To say that The Beatles had interesting lives would be the understatement of the century. When the Fab Four rose to fame in the 1960s, they ignited a spark in the music world that started a fire no one has yet to extinguish. This meant they were well and truly the centres of attention, which comes with pros and cons, as Paul McCartney discovered when he was the victim of a few different crimes that all took place around the same time.
The track ‘She Came In Through The Bathroom Window’ is widely accepted as the by-product of a fan breaking into Paul McCartney’s house and stealing a photo of his father. The thief has since then been confirmed as Diane Ashley, now married with four children and the proud owner of a framed photo of herself and Paul, which she displays in her kitchen.
“We found a ladder in his garden and stuck it up the bathroom window, which he’d left slightly open,” she said, “I was the one who climbed up and got in… I don’t regret any of it. I had a great time, a really great time.”
Even though McCartney has since confirmed that Diane was the inspiration behind the song, several other crimes surrounding The Beatles also assisted in the lyrics. The first is the line “quit the police department”, inspired by an ex-cop turned taxi driver in New York. The following line, “Sunday’s on the phone to Monday, Tuesday’s on the phone to me,” stems from a crime involving The Beatles song ‘A Day in the Life’.
Landis Kearnon, one-half of the thieving duo who carried out the crime of the century, commented on the big day. “All this time, I thought this song was written about me and my friend Judy,” she said in regards to ‘She Came In Through The Bathroom Window’. “What a surprise to learn there was someone named Diane Ashley who put a ladder up to Paul’s house and climbed in through the bathroom window.”
Landis and Judy were put up to their crime by Green and Stone, who she describes as “a couple of sleazy artist managers driving around the Sunset Strip in a Chinchilla-lined caddy limo”. They promised the two women $1,500 if they broke into David Crosby’s house, took the song ‘A Day In The Life’ off his reel-to-reel, and drove it to Sunset Sound Studios so that Green and Stone could make a copy.
Landis and Judy didn’t ask any questions when taking the record, but they did notice it was played on the radio the next day. It turns out Greene and Stone had used it to bribe KHJ into playing one of the bands they managed, The Cake, on air.
“By the following day, ‘A Day In The Life’ was no longer on the air,” said Landis, “And just a day or two after that, there was a front-page blurb in the LA Times about ‘A Day In The Life’ getting aired one month prior to the release date… which apparently cost The Beatles plenty, and they were suing Capitol or Columbia, whichever the label was, for $2 million… and McCartney was flying in from London to deal with the mess. Oops.”
Despite ‘She Came In Through The Bathroom Window’ being primarily inspired by Diane Ashley when she literally came in through the bathroom window, upon hearing the story of when ‘A Day In The Life’ was stolen, it becomes clear how that also inspired the song.
Kearnon added: “The bit about ‘Sundays on the phone to Monday, Tuesdays on the phone to me’, that was somebody named Sunday, maybe a detective, I can’t remember now, calling the producer Billy Monday about the break-in and song leak. Billy Monday, knowing she was a friend of McCartney’s, called Tuesday Weld, and it was she who called Paul in London and told him the news.”
The Beatles notoriously grew more and more abstract with their lyricism through the Sgt Pepper and Abbey Road days, leaving many of their lyrics open to interpretation. The band will have taken from numerous instances in their life and put them together in a song so that it sounded remotely cohesive. ‘She Came In Through The Bathroom Window’ is the perfect example of this, inspired by both the titular character and the crime surrounding ‘A Day In The Life’.
