Famous Muses & Groupies Girlfriends Partners and Wives in Rock Music
MUSE: Jane Asher
Jane was born on April 5th, 1946 in Willesden, England to a father who was a medical author and a mother who was a performing arts professor. Jane and her siblings, Peter and Claire, grew up as child performers in UK stage, film and TV programs. In between her acting jobs, Jane was educated at all-girls prep schools in London. Since age 5, Jane has had a lifelong, impressive career with popular films like The Masque of the Red Death (1964), Alfie(1966), The Buttercup Chain (1970), Deep End (1971), and Death at a Funeral (2007); as well as the mini-series “Brideshead Revisited” (1981). She portrayed Juliet in ‘Romeo & Juliet’ during a 1967 US repertory tour; and has published a handful of novels and cookbooks. Since 1971, Jane’s been with husband, animator Gerald Scarfe and has three children with him.
Now let me tell you a little story on how Jane lowkey became the most influential rock music muse of all time. On April 18th, 1963, Jane met the Beatles after a radio broadcast performance at Royal Albert Hall, where she appeared for a photo op for the zine Radio Times. Apparently when the band first saw Jane, all the members asked her out (I guess John and Ringo forgot they weren’t available, lol), but she had eyes for the cute one: Paul McCartney. The 17-year-old actress and 20-year-old music star hit it off right away and began dating instantly. By Christmas, Paul was living at Jane’s family’s house as her brother’s roommate until mid-1966, when Paul and Jane got their own house. Paul eventually proposed on December 4th, 1967. Supposedly back in the day, Beatle fangirls were most envious of Jane and Pattie Boyd (George’s first wife). Though most think of Pattie as the quintessential Beatle muse, about 50% of the songs she inspired were actually written after the band broke up. Jane on the other hand, quite possibly inspired more Beatles tunes than any other lady.
Although Paul and Jane looked like the perfect couple in magazines and news footage, the young pair were also a bit messy off camera. The two did indeed have a romantic courtship, but as is usually the case, things are ~different in relationships with musicians. By the time the sexual revolution was breaking through in 1965, Paul was a huge pothead, and was also experimenting with acid and coke by 1967. This didn’t really mesh well with Jane, who was rather straight-laced and didn’t care about trying drugs. In Marianne Faithfull’s 1994 memoir, Faithfull, the pop singer mentions going to a party at Paul & Jane’s house during the Summer of Love. She remembers Paul opening a kitchen window, and then Jane closing it, and the two passive-aggressively repeating the act throughout the night. There was also the issue of Paul being the most fangirled and lusted after dude in the British Invasion, and boy did he take full advantage of it with sidechicks like Maggie McGivern and Francie Schwartz.
Things seemed to be overall fine after Paul and Jane got engaged; and when Jane accompanied the Beatles and their wives on a famous trip to Rishikesh, India for a meditation retreat in spring 1968. But the legend goes that by summer of that same year, Jane returned home from a film shoot to find Paul and Francie in their bedroom together. Jane literally dumped him on the spot and drove away without second thought. While this is legit one of the crappiest ways for an engagement to end, Francie still wasn’t the sole reason Paul and Jane broke up. Besides everything else already covered in the previous paragraph, Paul was also hoping for a wife who would be willing to be a housewife fulltime. Jane was constantly insistent on keeping her career even if she started a family
Now on to the most important impact of this Beatle union: the songs. Jane has a dozen timeless songs written about her, and the funny thing is, she really couldn’t care less, lol. She vowed to move on and never publicly speak about Paul after she left him and she’s kept her promise 50 years on. But the songs remain iconic and include
‘All My Loving’Jane inspired pop songs, love songs, break-up songs, slow songs, fast songs, etc. Even if she didn’t become Macca’s soulmate like a lovely Linda ultimately did, she arguably got the best songs out of him and can be forever secretly smug. But then again, is it really flattering to hear these tunes everywhere when they were written by an ex who was always getting high with his mates and fooling around with a bagillion groupies on the road? All I know is if I inspired a ballad like ‘Here, There and Everywhere,’ I would be bragging about that ‘til the day I die.
‘And I Love Her’
‘Things We Said Today’
‘She’s a Woman’ [underrated]
‘Every Little Thing’
‘What You’re Doing’
‘Tell Me What You See’
‘We Can Work It Out’
‘You Won’t See Me’
‘I’m Looking Through You’
‘Here, There and Everywhere’ ← the magnum opus
‘For No One’ [omg, so good]
Not afraid of the erotic role in film and the foresight to appear in early Sixties classics like Alfie, Deep End (1970) with soundtrack by Can, even “Tirante el Blanco” which was released in 2006 belying the image of the goody goody girl next door she proved to be an intelligent actress of the widest skill set
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