Polythene Pam

The Zoo Crew has got Abbey Road spinning on the turntable over at THE ZOO, and right in the middle of that long side-two ride comes "Polythene Pam," a little blast of Liverpool rock that lasts about a minute and twelve seconds and still knocks the needle sideways. John Lennon wrote it in India in 1968, tucked it away when the White Album ran out of room, and hauled it back out the next summer when the band needed short pieces to stitch into the medley they called the Long One. He never pretended it was a cathedral. Years later he shrugged and called it, along with "Mean Mr. Mustard," bits of crap he wrote in India. The Zoo Freaks know better. Short does not mean slight when the guitars are this mean and the accent is this thick.

Lennon built Pam out of two real women, and he was happy to say so. In his 1980 talks with David Sheff he remembered a night on the Channel Islands with the beat poet Royston Ellis, a fellow he called England's answer to Allen Ginsberg. After a show on 8 August 1963, Ellis took him back to a rented flat and introduced a girlfriend named Stephanie. Ellis said she dressed up in polythene, and she did. They had read about leather and did not have any, so they used oilskins and plastic bags, climbed into the same bed, and decided the kink was more idea than fireworks. Lennon told Sheff it was perverted sex in a polythene bag, just looking for something to write about. He also admitted the jackboots and the kilt were his own embroidery. She did not wear those. He just sort of elaborated. The name came from somewhere else entirely. Pat Hodgett, later Pat Dawson, was a Cavern regular the early Beatles used to give a lift home. She ate polythene. She tied it in knots and chewed it, and sometimes burned it and ate it cold. They called her Polythene Pat. Lennon slid the name over to Pam and gave the character the look of a mythical Liverpool scrubber who makes the News of the World, the old Sunday tabloid that lived on scandal.

Paul McCartney liked the Liverpool-ness of it. He has told the story the way John told it to him: dinner, a few drinks, a girl in plastic, a little kinky scene. George Harrison went further and said he liked the song because nobody else writes comic stuff that still has a certain seriousness about it. He called it a really good rock and roll song, and it bothered him that something so obviously funny could sail past people who never got the joke. The band recorded it at Abbey Road Studios in late July 1969, joined at the hip to "She Came In Through the Bathroom Window," so the two numbers were cut as one piece. John sang lead in a broad Scouse accent and played twelve-string acoustic. Paul took bass and a backing vocal, George the lead guitars and another backing vocal, Ringo the drums, with tambourine, maracas, cowbell, and a whipcrack percussion hit filling the cracks. Right in the middle they drop the old yeah, yeah, yeah from "She Loves You," a wink back at the leather-jacket days before the suits and the stadiums.

There is a small bit of carpentry in the lyric that only shows up if you listen to the medley straight through. In an earlier draft of "Mean Mr. Mustard," the sister's name was Shirley. Once "Polythene Pam" was locked in behind it, John changed the line so Pam herself is the sister. The transition is one of those Abbey Road sleights of hand, a half-second of tape and a rewritten name, and suddenly two scraps become one story. Demo versions and a take 27 later turned up on Anthology 3 and on the Abbey Road anniversary sets, including the trial edit of the Long One from 30 July 1969. If you want the words sitting right where the band keeps them, the song page on the official site still prints the verses and lists the track on Abbey Road, released 26 September 1969.

The four fellows who cut that track did not arrive at Abbey Road by magic. They started as skiffle kids in Liverpool. John Lennon formed the Quarrymen in 1956, a washboard-and-guitar outfit named after Quarry Bank High School, playing Lonnie Donegan tunes at church fêtes. Paul McCartney wandered in at a Woolton village fête on 6 July 1957, played a little, and got asked back. George Harrison, younger and already serious about the guitar, came in through Paul the next year. Stuart Sutcliffe and then Pete Best filled out the early lineups. They played the Casbah, the Jacaranda, and the Cavern, then took the hard schooling of the Hamburg clubs, hour after hour on the Reeperbahn, living on pills and cheap beer and learning how to hold a room. Brian Epstein saw them at the Cavern in 1961, cleaned up the look without sanding off the sound, and got them to EMI. George Martin heard something the others had missed. Ringo Starr replaced Pete Best in 1962, and by the end of that year "Love Me Do" was out. The rest is the ride every Zoo Freak already knows: the records, the tours, the films, the experiments, and finally Abbey Road, the last album they made together, with "Polythene Pam" sitting in the medley like a postcard from the Cavern that somehow survived the studio years.

Lennon always said he was just looking for something to write about, and that night in the Channel Islands, plus a girl at the Cavern who chewed plastic, gave him a character who still sounds like she walked in off Mathew Street. The accent, the yeah yeah yeah, the joke about the News of the World, the way the song slams straight into Paul's bathroom-window tale: it is the band talking to itself, and to anybody still listening. The Zoo Crew will keep it in the stack. If you want the official word, the catalog, and the song itself written out, start at thebeatles.com. The same office runs the social pages: Facebook, Instagram, and X. Apple Corps and Universal also keep a moderated room for listeners, the Beatles Official Fan Group, where the talk runs to records, memories, and the odd deep cut. Pull up a chair, Zoo Freaks. Pam is on.