Dear Prudence

• 1. Introduction

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  "Dear Prudence" was written in early 1968 in the foothills of the Himalayas, far from any recording studio. John Lennon was sitting beneath a jacaranda tree in Rishikesh, India, learning a new guitar technique from the folk singer Donovan, when a particular person across the ashram refused to come outside. That person was Prudence Farrow, sister of actress Mia Farrow, and her self-imposed seclusion would produce one of the most quietly celebrated songs on the Beatles' landmark double album. What drove Prudence to lock herself away? Why were Lennon and George Harrison assigned to coax her out? And how did a song born from personal concern become what critic Tim Riley called one of Lennon's finest compositions?

• 2. Prudence in Rishikesh

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  Prudence Farrow arrived at Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's ashram in Rishikesh having been drawn to Transcendental Meditation through a highly disturbing experience with LSD. Once there, she became intensely serious about meditating, refusing to leave her bungalow for days on end. Of all the students on the course, she felt closest to Lennon and Harrison, and the Maharishi assigned them to act as her "team buddies". Lennon and Harrison had each experimented with LSD before finding meditation, which gave them a particular stake in her wellbeing. Their task was to make sure she socialised with the other students, but the days stretched on and Farrow would not emerge. Farrow herself later described racing back to her room after every meal and lecture, saying she was simply more "fanatical" than the others. Before she left Rishikesh, Harrison told her that they had written a song about her, though she did not hear it until after the Beatles had already recorded it.

• 3. A Song Written Under a Tree

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  Donovan had followed the Beatles out to Rishikesh to study Transcendental Meditation alongside them. One morning, sitting under a jacaranda tree, Lennon asked him to demonstrate the finger-picking style Donovan later described as "the Carter Family finger style" and also called clawhammer picking. Lennon, according to Donovan, was "a fast learner" and mastered the technique in just two days. The song Lennon wrote using that technique carries lyrics that are deliberately simple: references to birds, flowers, clouds, the sun, and the wind appear throughout, which author Steve Turner connected to the simplicity of life on the ashram. Musically, "Dear Prudence" shares a descending chromatic bass-line with Lennon's 1967 composition "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds". It is in D major, and the arpeggio effect is achieved by detuning the sixth string down to a low D. Musicologist Walter Everett placed the song alongside "Across the Universe" as Lennon's most "Indian"-sounding composition, citing its peaceful aura and ringing dronelike guitars.

• 4. Recording Without Ringo

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  The Beatles formally recorded "Dear Prudence" at Trident Studios in London from the 28th to the 30th of August 1968. Ringo Starr was not present. He had temporarily walked out of the band during recent sessions for McCartney's song "Back in the U.S.S.R.", protesting McCartney's criticism of his drumming. On the 28th of August, the three remaining Beatles completed the basic track, with McCartney taking over on drums. Trident Studios offered eight-track recording equipment, which gave the band more options than the four-track setup they normally used at EMI Studios. According to Everett, this freedom allowed a cleaner layering of the increasingly thick vocal and instrumental arrangement. Lennon played a finger-picked electric rhythm part; Harrison contributed rhythm guitar using his recently acquired Fender Telecaster; and the recording benefited from Lennon's new Fender Twin Reverb amplifier. On the 29th of August, McCartney overdubbed bass guitar, Lennon doubled his lead vocal, and the three Beatles added harmonies. They were joined that day by Mal Evans, Apple Records artist Jackie Lomax, and McCartney's cousin John McCartney, who contributed backing vocals, handclaps, and percussion including tambourines. A performance ending with the backing singers cheering and applauding was eventually cut from the released version. McCartney added piano on the final day, and the arrangement also includes what author Jonathan Gould describes as a "ten-bar drum solo" by McCartney and an ascending countermelody by Harrison played in two octaves. Author Ian MacDonald singled out Harrison's "Indian"-style guitar parts as the arrangement's richest ingredient.

• 5. Lennon's Shifting View

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  A demo of the song was recorded before the Trident sessions, at Harrison's house, Kinfauns, in Esher, Surrey, in late May 1968 as part of a set of 27 songs the Beatles taped in preparation for the White Album. Lennon performed it alone on acoustic guitar and added a spoken commentary afterward, calling it a song about a girl "who attended a meditation course in Rishikesh". Author and journalist Mark Paytress observed that Lennon grew less charitable toward the song's subject as his disillusion with the Maharishi deepened. By 1980, in an interview, Lennon described Prudence as having "gone slightly barmy, meditating too long" and unable to come out of her hut. He added, with a laugh, that he "didn't know" at the time that he was "already cosmic". Author David Quantick linked this shift to rumours that the Maharishi had made sexual advances toward Mia Farrow, noting that Lennon now reread Prudence's episode in an anti-Maharishi light. Quantick also observed that "Dear Prudence" became, in light of Lennon's falling out with the Maharishi in April 1968, "an invitation to tune in or drop out", and that the track's eeriness would have fit with A Doll's House, the originally intended title for The Beatles.

• 6. Reception and the Banshees

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  Apple Records released The Beatles on the 22nd of November 1968, with "Dear Prudence" sequenced as the second track on side one of the double LP. Its introduction was cross-faded with jet aircraft sounds that close out "Back in the U.S.S.R.". A reviewer for Record Mirror noticed the unusual opening immediately, describing it as "a shock" to find the old folk clawhammer pick performed on an open-tuned electric guitar. In 1987, Lennon's original handwritten lyrics for the song, running to 14 lines with doodles in the margins, sold at auction for $19,500. Rolling Stone ranked the song at number 63 on its list of the Beatles' 100 greatest songs in 2010, and Mojo placed it at number 44 in 2006. The most commercially striking afterlife came in 1983, when English post-punk band Siouxsie and the Banshees released a cover version as a single during a turbulent period for the group: guitarist John McGeoch had left due to alcoholism and had been replaced by Cure frontman Robert Smith. The band recorded the track at a studio in Stockholm in July 1983 and finished it at Angel Recording Studios in north London, where Smith's sister Janet added a harpsichord part. The single peaked at number 3 on the UK Singles Chart, kept from the top by Culture Club's "Karma Chameleon". The success surprised Siouxsie, who said it did not really sink in until the touring had ended and the band was back home for the winter. Prudence Farrow titled her 2015 autobiography after the song and, as of 2013, ran the Dear Prudence Foundation, raising funds to educate people in meditation.