Writing Prompts from Beatles Lyrics
Taking the Beatles fictional characters to the next level
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The Beatles’ early albums, targeted to their fanbase of teenage girls, focus on love, either besotted love (I Saw Her Standing There) or the many iterations of bitter betrayal and heartbreak (Misery, No Reply). Starting with Rubber Soul in 1965, the Beatles sought a more sophisticated audience. The lyrics became simultaneously deeply personal (In My Life) and more impersonal (Eleanor Rigby).
Eleanor Rigby exemplifies a narrative or “story song,” a format favored by Paul, which use fictional characters, often inspired by real life events. This genre blossomed in Sgt. Peppers with “A Day in the Life,” “She’s Leaving Home” and “Lovely Rita.” The stories of “Rocky Racoon,” “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” and Desmond and Molly Jones (in Ob-Bla-Di Ob-Bla-Da”) are featured in the Beatles “White Album.” These songs have a story arc with a beginning middle and end, but clocking in at about three minutes, the narrative could use additional nuance and development.
I’m always on the prowl for intriguing story prompts, so I thought what better than taking the Beatles’ fictional characters to the next level.
Rocky Racoon
The Beatles Story Line
Rocky Racoon is styled as an American West honkytonk yarn about a gunfight between Rocky and his rival Dan who stole Rocky’s girlfriend, variably referred to as McGill, Lil or Nancy. Rocky returns to his room after a doctor, “stinking of gin,” treats his gunshot wound. Rocky notices a Bible embossed with “Gideon” and assumes the prior occupant had left it behind.
I’m utterly charmed by this shout out to Gideon. Apparently both Paul and I enjoy the same curiosity about the Gideon Bibles in hotel rooms. Who is this well-traveled guy and why does he keep leaving Bibles behind?
Writing Prompt
In my continuation, Rocky has recovered but is now missing his left earlobe. He discovers a treasure map Gideon left behind, along with a letter to his rival Dan, telling him to make sure that no one is tailing him and to meet him at the sign of the cross in the Black Hills of the Dakotas.
Crossing and double-crossing ensue as Rocky vows to retrieve McGill/Lil/Nancy, seek revenge on Dan and find the missing treasure. This song could turn into a rock opera, a la “Tommy” by the Who. I anticipate my Rocky Racoon evolving into the next great American novel. I’m channeling Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick.” Like Melville’s fascination with the whaling industry, I would include a complete fact-based section on the Gideons, who the hell they are, what their mission is, concluding with a blistering commentary on the exclusion of women as full members. I would open the novel with the line, “Call me Gideon.”
A Day in the Life
Beatles Story Line
Against the backdrop of road repair work in Lancashire, “A Day in the Life” describes a shared moment among three random people:
A lucky man who made the grade, but who is then killed in a traffic accident
The crowd of people watching a movie about a victorious war
A man who woke up and dragged a comb across his head, then went upstairs to have a smoke
Writing Prompt
My expanded version would provide a detailed back-story of the random people at the crash site. The man who made the grade is the victim, now nothing more than roadkill surrounded by gawking bystanders. The crowd of people leaving the movie theatre are shocked to see yet another violent scene – perhaps the decapitation of the lucky man. The man who had just combed his hair happens to be in the bus that slammed into the lucky man who hadn’t noticed that the light had changed.
My theme would delve into how the lives of all these people would change with an equally random blip in their routine - if the man had not stopped to comb his hair, if a busted water main had closed the theatre, if the lucky man took a cab instead of driving himself. The random nature of fate is consistent with the iconic last rising chord in the song. Paul instructed the orchestra, much to their surprise, to play any notes along a rising scale. The atonal chord cuts off abruptly just as the lucky man meets his fate.
I’m now channeling “The Bridge of San Luis Rey,” the 1927 Pulitzer Prize winner by Thornton Wilder. His theme is similar, the random acts of fate that bring five unrelated villagers to a bridge in the Andes at the moment the bridge snaps and hurls them to a violent death. Wilder’s book includes a friar who seeks a cosmic answer to random tragedies. He finds none.
The postscript to my version will take up this theme and wonder about missed opportunities, how our world would be diminished if Paul had not met John on that fateful day - July 6, 1957, at Woolton Parish church where John and the Quarrymen were playing at a church garden party.
Lovely Rita Meter Maid
Beatles Story Line
Lovely Rita is a simple song about a guy who becomes besotted with a meter maid, inviting her out to tea and dinner, eventually visiting with her family and a “sister or two.” The extent of the ensuing relationship is unclear.
Writing Prompt
Culture clash is screaming out to me. I envision the narrator as a privileged lad, let’s call him Paul, who has a quirky fetish for women in uniform. Rita, a pert meter maid, is a welcome novelty from his usual diet of nurses. Paul knows his friends will tease him for his down-scale tastes, but Rita is a surprise. She’s a well-educated, well-read woman who speaks both Polish and French and is saving up enough money to attend the Sorbonne. Paul is captivated and falls in love, despite the disapproval of his peer group.
Now, here’s the thing. I’ve been to many writing workshops where the consistent advice is to listen to your characters and let them lead the story. Don’t fight it, go with the character. I can’t explain it, but Rita has spoken to me. She insists she has a club foot. The disability is not immediately apparent due to her special shoe, but Paul can’t help but notice when he visits Rita at her home. She takes off her shoe and puts her feet up on the table along with her sisters who have the same club foot. Rita looks at him and gives him a wink.
I invite anyone to take up this adaptation, but only on the non-negotiable condition that Rita has a club foot.
Eleanor Rigby
Beatle Story Line
Eleanor Rigby and Father McKenzie live lonely, isolated lives.
Writing Prompt
I seize upon the lyric, “she puts on the face she keeps in the jar by the door.” Eleanor has a dark secret to hide. Taking a page from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter,” I believe that she and Father McKenzie have a love child. The town shuns Eleanor. Her contrived face in the jar by the door is the equivalent of the scarlet letter. Father McKenzie is consumed with guilt, his sermons an off-putting rant about the hellish consequences of carnal sin. No wonder nobody comes to his church.
This adaptation is a slam dunk.
I might consider a series of linked stories and take up the tale of the love child. Her name could be Sexy Sadie.
She’s Leaving Home
Beatles Story Line
An only daughter slips out and runs away with a man from the motorcade. The devastated parents can’t imagine how a daughter could be so thoughtless after they have given her “everything money can buy.”
Writing Prompt
This is a real-life story line of the late 60s when millions of teenagers headed out to San Francisco to pursue personal and sexual freedom. My story line would not follow the daughter scrapping out an existence on the streets of Haight Ashbury. I would focus on the mother, a frustrated housewife who has just read Betty Friedan’s book “The Feminine Mystique.” The mother has abandoned her wish to become a dancer, instead following the social norms of the 1950s dictating marriage and motherhood. She constantly reminds her daughter of her dashed dreams. At the same time, she’s bitterly jealous of her daughter’s sexual freedom and unconventional lifestyle.
Why does this plot line sound so familiar?
Oh, yeah, I forgot. I’ve been working on a book about this very theme for the past five years. I’ll give it a sales boost by saying that it’s inspired by the Beatles song.
You can’t go wrong with Beatles tunes - a rich tapestry.