Mick Jagger’s Girlfriend Didn’t Like The Beatles’ ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’

Mick Jagger’s girlfriend once wrote a juicy memoir with many interesting anecdotes about classic rock stars from the Swinging ’60s. For example, she revealed what it was like hearing The Beatles’ “Strawberry Fields Forever” for the first time. She didn’t think it lived up to another song The Beatles released at the same time.

Mick Jagger’s girlfriend preferred The Beatles’ ‘Penny Lane’ to ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’

Marianne Faithfull was Jagger’s girlfriend. She had two hits in the United States: the Jagger/Keith Richards ballad “As Tears Go By” (which The Rolling Stones later recorded themselves) and a cover of The Beatles’ “Yesterday.” She’s far more prominent in her native United Kingdom. 

In her 2007 book Memories, Dreams & Reflections, the “As Tears Go By” singer recalled meeting Paul for the first time. “He was just as the photographs,” she said. “Only he’d grown a mustache. His hair was shorter too.” Paul’s physical transformation was almost a visual encapsulation of The Beatles’ newfound musical maturity.

The she heard two of the Fab Four’s most important songs. “He was playing the latest Beatles record, ‘Penny Lane,'” she wrote. “I like it very much. Then he played the other side — ‘Strawberry Something.’ I didn’t like this as much.” Her take on the two songs is interesting considering that “Strawberry Fields Forever” is arguably more critically acclaimed than “Penny Lane” today.

Why John Lennon wrote The Beatles’ ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’

The book All We Are Saying: The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono features an interview with 1980. In it, John spoke more about “Strawberry Fields Forever” than most of The Beatles’ catalog. He said the track was inspired by his childhood, playing at a Salvation Army Orphanage called Strawberry Field. While writing the song, John drew from his feelings of being on a different wavelength from everyone else.

He connected the track to “Penny Lane,” which was Paul’s nostalgic song about the Penny Lane area of Liverpool. Notably, “Strawberry Fields Forever” was released as a double A-side single with “Penny Lane.” It’s interesting that Faithfull loved one of the songs but not the other. While they’re both psychedelic songs about youth, “Penny Lane” is much more upbeat and celebratory than the haunting, oblique “Strawberry Fields Forever.”

Marianne Faithfull said drugs weren’t the only thing that made 1960s music great

Regardless of what Faithfull thought of “Strawberry Fields Forever,” she wrote in Memories, Dreams & Reflections that she was elated to be part of the 1960s rock ‘n’ roll scene. “We had a sense of everybody being in the right place, at the right time, with the right people,” the singer wrote. “And every time something came out, like ‘I Can See for Miles and Miles’ or ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash,’ ‘Visions of Johanna,’ or the sublime ‘God Only Knows’ from Pet Sounds, or anything at all, it seemed like we had just broken another sound barrier. 

“Blind Faith, the Mothers of Invention … one amazing group after another,” she added. “Tiny Tim, anything, we were instant fans! And I don’t think it was just the drugs.” While every era has its musical giants, the 1960s might have had the highest bar for popular music.

Faithfull clearly admired The Beatles’ music even if she wasn’t a fan of “Strawberry Fields Forever.”