"She Came In Through the Bathroom Window" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles from their 1969 album Abbey Road. Written by Paul McCartney, it is the fifth song of the album's climactic medley, immediately following "Polythene Pam".
Origin
The song Paul McCartney wrote "Bathroom Window", after the inspiration came to him on 11 May 1968 while in New York City to launch the band's record label Apple Corps. One of the sources was the Apple scruffs who camped nearby Abbey Road Studios. One day, Diane Ashley and some of her fellow Apple scruffs broke into McCartney's St John's Wood home. She told Beatles historian Steve Turner in 1994:
She then opened the front door to let the others inside. In addition to clothes, the fans also stole a number of photographs. Another Apple scruff, Margo Bird, confirmed this account and later found one of the stolen photographs, thereby returning it.
McCartney found himself stuck on the final verse, but conceived of one beginning with "So I quit the police department" after seeing a police identification panel on a taxi he rode to Kennedy Airport; it contained a mug shot of the driver and his name resting above the words New York Police Dept. McCartney recalled: "This was the great thing about the randomness of it all. If I hadn't been in this guy's cab, or if it had been someone else driving, the song would have been different. Also I had a guitar there so I could solidify it into something straight away." He had brought his guitar with him to New York, restoring a habit of his dating back to the Beatles' early days in Liverpool.
The Abbey Road medley When working on Abbey Road, the Beatles did not know that their time as a band was fast moving towards divorce.; Lennon originally wanted a rock and roll album, and McCartney, a pop symphony/opera, so the album was split two ways: the first side contained individual songs, and most of the second was a sixteen-minute medley. The idea for the medley was McCartney's, and the group's producer George Martin claimed his share of credit in its creation in wanting "to get John and Paul to think more seriously about their music".idea was McCartney's: ; Martin's influence: He had long been advising the group to "think symphonically", to use motifs and complex structures and forms. Thus, the medley's songs, short "half" songs, are connected in some way by thematic or tonal coherence and link together through segues and fades.; ;
Composition "Bathroom Window" is written in the key of A major and in time throughout.
In the final moments of the preceding track, "Polythene Pam", the guitars' bassline walks down the E major scale in steps and half steps (E/D/C#/B). Then, they arrive at A major, the home key of "Bathroom Window" as well as the key of the medley's first piece, "You Never Give Me Your Money" (along with A minor).; ; see also Since "Money", the medley had followed E major, and so the return to A major marks a resolution, hence "one of the medley’s most exciting moments", as Womack sees it.
Recording "Bathroom Window" was recorded together with the song preceding it in the medley, "Polythene Pam", as one track, like "Sun King" and "Mean Mr. Mustard".; This happened across three days, on 25, 28, and 30 July 1969, in thirty-nine takes.dates: ; ; ; number of takes: ; The Beatles recorded the basic track for "Pam"/"Bathroom Window" at EMI Studio Two in London on 25 July; Ringo Starr plays his Ludwig Hollywood Maple drum kit, Harrison, his Gibson Les Paul Standard electric guitar, McCartney, his Rickenbacker 4001S bass, and Lennon plays his Framus Hootenanny twelve-string guitar.; precise instrumentation:
McCartney sang an off-mike guide vocal on "Bathroom Window", while Lennon did the same on "Pam". At the very beginning of "Bathroom Window", in anticipation of the change of tempo, Lennon gives out a laugh and then shouts "Oh, look out!".
The band carried out overdubs on the track on 28 July, although, according to the Beatles historian John C. Winn, many of these contributions, such as piano and electric piano, were subsequently cut. Recording was completed on 30 July, when the final vocal, guitar, and percussion overdubs were taped.; ; These included a second lead guitar part by Harrison, playing the descending notes into the start of "Bathroom Window". After listening to the recordings to check for the transitions between the medley pieces, the group accepted that of "Pam"/"Bathroom Window". On August 14, stereo mixing was finished, and "Pam" and "Bathroom Window" were fused into the medley "without the slightest hint of a pause between the [former and 'Mean Mr. Mustard', the song preceding it in the medley]", as Womack notes.; ; George Martin produced "Pam", and Geoff Emerick and Phil McDonald, along with John Kurlander and Alan Parsons, engineered it.; Kurlander and Parsons:
A slower version of this song, recorded in late January 1969 during the Get Back sessions, appears on the 1996 compilation Anthology 3, while an in-progress version is featured on the 2021 Let It Be 50th Anniversary Edition.
Release and reception Dennis Jovenetti of Utah State University's Student Life paper cited it and "Because" as an example of the medley's, as well as overall album's, musical diversity. He categorized it as hard rock, with "very fine" guitar fills from Harrison between the lyrics. Ritchie Yorke of the Houston Post called it "a very good song of Paul's with great lyrics." Jovenetti noted that Abbey Road placed more stress on the words than all previous Beatles albums, and cited the line: "So I quit the police department, and got myself a steady job", as an example.
Personnel Writers and scholars disagree somewhat on the parts composing "Bathroom Window" and who played or sang them. And despite the recording takes of "Bathroom Window" and "Polythene Pam" being one and the same, the two tracks have different personnel listings but nevertheless very similar instrumentation. Hunter Davies, Walter Everett, Jean-Michel Guesdon and Philippe Margotin, Ian MacDonald, John C. Winn, and Kenneth Womack, concur with this list:; ; ; ; ;
Paul McCartney – lead vocal, bass guitar John Lennon – twelve-string acoustic guitar George Harrison – lead guitar Ringo Starr – drums
Other identified parts are these; the writers who mention them are listed in the respective citations:
McCartney – lead guitar,; ; piano (tentative); ; Lennon – backing vocal; ; Harrison – backing vocal; ; ; Starr? – tambourine,; (although he does not say who plays it); ; ; (although he does not say who plays it); maracas, (although he does not outright name Starr); ; (although he does not outright name Starr); cowbell;
Winn notes the use of "whipcrack" percussion but does not credit it to anyone. MacDonald writes that McCartney plays electric piano. Guesdon and Margotin credit another guitar part to McCartney and uncertainly indicate a piano part fronted by Lennon.
Covers
In 1970, Joe Cocker's cover of this song reached number 30 on the Billboard top 40, number 18 on the Dutch Single Top 100, and 19 on the Dutch Top 40. The Austin Chronicles Raoul Hernandez, reporting on Cocker's performance at Wimberley, Texas, opined his three Beatles covers, including "She Came In Through the Bathroom Window" "were worth the proverbial price of admission".
Ike and Tina Turner released a cover of this song as a European single from their 1972 album Feel Good. Music journalist Lindsay Zoladz, crowning it one of Tina Turner's best rock covers, argues that her rendition shapes the Beatles' casual account of the Apple Scruffs' theft into a mature, urgent lyric, with the words: "He said he’d always been a hustler, said he worked about 15 hours a day". A version features on their 1973 double album of live performances across Europe, The World of Ike & Tina, which Record World notes as a "[r]ough, raunchy [rocker]" alongside other covers on the album.
Notes
References
Citations
Bibliography Books and academic sources
Magazines and websites
Other media
External links
An alternate take of the song during the Get Back sessions, as heard on Anthology 3
The Beatles Bible entry on "She Came In Through the Bathroom Window"