#prudence farrow

Prudence remembered them bursting into her room, singing “Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band,” and “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da.” She was grateful and thought they were sweet, but she just wanted them to disappear. She detested the celebrity circus and asked Maharishi to move her from the noisy Beatles’ building. But the ashram was full.

Muse

Prudence Farrow [20.01.48]

In 1968, Prudence Farrow traveled to India with her sister Mia to study transcendental meditation under Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. During her four-month stay in Rishikesh, Farrow spent time with The Beatles, who also were studying meditation. Farrow’s unwavering dedication to her meditation practices inspired John Lennon to write the song “Dear Prudence”. At 19, Farrow inquired about joining a retreat with the Maharishi but was told she was too young and would have to finish college.

“My sister Mia was just divorcing Frank Sinatra at the time, and The Beatles were also starting their mediation in ‘67, and Mia heard The Beatles would be traveling to India too, and she called me, wanting to go.”

“The Beatles being there — I can honestly say — did not mean anything to me. But those two people that I met, John and George, I really liked them, and they were very much up my alley.”

“It epitomized what the Sixties were about in many ways. What it’s saying is very beautiful; it’s very positive. I think it’s an important song. I thought it was one their least popular and more obscure songs. I feel that it does capture that essence of the course, that slightly exotic part of being in India where we went through that silence and meditation.” - on the song.

At the retreat, the Farrow sisters met the Beatles.

“Because of Mia there were too many people coming in and out of our block,” says Ms Farrow.

“And then in the evenings George Harrison would jam with John Lennon and others would join in. I wasn’t getting the silence.

“People said: ‘You are being too fanatical, you should come out.’ Yes, I was extreme because I thought it was a privileged time. I still think it was the most important time in my life.”

So while the rest of the students partied, Ms Farrow says she locked herself up in her room and practised meditation. That is when, she says, Lennon, wrote the song Dear Prudence, which appears on the band’s White Album.

DEAR PRUDENCE

Dear Prudence, won’t you come out to play

Dear Prudence, greet the brand new day

The sun is up, the sky is blue

It’s beautiful and so are you

Opening verses of Dear Prudence, written by John Lennon

The song’s hand-written lyrics, lined with doodles, sold at a Sotheby’s auction in 1987 for $19,500 (£12,800).

“The reason he wrote I was beautiful – and there were much more beautiful people around – was because I was so much like George,” says Ms Farrow.

“George and I were there for very much the same reasons – we were both very spiritual and we wanted to find a solution for ourselves and the world. George would say that through his music he wanted to help people become more settled, more quiet and more sensitive.”

Ms Farrow says she did not want to meet the Beatles as “great people never lived up to their image”.

Did they disappoint her?

“What didn’t disappoint me was that they were still real people. They weren’t more important than anybody else,” says Ms Farrow. "Fame has that quality – it corrupts you. You begin to feel that you’re separate from other people, you’re more powerful. But they didn’t have that. They were going through the same things as we were. That’s why they were the voice of the times.”