Sexy Sadie

• 1. Introduction

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  "Sexy Sadie" began as something far more blunt: a song called "Maharishi." John Lennon wrote it in India in 1968, bags already packed, ready to leave the ashram at Rishikesh after hearing an accusation that shook his faith in a spiritual teacher he had once revered. What came out of that moment was a track so loaded with bittersweet contempt that critics would later call it one of the earliest examples of a diss track in rock history. How does a song about a guru become a document of betrayal? And how does the story behind it keep shifting, even decades later, as the people involved change their accounts?

• 2. The Accusation

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  Actress Mia Farrow was attending a course taught by the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi at his ashram in Rishikesh when the alleged incident occurred. Lennon heard that the Maharishi had made a sexual advance on Farrow, and the story hit him like a door slamming shut. The source of that account, it later emerged, was Alexis Mardas, a figure known to the Beatles as "Magic Alex." George Harrison, Paul McCartney, and Cynthia Lennon all came to believe that Mardas had fabricated the story. Farrow herself did not address it for decades. Then, during the MeToo movement, she confirmed she had been harassed, describing what happened in her own words: "Suddenly I became aware of two surprisingly male, hairy arms going around me." The accusation Lennon acted on in 1968 turned out to be true in her account, even if his bandmates doubted it.

• 3. Writing in Anger

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  Lennon described the song's origins with unusual clarity. "I wrote it when we had our bags packed and were leaving," he said. "It was the last piece I wrote before I left India." His original lyrics were considerably less polished than what ended up on record. According to Mark Lewisohn's 1988 book The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions, an early outtake captures Lennon demonstrating those raw lyrics to his bandmates: "Maharishi, you little twat / Who the fuck do you think you are?" The song's eventual opening line asks, "What have you done? / You made a fool of everyone" - a clear echo, Lennon noted in a 1968 Rolling Stone interview, of Smokey Robinson and the Miracles' "I've Been Good to You," which opens with nearly the same sentiment. Even in his fury, Lennon was listening to Motown. Before leaving, he exchanged words with the Maharishi directly. When asked why he was going, Lennon replied, "Well, if you're so cosmic, you'll know why."

• 4. George Harrison's Intervention

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  The title change from "Maharishi" to "Sexy Sadie" came entirely at Harrison's insistence. His account appears in the director's cut of the Beatles Anthology documentary from 1995: Harrison told Lennon that if the song was going to be used, the name had to change. He persuaded Lennon to make the swap. After returning from India, Lennon had scratched the original lyrics, still titled "Maharishi," into a piece of wood. Derek Taylor, the Beatles' press officer, remembered watching Lennon do this in the Apple offices. The renaming was not just practical protection against a lawsuit; it transformed a direct attack into something more oblique and enduring. The song's moody instrumental fadeout was also trimmed before mixing, with 39 seconds cut from an ending that had featured a breakdown built around the middle eight.

• 5. Shifting Accounts

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  Harrison's feelings about the whole episode grew more complicated over the years. In 1992, he gave a benefit concert for the Maharishi-associated Natural Law Party, and he later apologised for how the Maharishi had been treated, saying, "We were very young." He was direct about his revised view: "It's probably in the history books that Maharishi 'tried to attack Mia Farrow' - but it's bullshit, total bullshit." Cynthia Lennon wrote in 2006 that she had "hated leaving on a note of discord and mistrust, when we had enjoyed so much kindness from the Maharishi." Asked in an interview whether he forgave the Beatles, the Maharishi said, "I could never be upset with angels." McCartney took his daughter Stella to visit the Maharishi in the Netherlands in 2007, an encounter that renewed their friendship. Mia Farrow, through all of this, has continued to maintain that the harassment was real.

• 6. Legacy and Influence

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  Ringo Starr referenced "Sexy Sadie" in lyrics twice: once in "Devil Woman" from his 1973 album Ringo, and again in "Drumming Is My Madness" from the 1981 record Stop and Smell the Roses. Harrison also folded a reference to the song into "Simply Shady" on his 1974 album Dark Horse. The 2007 Beatles-themed film Across the Universe named one of its characters Sadie, played by Dana Fuchs, in direct tribute to the song. A band called Sexy Sadie took their name from it entirely. The song's piano part left a more structural mark: the main riff in Radiohead's "Karma Police" closely resembles it, a debt that one critic noted alongside Arctic Monkeys' "Four Out of Five" when ranking the song. At the 50th anniversary of The Beatles, Jacob Stolworthy of The Independent placed "Sexy Sadie" sixth out of the album's 30 tracks. Time Out London, also in 2018, ranked it 14th on its list of the best Beatles songs overall.