“Lady Madonna” is a song by The Beatles, primarily written by Paul McCartney (credited to Lennon–McCartney). It was recorded on 3 and 6 February 1968 before the Beatles left for India, and released on March 18 in the US. It reached #4 on the Billboard Hot 100 and topped the UK chart.
“Lady Madonna” is based Paul McCartney’s piano part for the song on Humphrey Lyttelton’s 1956 trad jazz recording “Bad Penny Blues”, which George Martin produced. McCartney said of writing the song in a 1994 interview, “‘Lady Madonna’ was me sitting down at the piano trying to write a bluesy boogie-woogie thing … It reminded me of Fats Domino for some reason, so I started singing a Fats Domino impression. It took my voice to a very odd place.” Domino himself covered the song later in 1968.
John Lennon helped write the lyrics, which give an account of an overworked, exhausted (possibly single) mother, facing a new problem each day of the week. McCartney explained the song by saying: “‘Lady Madonna’ started off as the Virgin Mary, then it was a working-class woman, of which obviously there’s millions in Liverpool. There are a lot of Catholics in Liverpool because of the Irish connection.” The lyrics miss Saturday and in a 1992 interview, McCartney, who only realized the omission many years later, half-jokingly suggested that, given the difficulties of the other six days, the woman in the song likely went out and had a good time that night.
Two promotional films were made for “Lady Madonna”, which were syndicated to television broadcasting companies. The material was shot on 11 February 1968 in Abbey Road Studios and was distributed by NEMS Enterprises to US and UK TV stations. The films were directed by Tony Bramwell.
The footage consisted of the Beatles recording in the studio. The song they were working on at the time was “Hey Bulldog.” In 1999, the material was re-edited by Apple to create a new promo for “Hey Bulldog.”
A cut of the film on The Beatles Anthology includes not only footage of the “Hey Bulldog” session but also a session from roughly five months later where the band rehearsed “Hey Jude” during the White Album sessions. Visible differences in lighting, clothing and hair (both head and facial) indicate the difference in time between the shoots. Some footage of McCartney’s session with Cilla Black for the song “Step Inside Love” is also included.
“The Inner Light” is a song written by George Harrison that was first released as a B-side to “Lady Madonna”. It was the first Harrison composition to be featured on a Beatles single. The lyrics are a rendering of the 47th chapter (sometimes titled “Viewing the Distant” in translations) of the Taoist Tao Te Ching.
The song features lead vocals from Harrison and brief backing vocals from John Lennon and Paul McCartney. The instrumental track was recorded in Mumbai, India, during the sessions for Harrison’s Wonderwall Music (a soundtrack album), during January 1968.
In his autobiography I, Me, Mine, Harrison writes that the song was inspired by a letter from Juan Mascaró, a Sanskrit scholar at Cambridge University, who sent him a copy of his book Lamps of Fire (a wide-ranging anthology of religious writings, including some from the Tao Te Ching) and asked him if “… might it not be interesting to put into your music a few words of Tao, for example number 48, page 66 of the book.” Harrison states: “In the original poem, the verse says ‘Without going out of my door, I can know the ways of heaven.’ And so to prevent any misinterpretations — and also to make the song a bit longer — I did repeat that as a second verse but made it: “Without going out of your door/You can know all things on earth/ Without looking out of your window/ You can know the ways of heaven” — so that it included everybody”. The passage Harrison refers to, however, corresponds to what English translations normally number as “47”, rather than “48”. D. C. Lau’s translation of the Tao Te Ching 47, for example, states: “Without stirring abroad/One can know the whole world;/Without looking out of the window/One can see the way of heaven.”
“The Inner Light” spent one week on the Billboard Hot 100 at #96, on 30 March 1968
