18 November 2010

"Mother Mary comes to me..."

When I find myself in times of trouble,
Mother Mary comes to me.
Speaking words of wisdom: Let it be

And in my hour of darkness,
She is standing right in front of me
Speaking words of wisdom: Let it be
I've listened to those lyrics for forty years without knowing the backstory.  Yesterday while driving to the library, I heard a BBC report about the top five Beatles' songs being uploaded on iTunes, and a commentor mentioned in passing that the "mother Mary" referred to in the song was in fact Paul McCartney's mother.  The story, via Wikipedia:
McCartney said he had the idea of "Let It Be" after a dream he had about his mother during the tense period surrounding the sessions for The Beatles (the "White Album"). McCartney explained that his mother—who died of cancer when McCartney was fourteen—was the inspiration for the "Mother Mary" lyric.  McCartney later said, "It was great to visit with her again. I felt very blessed to have that dream. So that got me writing 'Let It Be'."  He also said in a later interview about the dream that his mother had told him, "It will be all right, just let it be."
You learn something every day.

Image credit (A photo of Mary McCartney when she worked at The Walton Hospital. Taken from the "Woman" album by Mike McCartney/McGear.)

6 comments:

  1. This got me thinking about Lucy in the Sky with Diamond, who said there would be liaison with LSD and Lennon denied himself and said there would be no connection with drogas.Junkie should be who thought this hypothesis...or not(?)

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  2. Minnesotastan

    by the way ,apropos , i don´t ....
    when you will write about Don McLean - Miss American Pie.
    This music , is beautiful and full of mysteries.
    There are a mix of Rolling Stones , Hell´s Angels + murder + the show ; Altamont ;The Big Bopper

    Don said :"I never will speak the true about this music" e what do you think, Minnesotastan?

    I myself have thought about writing a book,and you?

    Will be a conspiracy theory ?

    I don´t know if my english is enough to understand...


    Links
    http://katandmike.com/misc/american_pie/american_pie.htm


    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tr-BYVeCv6U

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  3. Binho, I think "Lucy" was inspired by John Lennon's son Julian. You can look it up on Wikipedia.

    Thanks for the suggestion re Don McLean, but I have too much stuff bookmarked as it is.

    :.)

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  4. Speaking of conspiracy theories... would this be the *real* Paul McCartney's mother, or the impostors? (wink, wink)

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  5. Paul is dead . . .

    ReplyDelete