Paul McCartney says Lady Madonna is a ‘tribute to women’ inspired by a ‘terrible sense of loss’

The non-album single Lady Madonna is a “tribute to women” according to Paul McCartney, who says The Beatles song is inspired by a “terrible sense of loss.”

Lady Madonna holds a more conventional sound to that of the songs to follow on from the Fab Four’s trip to India, with the McCartney-written song, credited to the Lennon-McCartney partnership, shying away from the psychedelic experimentation. McCartney has since confirmed the short track is inspired by loss and that a nursery rhyme lyrical lift is his favourite part of the song. Writing in his book, The Lyrics, where McCartney breaks down the origins of each of his songs, he says Lady Madonna holds one of the “most powerful components in songwriting.”

McCartney wrote: “The fact that my mother Mary died when I was fourteen is something I never got over. A song that portrays a very present, nurturing mother has got to be influenced by that terrible sense of loss. The question about how Lady Madonna manages to ‘feed the rest’ is particularly poignant to me, since you don’t have to be a psychoanalyst to figure out that I myself was one of ‘the rest’. I must have felt left out. It’s really a tribute to the mother figure, a tribute to women.”

McCartney went on to praise the Three Blind Mice nursery rhyme, where he pulled one of the most memorable lyrics heard in Lady Madonna. He called the phrase “see how they run” his “favourite aspect of the song”.

Explaining why it was his favourite moment, McCartney said: “That reference lends a slightly dark aspect to the song. In any case, the word ‘run’ also refers to stockings. One of my abiding memories of growing up was that, in addition to the other rather more important problems women faced, they were always laddering their stockings.”

McCartney believes the strength of the song comes from the fact that he and the rest of The Beatles were not able to read music or actively pursue cord changes. He continued: “With The Beatles, we were always operating on the cusp between being conscious of how a ‘refrain’ contributed to a song and basically having no idea what we were doing.

“One of the things I always thought was the secret of The Beatles was that our music was self-taught. We were never consciously thinking of what we were doing. Anything we did came naturally. A breathtaking chord change wouldn’t happen because we knew how that chord related to another chord. We weren’t able to read music or write it down, so we just made it up.”

Fellow Beatles member John Lennon was less excited about the song, saying he was “not proud” of Lady Madonna. He said: “Good piano lick, but the song never really went anywhere. Maybe I helped him on some of the lyrics, but I’m not proud of them either way.”