Marianne Faithfull Said a Tense, Silent Fight Between Paul McCartney and His Girlfriend Felt Like a Play
During one uncomfortable evening visit, Marianne Faithfull recalled watching Paul McCartney and his girlfriend, Jane Asher, fight all night. Faithfull said the tension between them was so palpable that she correctly predicted that the couple would break up. What was interesting about the argument was that McCartney and Asher carried it out without ever speaking or even looking at each other. Faithfull said it was like watching a play.
Paul McCartney tried to sound like Marianne Faithfull on a Beatles song
Faithfull, an actor and singer who dated Mick Jagger, spent time around The Beatles. She got to know the band and their significant others well. She recalled listening to McCartney play “Hey, Jude” at a party she was attending.
“So there we all were, having a wonderful time, really high (the punch had been spiked with LSD), and in strolls Paul McCartney, a little smile on his lips, hands behind his back,” she wrote, per The Guardian. “‘What have you got, Paul?’ we cried out. ‘Oh, nothing, really,’ says he, and puts on ‘Hey, Jude.’ It was the first time anyone had heard it and we were all blown away.”
McCartney also admired Faithfull’s music and tried to sound like her on the song “Here, There and Everywhere.”
“When I sang it in the studio I remember thinking, ‘I’ll sing it like Marianne Faithfull,'” he said in the book Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now by Barry Miles. “[It’s] something no one would ever know. You get these little things in your mind.”
Marianne Faithfull watched a fight between Paul McCartney and his girlfriend
While Faithfull enjoyed hearing McCartney play music, she wasn’t always comfortable when she visited his home.
“Visits to Paul and Jane Asher weren’t quite as relaxed,” she said. “They were a bit uptight, and there were constant little frictions, but that’s what happens when couples start to come apart.”
She recalled one particularly tense visit.
“I love watching people living their domestic life and seeing how that goes,” she explained, adding, “I always thought Jane and Paul were very tense. I do remember very clearly an evening at Cavendish Avenue where she wanted the window shut and he wanted the window open. That was really like Joe Orton play. It was f***ing great.”
She explained that the argument was so captivating because they didn’t have to use words to convey their feelings.
“I sat there all night watching Jane get up and open it, and Paul close it, and it was just like, nothing was said,” she explained. “And quite soon after that they split up, which of course I could have told anyone they would.”
Jane Asher broke up with the Beatle during an interview
Shortly after the visit, McCartney and Asher had a very public breakup. After she discovered him cheating on her, she went on the show Dee Time and gave an update about her relationship.
“I haven’t broken it off, but it is broken off, finished,” she said in 1968, per Express. “I know it sounds corny, but we still see each other and love each other, but it hasn’t worked out. Perhaps we’ll be childhood sweethearts and meet again and get married when we’re about 70.”
Ultimately, Asher married cartoonist Gerald Scarfe in 1981, and McCartney married photographer Linda Eastman in 1969.
