|
This song was inspired by the
activities of an Apple Scruff who climbed into Paul's house
in St. John's Wood when he was away for the day. "We were
bored, he was out and so we decided to pay him a visit,"
remembers Diane Ashley. "We found a ladder in his garden and
stuck it up the bathroom window which he'd left slightly
open. I was the one who climbed up and got in."
Once she was inside the house, she
opened the front door and let the rest of the girls in.
Fellow Apple Scruff Margo Bird remembers: "They rummaged
around and took some clothes. People didn't usually take
anything of real value but I think this time a lot of
photographs and negatives were taken. 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 was eventually offered a job at Apple. I
started by making the tea and ended up in the promotions
department working with Tony King."
Paul asked Margo if she could
retrieve any of his belongings. "I knew who had done it and
I discovered that a lot of the stuff had already gone to
America," she said. "But I knew that 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."
Paul wrote 'She Came In Through The
Bathroom Window' in June 1968 during a trip to America to do
business with Capitol Records. It was here that he resumed
his relationship with Linda Eastman, whom he'd been
introduced to the previous summer in London and had since
met in New York.
The line, 'and so I quit the police
department' was inspired by the name of a cab driver in Los
Angeles. Paul noticed from his license badge that he was
called Eugene Quits and so he worked part of the name into
his song.
According to Carol Bedford, an
Apple Scruff who wrote the book Waiting For The Beatles,
Paul later said to her: "I've written a song about the girls
who broke in. It's called 'She Came In Through The Bathroom
Window'." Diane was surprised to have become the subject of
a Beatles' song. "I didn't believe at first because he'd
hated so much when we broke in," she says. "But then I
suppose anything can inspire a song, can't it? I know that
all his neighbors rang him when they saw we'd got in and I'm
sure that gave rise to the lines, 'Sunday's on the 'phone to
Monday/Tuesday's on the 'phone to me '."
Now married with four teenage
children, Diane keeps a framed photo of herself with Paul on
her kitchen shelf and looks back on her days as an Apple
Scruff with affection. "I don't regret any of it. I had a
great time, a really great time."
|