The Beatles wrote many songs about themselves but they rarely wrote about other rock stars. One of the songs from The Beatles’ The White Album is reportedly a lighthearted spoof of one of the rockers the band knew personally. Despite this, Paul McCartney said the song had a very different meaning.
A song from The Beatles’ ‘White Album’ may be about a star who worships Mother Nature
Donovan is a folk-rock singer who explored hippie mysticism through songs like “Atlantis,” “Season of the Witch,” and “There Is a Mountain.” He famously accompanied The Beatles on their trip to Rishikesh, India, to study meditation under the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. According to a Variety article, The Beatles were gently poking fun at Donovan with “Mother Nature’s Son,” one of the folk tunes from The White Album.
Modern cultures mainly use Mother Nature as a symbol for the earth. However, the ancient Romans worshipped her as a deity called Terra Mater. In 2022, Donovan said he, too, devotes himself to Mother Nature. “Every other song of mine celebrates the Goddess,” he said. “She is Mother Nature. And we have been placed in this extraordinary position, almost on the edge of extinction, by this totally, overly male view that every resource, every river, every breeze, every cloud, every metal in the land should be raped and pillaged and sold as a commodity.”
Donovan explained his pagan beliefs in greater detail
,
Donovan’s pagan beliefs had a big impact on his music. The “Mellow Yellow” singer recalled a dramatic experience at Castlemartin. “I was also doing in that old house was remembering, ‘What am I? What is the power that I have? What is this power that sells all these records? What is it that they’re all reacting to?’” he said.
“And it became clear that I was interested in the power of the pagan song,” the Hurdy Gurdy Man added. “What is that power? That great oratorical, musical compositional power of poetry that so many great Gaelic artists have? I was looking for somebody to call, somebody to speak to me.” This anecdote inspired his track “The Ghost of Pagan Song.”
What Paul McCartney and John Lennon said about the ‘White Album’ song
,
However, not everybody remembers things the same way. In the 1997 book Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now, Paul said he wrote “Mother Nature’s Son” about himself. He was paying tribute to the love of the natural world he developed as a Boy Scout. Other sources for the tune were the standard “Nature Boy” and a lecture by the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. While explaining the origin of “Mother Nature’s Son,” Paul didn’t mention Donovan or imply that there was anything satirical about the tune.
The book All We Are Saying: The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono features an interview from 1980. In it, the “Happy Xmas (War Is Over)” singer was asked about “Mother Nature’s Son.” John said the tune was Paul’s. John revealed that the lecture that influenced “Mother Nature’s Son” also inspired him to write an early version of his solo song “Jealous Guy.” He didn’t say the former tune had anything to do with Donovan.
Whether or not Donovan inspired “Mother Nature’s Son,” he is Mother Nature’s son.
