Who was Martha (my dear)?
A coded message to Jane Asher? Or a piano exercise about a sheepdog?
When I taught myself piano I liked to see how far I could go. This started life almost as a piece you’d learn as a piano lesson. It’s quite hard for me to play, it’s a two-handed thing, like a little set piece. In fact I remember one or two people being surprised because it’s slightly above my level or competence really, but I wrote it as that, something a bit more complex for me to play’
Paul McCartney Many Years From Now, Barry Miles
Unlike his songwriting partner, McCartney worked hard on improving the technical level of his musicianship. While Lennon told interviewers that The Beatles were ‘primitive musicians’ — and seemed resigned to this — Paul was a dedicated self-improver.
Wimpole Street
This was particularly evident during the time he lodged with the Asher family (1964/66). Jane’s mother, Margaret Eliot, was a celebrated oboe player and tutor at the Guildhall of Music, where she had taught George Martin. She unsuccessfully tried to teach Paul musical notation but did manage to introduce him to the basics of recorder playing. He put his new skill to practical use on THE FOOL ON THE HILL.
McCartney also began learning piano systematically, teaching himself on a small one he had installed in his ‘artist’s garret’ at the top of the house. He had dabbled with the instrument since early childhood, when he listened to his father play in the family living room. As with every other instrument, he did not use sheet music but learned by exploration and experimentation.
By this method he devised his own exercises. One of these would end up on The Beatles (The White Album).
Words
Then while I was blocking out words — you just mouth out sounds and some things come — I found the words ‘Martha my dear’.
For McCartney detractors — now a sizeable army, including some who believed him Fake Paul, an imposter — the song title was fey and vaguely insincere. The phrase sounded posh — more typical of Asher social milieu than someone who had grown up in a Liverpool council house.
Others suggested that it was a hidden homage to Jane Asher. Paul was the last unmarried Beatle but it was widely agreed that Jane would be a fitting bride. Even the diehard ‘Apple Scruffs’ — who were permanently camped outside his Wimpole Street address, begrudgingly conceded the appeal of the’ English rose’ Asher. What chance chance did anyone stand against a charming young film star?
Strictly Platonic
They were mistaken, of course. Martha was not Jane or any other glamorous love interest but a ‘dear pet of mine’. She had come into his life after he had finally moved out of the Asher family home and into what he grandly called ‘Cavendish’ — a house on nearby Cavendish Road.
Jane did not move in with him, but an old English sheepdog puppy did. To the astonishment of those who knew him best, the dog brought out a previously hidden soppiness
I remember John being amazed to see me being so loving to an animal. He said, ‘I’ve never seen you like that before.’ I’ve since thought, you know, he wouldn’t have. It’s only when you’re cuddling around with a dog that you’re in that mode, and she was a very cuddly dog.
The general expectation was that Jane would follow Martha into Cavendish — most likely as Mrs McCartney. This did appear to be playing out when Paul and Jane announced their engagement on Christmas Day 1967. Six months later it was curtains for the world’s preferred Beatles preferred romance.
Not that Martha was the femme fatale. Conspiracy theorists might seize on the lines ‘You silly girl, look what you’ve done,’ but they would be barking up the wrong tree. As Paul explained in 1997:
It’s a communication of some sort of affection but in a slightly abstract way — all that sort of stuff. These songs grow. Whereas it would appear to anybody else to be a song to a girl called Martha, it’s actually a dog, and our relationship was platonic, believe me.
The Beatles Teaching Pack — free to download
