TMS Muse of the Week: Jane Asher

(Getty Images)

The word ‘muse’ gets thrown around a lot contemporarily, most of the time by people who didn’t actually inspire much of anything. When it comes to the well regarded muses of classic rock, my choice for the most impactful isn’t Pattie Boyd, Anita Pallenberg or Rosanna Arquette, but Jane Asher. Though I like all the other three ladies, there’s something about Jane that just makes her stick out differently from her fellow, former rock girlfriends. In a community where every ex and groupie are claiming to have songs written about them, Jane actually has a big handful of them and isn’t interested in endorsing them. She was the most important relationship in Paul McCartney’s life before Linda Eastman and at the center for the best and worst parts of Beatlemania from 1963 to 1968. Jane was the envy of every 12-20 year old fangirl in the world; got all of the VIP perks of rock & roll; was the subject of many love songs and break-up tunes; she and Paul were one of the best looking couples in showbusiness; and she was talented herself to boot. How and why did it all end?

Many things can go wrong in a relationship, and with Paul and Jane it seemed to go sideways almost instantly. There was a legitimate, romantic courtship between the two, as reflected in the classic Beatles songs ‘All My Loving,’ ‘And I Love Her,’ ‘She’s a Woman’ and ‘Here, There and Everywhere.’ But there was also a disconnect that grew once the stardust started dimming and things became more serious. Trouble was already in paradise by 1965, when two shady songs by Paul [‘You Won’t See Me’ and ‘I’m Looking Through You’] on the Beatles sixth album, ‘Rubber Soul,’ were written during a brief split. Paul was at the height of his craft and taking advantage of any kind of inspiration from the pretty redhead. In Marianne Faithfull’s self-titled memoir from 1994, the friend of the couple reveals she once attended a house party hosted by Paul and Jane; with the hosts passive aggressively opening and closing a window to intentionally contradict each other. You can feel this type of tension in Paul’s music from this period and it artistically worked in his favor on songs like ‘We Can Work It Out,’ ‘For No One’ and ‘Tell Me What You See.’

In between accompanying Paul to showbiz events, parties, vacations and holidays, Jane had her own successful career. The ingenue was a former child star, with her brother Peter also a friend and peer of Paul’s. When she first met the cute Beatle, she was very much a celebrity and artist in her own right, transitioning to grown-up roles and intending to keep her acting career alive. But Paul was also a traditionalist who could see them married with kids in the near future. Despite living together for most of their relationship and getting engaged for the last six months, Jane wasn’t interested in becoming a mother so soon in her early 20s. This is considered the main catalyst for their flawed romance, but of course, the usual rockstar cliches applied by the end too [i.e. recreational drugs and affairs on Paul’s end].

(Mike McCartney)

But now, back to Jane. What makes her stand out compared to fellow Beatles muse Pattie Boyd, is that she hasn’t publicly spoken about Paul since she left him in 1968. She must be aware that her former fiancé is still a big part of why she’s famous, since when you Google her name, just as many results related to her Beatles connection appear as they do her career. The actress could have easily made a bunch of money kissing and telling like Marianne, Pattie and many other former girlfriends. But honestly, she doesn’t really need to. Yes, to a lot of people she will always be the almost Mrs. McCartney, but she still accomplished the career she wanted; which you can see in popular films like Roger Corman’s The Masque of the Red Death (1964), Lewis Gilbert’s Alfie (1966), Jerzy Skolimowski’s Deep End (1971), Frank Oz’s Death at a Funeral (2007) and the ITV mini-series of “Brideshead Revisited” (1981). Later in life she began writing novels and cook books; and by 1981, she settled down and formed a family with husband, animator Gerald Scarfe.

We may never know if Jane truly doesn’t care about her part in the Beatles legacy or if she’s secretly proud [I know I would be if I was the basis for ‘For No One’ or ‘Here, There and Everywhere’]. But she got the career, marriage, family and place in history in the final analysis. In the words of an “Arrested Development” meme, good for her.