"But, Meg," you might continue to ask, "what could possibly be John's beef with the Maharishi?" Well, after spending some months in Rishikesh meditating with the Maharishi and the other Beatles and a bunch of celebrity friends and fans (among them, most famously, Donovan and Mia and Prudence Farrow), John was joined by Alexis Mardas, also known as Magic Alex, a world-champion con artist and asswipe who had unfortunately worked his way into the Beatles' inner circle. (If you're unfamiliar with Magic Alex, you should check out this excellent article from In the Life of... The Beatles, because he's fascinating.) Alex essentially started a rumor that the Maharishi had been hitting on a woman staying in the meditation camp, which John believed, and which for some reason destroyed John's trust in the Maharishi as anything more than just another douche trying to get laid. John left Rishikesh in a huff, writing the song that was to become "Sexy Sadie" as he waited for a car to pick him up. It was a few years after the song came out on the White Album, I believe, that John revealed whom it was really about, and during the years that followed many others have come to the Maharishi's defense, which is why I now say with some certainty that the alleged sexual intrigue seems to never have happened, at least not according to people who were there. (And even if it had, I've never understood why it necessarily would have mattered-- but that's just me.)
As a Beatles blogger, I'm basically honor-bound to repeat that story when speaking of "Sexy Sadie," but I personally prefer to not think too much about it, because changing the Maharishi to a woman and making the whole thing a lot less specific just makes the song scads more appealing. I mean, when you realize that John wrote "Sexy Sadie" about a real person, it takes on a little bit of a nasty sheen-- but not so much that one can't love it, in my opinion. (This is no "How Do You Sleep?", thank the good Lord. Ever since John's death has turned him into some kind of peacenik "imagine-all-the-people-tra-la-la" icon/martyr in the popular imagination, I feel like people forget how mean John could be. I mean, I can't even listen to the character assassination piece that is "How Do You Sleep?", and that's from the Imagine album, of all places.)
But anyway, just one lovable thing about "Sexy Sadie" is that John's vocal is particularly ingenious, even for him. His singing hits just the right notes of bitterness, amusement, arousal, and even begrudging admiration-- he even manages to make some moments sound a lot like heavy breathing. And his falsetto parts, particularly in the coda, are beautiful, rather like laughter. I think that by the time he got around to making the White Album recording of this thing he'd already become less overtly angry and more just cynical about this situation. It's all in the vocal, which, as usual in John's best vocals, hides nothing that he's feeling. Awesomely, the others sing backup on hilarious "wah-wah-wah" lines that sound as much like "nyah-nyah-nyah" as one could hope for-- while their gleeful rising chorus of "saaay-diiiie" on the bridge sounds like they're egging her on from the sidelines.
And we've got another piano-driven song today, which is kind of cool. That's Paul on the opening piano line, which for some reason has been produced such that it sounds like it's coming from a room down the hall or something. It's also Paul on the bassline that comes in after the piano opening. This is one of Paul's more underrated lines, I think-- listen to it and tell me it doesn't just drip with lazy mockery. I don't know how he manages to infuse basslines with so much personality, but he DOES. Between the piano, the bass, and the drumming--which Ringo keeps fairly lazy and heavy without ever actually lagging behind the beat-- we get a laid-back, sorta hard-rock feel that makes this song a nice breather (or a nice cigarette break) in between the manic rock of "Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey" and "Helter Skelter," which "Sexy Sadie" sits smack in between. Listen to the piano part-- it sounds like it gets almost clunkier as it goes along-- by the time we're midway through, it might actually be just slightly behind the beat.
That piano-and-drum sound on "Sexy Sadie" gives it a totally distinctive sound in the Beatles canon, I think-- I can't imagine ever mistaking this piano part for any other piano part. The whole mood here is a little weird for them, just shot through with a very Lennon-esque cynicism that he'd do a lot more with down the line in his solo recordings. But I find "Sexy Sadie" totally, totally sexy. It's like John's talking dirty to you, or something. So just leave the Maharishi out of it and let him. It rules.
"Sexy Sadie," released in the U.K. side C track 5 of The Beatles a.k.a. the White Album, November 22, 1968; in the U.S. November 25, 1968.