Polythene Pam is the name of a song written by John Lennon (although credited to Lennon-McCartney) and performed by The Beatles on their final album, Abbey Road. Superficially about "a mythical Liverpool scrubber dressed up in her jackboots and kilt", the song was inspired by an evening that John spent with poet Royston Ellis and his girlfriend, Stephanie. The three wore polythene (a common British truncation of the word polyethylene) bags and slept in the same bed out of curiosity about kinky sex. Incidentally, John would later admit in the 1980 interview with Playboy that Ellis was the first person to introduce the Beatles to drugs when he showed them how to get high from the strips inside a Benzedrine inhaler. It was in this interview that John supplied the details of this event but refused to elaborate further.

The song may have been equally inspired by Cavern Club fan Pat Hodgetts, who was called "Polythene Pat" because she used to eat the material. "I'd tie it in knots and then eat it," she later reported. "Sometimes I even used to burn it and then eat it when it got cold."

On the album, this song runs directly into the next song, "She Came in Through the Bathroom Window". Technically, "Polythene Pam" is over at the end of the guitar solo, at which point Lennon says, "We'll listen to that now," followed by, "Oh, look out!"

At 0:45, someone picks up a maraca and, in the right channel, Paul McCartney can be heard saying "Yeah," while Lennon says, "Great."

References

• Turner, Steve. A Hard Day's Write: The Stories Behind Every Beatles' Song, Harper, New York: 1994, ISBN 006095065X
• Alan W. Pollack's Notes on "Polythene Pam"
• What Goes On?

External links

• Lyrics