Dave's Song of the Day
She Came In Through the Bathroom Window – Joe Cocker
Saturday song of the day: Today’s song was inspired by a fan breaking into a rock star’s home.
It’s hard to imagine just how big The Beatles were in the mid and late 1960s. They basically could not go anywhere without being mobbed by fans. In addition, there was a rabid group of Beatles fans that the band called “Apple scruffs” who hung out near the Apple Corps record company offices, the Abbey Road recording studio, and the homes of the band members, hoping to interact with the band. On occasion, the Apple scruffs stepped way over the line and invaded the band’s private lives.
One such incident took place at Paul McCartney’s home in 1967 or 1968, when a fan noticed a ladder on the property, as well as a partially opened bathroom window on an upper floor. The fan, Diane Ashley, decided to use the ladder to climb up to the window. She described it as “We were bored, he was out and so we decided to pay him a visit. We found a ladder in his garden and stuck it up at the bathroom window which he’d left slightly open. I was the one who climbed up and got in.” After Diane got in the house, she went downstairs, opened the door, and let other people in. Several personal items were stolen.
Other Apple scruffs were more benign. One of them, Margo Bird, describes what happened after the break-in, “There were really two groups of Apple Scruffs – those who would break in and those who would just wait outside with cameras and autograph books. I used to take Paul’s dog for a walk and got to know him quite well. I knew there was one picture he particularly wanted back – a colour-tinted picture of him in a Thirties frame. I knew who had taken this and got it back for him.”
While putting together songs for the 1969 Beatles album
Abbey Road, Paul wrote a song inspired by the break-in that he called
She Came In Through the Bathroom Window. It was a relatively minor song by Beatles standards and was included on the album as part of a long medley of eight short songs. The medley stretched to sixteen minutes and included, in order,
You Never Give Me Your Money,
Sun King,
Mean Mr. Mustard,
Polythene Pam,
She Came In Through the Bathroom Window,
Golden Slumbers,
Carry That Weight, and
The End. The portion devoted
to She Came In Through The Bathroom Window ran for under two minutes.
Abbey Road was released on September 26th, 1969. Before the record was even released, however, The Beatles gave singer Joe Cocker permission to record a cover of
She Came In Through the Bathroom Window for his second album,
Joe Cocker! McCartney had liked Cocker’s previous cover of their song
With a Little Help from My Friends and thought he would do a good job with another Beatles song. Cocker’s album came out in November 1969, a bit over a month after
Abbey Road, and the
Joe Cocker! album’s third single was his version of
She Came In Through the Bathroom Window. While The Beatles never released the song as a single, Cocker’s cover was a minor hit, placing at #30 on the
Billboard Hot 100.
Joe Cocker, November 1969
View: https://youtu.be/TedvuER50Lk
The Beatles, September 1969
View: https://youtu.be/NVv7IzEVf3M
Tomorrow: Don’t let the days go by