"Polythene Pam" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles from their 1969 album Abbey Road, the fourth piece in the album's climactic medley. It is a brief, brisk character sketch of a woman from the North who, dressed in a bag made of polythene, roams the streets at night and earns coverage in the tabloid paper News of the World. John Lennon wrote it during the group's 1968 sojourn in India. While a third source has been proposed, Lennon moulded the character of Polythene Pam from two women he knew personally. The first is "Polythene" Pat Dawson, an early Beatles fan so named for her appetite for the plastic; the second is Royston Ellis' girlfriend Stephanie, who spent a night in bed with Ellis and Lennon clad in a polythene bag.
The song was to be recorded for the Beatles' 1968 White Album but instead made Abbey Road, a contribution of Lennon's to the medley (also dubbed the Long One) that he viewed with frigidness. In fact, he later called the song, along with another of his medley pieces, "bits of crap I wrote in India". The band recorded "Pam" on three separate days in July 1969 as a continuous piece with "She Came In Through the Bathroom Window", which comes after in the Long One.
Generally described as a rock and roll song, critics have spotlighted "Pam"'s driving rhythm and Lennon's singing in an aggressive Scouse accent. It is one of the Long One's several character sketches and builds narrative unity by linking to the previous track "Mean Mr. Mustard", a portrait of an old miser whose sister is Polythene Pam. As for its musical role in the medley, "Pam" intactly leads to the resolution back to A major in the beginning of "Bathroom Window", returning to the key in which the medley's first piece is written. Most critics reviewing Abbey Road or the Beatles catalogue have said little about the song.
Background
The song John Lennon wrote "Polythene Pam" in Rishikesh,; ; a pilgrimage town for Hindus. The Beatles had travelled there in February 1968 to stay at the Maharashi Mahesh Yogi's monastery and practice Transcendental Meditation.; ; The few weeks they passed in Rishikesh fostered their most plentiful output of songs to date, including many of the tracks that formed The Beatles (popularly dubbed the White Album).few weeks: see ; most plentiful output: ; White Album: ;
However, "Pam" hardly concerned the Beatles' time in India. It in fact draws from two or three women in Lennon's life, two of whom are far more often discussed across scholarly books and biographies. The first is "Polythene" Pat Dawson (born Hodgett); as a fourteen-year-old girl from Liverpool, she was a Beatles fan and frequently attended their shows at the local Cavern Club. She would eat polythene; ; ; ; —in her recollection, by winding it into in knots, sometimes after burning it and letting it cool. Her friend worked at a polythene factory and ensured her a steady supply of the plastic. She once related: "... I got quite friendly with [the Beatles]. If they were playing out of town they'd give me a lift back home in their van. It was about the same time that I started getting called Polythene Pat." In his John Lennon Encyclopedia, the journalist Bill Harry introduces Dawson as a "Liverpool barmaid who had a brief flirtation with John".
The second source is Royston Ellis' girlfriend Stephanie. Ellis was an English Beat poet who would tour the country to read his verse alongside a jazz and pop or rock and roll performance. Having been invited to the University of Liverpool in 1960, he met and befriended the Beatles and even accompanied them during one of their gigs that year.; ; Three years later, he chanced to meet them again. Ellis had since quit the Beat culture and found work as a ferry engineer in Guernsey. It is there that the Beatles performed on 8 August, at Candie Gardens, after which Ellis encountered Lennon and invited him to pass the night at his and Stephanie's flat.; ; ; According to the Beatles scholar Kenneth Womack, Ellis had rented a garret especially for the event. Then, with Stephanie wearing a polythene bag, the three stayed the night together in bed. Their memories drift apart as to what exactly happened.; ;
Lennon told David Sheff in their 1980 interview: "That was me, remembering a little event with a woman in Jersey [sic], and a man who was England's answer to Allen Ginsberg ... I met him when we were on tour and he took me back to his apartment and I had a girl and he had one he wanted me to meet. He said she dressed up in polythene, which she did. ... Perverted sex in a polythene bag." About the character of Polythene Pam's wearing jackboots and kilts, he added: "She didn't wear jack boots and kilts, I just sort of elaborated."wearing jackboots and kilts: see ; quote: Lennon did not imply that Stephanie was the woman dressed in polythene, and neither does Bill Harry.see ; From his end, Ellis did not remember any "perverted sex" but faintly remembered Stephanie; he recalled his own picture in 1994:
He suggests that the night's events stemmed from a verse in his poetry booklet: "I long to have sex between black leather sheets, and ride shivering motorcycles between your thighs." Paul McCartney presented his account of the night's events as Lennon had relayed them: "John, being Royston's friend, went out to dinner with him and got pissed and stuff and they ended up back at his apartment with a girl who dressed herself in polythene for John's amusement, so it was a little kinky scene." Moreover, he said that Ellis had encountered Lennon in the first place by attending their gig, although he said they met "down South ... somewhere like Shrewsbury", and that the pair subsequently had dinner together before retreating to Ellis' flat. His biographer Barry Miles indicates that McCartney too had met Ellis in Guernsey. Since "Pam", for the most part, sketches a character's being dressed in polythene, Lennon's night with Stephanie and Ellis is the main source for the song.; see also
The third source, confidently named by the Beatles associate Tony Bramwell but left out of many Beatles texts and biographies, was "an old 'bag lady' who used to hang around the Knightsbridge end of Hyde Park, close to the army barracks". As he explained, she would sleep in the park and keep her belongings in plastic bags, and Lennon was struck by her. In addition, the musicologist Walter Everett suggests that Pam's polythene bag dress refers to Lennon and Yoko Ono's Bag Productions company; Lennon explicitly mentions it in "Come Together". The music author Kevin Courrier likewise sees a hint of their performance art bagism, but only in Stephanie's act of being in bed while inside a polythene bag.
The Abbey Road medley
When working on Abbey Road, the Beatles did not know that their time as a band was fast moving towards divorce.; Lennon originally wanted a rock and roll album, and McCartney, a pop symphony/opera, so the album was split two ways: the first side contained individual songs, and most of the second was a sixteen-minute medley. The idea for the medley was McCartney's, and the group's producer George Martin claimed his share of credit in its creation in wanting "to get John and Paul to think more seriously about their music".idea was McCartney's: ; Martin's influence: He had long been advising the group to "think symphonically", to use motifs and complex structures and forms. Thus, the medley's songs, short "half" songs, are connected in some way by thematic or tonal coherence and link together through segues and fades.; ;
The Beatles biographer Hunter Davies coldly describes the medley as a long string of "short pieces that ... were unfinished, hardly worked on, half realised scraps that got melded together, running into each other, with the odd reprise, to fill up the end of the album", although he follows the narrative that the Beatles knew Abbey Road would be their last album. Lennon was less eager about the Long One, both because it was McCartney's idea and because he preferred unvarnished rock and roll free from intricate album structures and other grand touches.; ; Such was his preference that when Neil Aspinall suggested Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band include a reprise of the title song, Lennon told him: "No one likes a smart-arse, Neil." He said that his three contributions to the medley, "Sun King", "Mean Mr. Mustard", and "Pam", were "juggled ... about until it made vague sense"; and according to the author Chris Ingham, he would have considered them "garbage". Some critics hold that the three Lennon numbers are the medley's weakest patch. In spite of this, Ingham, one of these critics, thinks they are "hugely entertaining musically" with their peculiar characters, and Mark Hertsgaard, another, praises "Pam"'s "wicked humor".; Rolling Stone agrees: "He contributed some of its most eccentric parts, like the sneering 'Mean Mr. Mustard' and the quick, funky put-down 'Polythene Pam.'"
The author Nicholas Schaffner writes: "Like all their best albums, Abbey Road is inhabited by a large cast of whimsical characters—such as Maxwell, who cheerfully bumps off all and sundry with a magic hammer; Mean Mr. Mustard with the 10-shilling note up his nose, who gets his kicks out of screaming obscenities at Her Majesty; and his transvestite sister Pam, resplendent in a polythene bag." In "Mean Mr. Mustard", another medley number, the title character has a sister Pam. Her name, going as far back as the song's demo in 1968, was originally Shirley, but Lennon changed it to Pam "to make it sound like it had something to do with it" and hence make the medley sound continuous.; ; Lennon wanted to record his medley songs at one go, without interruption; as Womack writes, "In so doing, they would not only serve the purposes of the musical suite but also share in the unfolding character studies that the medley was beginning to accrue."
Recording and sequencing on Abbey Road
"Pam" was first intended to be recorded for the White Album.; Lennon performed a demo at George Harrison's Kinfauns home in May 1968 much resembling its finished released state, save for the name change from Shirley to Pam and an altered verse: instead of "She's the kind of a girl that makes the News of the World", he sings "It's a little absurd but she's a nice class of bird".name change: ; altered verse: The demo is also somewhat longer but, Rolling Stone's Jordan Runtagh argues, still too meagre to become a song in its own right as Lennon utters the two verses over and over; towards the demo's end, he says "It's too long, that!". Lennon recorded another at his Kenwood estate. On 24 January 1969, he played "Pam" during the Get Back sessions for the only time.; ; The musicologist Alan W. Pollack hesitates to call this performance of the song a performance and, rather, prefers sketch: "John and Paul in particular seem to be having a dickens of a time keeping their signals straight with respect to either words or chord changes."; see also
"Pam" was recorded together with the song succeeding it in the medley, "She Came In Through the Bathroom Window", as one track, like "Sun King" and "Mean Mr. Mustard".; This happened across three days, on 25, 28, and 30 July 1969, in thirty-nine takes.dates: ; ; ; number of takes: ; The Beatles recorded the basic track for "Pam"/"Bathroom Window" at EMI Studio Two in London on 25 July; Ringo Starr plays his Ludwig Hollywood Maple drum kit, Harrison, his Gibson Les Paul Standard electric guitar, McCartney, his Rickenbacker 4001S bass, and Lennon plays his Framus Hootenanny twelve-string guitar.; precise instrumentation: