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This song was inspired by the activities of an Apple Scruff who climbed into Paul's house in St. John's Wood when he was away for the day. "We were bored, he was out and so we decided to pay him a visit," remembers Diane Ashley. "We found a ladder in his garden and stuck it up the bathroom window which he'd left slightly open. I was the one who climbed up and got in." Once she was inside the house, she opened the front door and let the rest of the girls in. Fellow Apple Scruff Margo Bird remembers: "They rummaged around and took some clothes. People didn't usually take anything of real value but I think this time a lot of photographs and negatives were taken. There were really two groups of Apple Scruffs - those who would break in and those who would just wait outside with cameras and autograph books. I used to take Paul's dog for a walk and got to know him quite well. I was eventually offered a job at Apple. I started by making the tea and ended up in the promotions department working with Tony King." Paul asked Margo if she could retrieve any of his belongings. "I knew who had done it and I discovered that a lot of the stuff had already gone to America," she said. "But I knew that there was one picture he particularly wanted back - a colour-tinted picture of him in a Thirties frame. I knew who had taken this and got it back for him." Paul wrote 'She Came In Through The Bathroom Window' in June 1968 during a trip to America to do business with Capitol Records. It was here that he resumed his relationship with Linda Eastman, whom he'd been introduced to the previous summer in London and had since met in New York. The line, 'and so I quit the police department' was inspired by the name of a cab driver in Los Angeles. Paul noticed from his license badge that he was called Eugene Quits and so he worked part of the name into his song. According to Carol Bedford, an Apple Scruff who wrote the book Waiting For The Beatles, Paul later said to her: "I've written a song about the girls who broke in. It's called 'She Came In Through The Bathroom Window'." Diane was surprised to have become the subject of a Beatles' song. "I didn't believe at first because he'd hated so much when we broke in," she says. "But then I suppose anything can inspire a song, can't it? I know that all his neighbors rang him when they saw we'd got in and I'm sure that gave rise to the lines, 'Sunday's on the 'phone to Monday/Tuesday's on the 'phone to me '." Now married with four teenage children, Diane keeps a framed photo of herself with Paul on her kitchen shelf and looks back on her days as an Apple Scruff with affection. "I don't regret any of it. I had a great time, a really great time." |
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