What Was “Dear Prudence” Written About?
Flickr/dgjonesFirst pressing of Gatefold Double LP + insert prints: The White Album.
In 1968, The Beatles traveled to India to study transcendental meditation under guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. But they weren’t the only celebrities interested in finding enlightenment at the time. Many actors and musicians made their way to the ashram. Among them were Mia Farrow and her sister Prudence.
As John Lennon later said, in an attempt to “reach God quicker than anybody else,” Prudence refused to leave her room at the ashram. This refusal, Lennon said, lasted for weeks.
Prudence did so against the wishes of Maharishi, and eventually, George Harrison and Lennon were tasked with getting her out.
“They selected me and George to try and bring her out because she would trust us,” Lennon said.
Prudence — in spite, or perhaps because of, her isolation — spurred Lennon to write a song about her: “Dear Prudence.”
Lennon said that the song is “about Mia Farrow’s sister, who seemed to go slightly barmy, meditating too long, and couldn’t come out of the little hut that we were living in.”
Harrison and Lennon wrote the song while still in India, only letting Prudence know that they had done so as they were leaving. She heard it for the first time after the White Album came out.
Prudence later confirmed Lennon’s story. “Being on that course was more important to me than anything in the world. I was very focused on getting in as much meditation as possible so that I could gain enough experience to teach it myself,” she said.
“I knew that I must have stuck out because I would always rush straight back to my room after lectures and meals so that I could meditate.
“John, George, and Paul would all want to sit around jamming and having a good time and I’d be flying into my room. They were all serious about what they were doing but they just weren’t as fanatical as me.
“At the end of the course, just as they were leaving, George mentioned that they had written a song about me but I didn’t hear it until it came out on the album. I was flattered. It was a beautiful thing to have done.”
