Today’s “Beatles People” is Jane Asher

 

 

Paul’s girlfriend between 1963 and 1968, Jane was a major influence on his lifestyle and songwriting with The Beatles.

For a time Paul lived at the Asher family home in London, and a number of his songs were inspired by their relationship.

“I always feel very wary including Jane in The Beatles’ history,” said Paul.

“She’s never gone into print about our relationship, whilst everyone on Earth has sold their story. So I’d feel weird being the one to kiss and tell.”

Born in London on April 5, 1946, Jane was the second of three children born to Dr Richard Asher and his wife Margaret.

Dr Asher was a consultant in blood and mental disease. Margaret Asher was a professor of the oboe and one of her pupils had been George Martin.

Jane began her acting career at the age of five, playing the role of Nina in the 1952 film Mandy.

She appeared in a number of films, including The Quatermass Xperiment (1955), The Greengage Summer (1961), The Prince And The Pauper (1962) and Alfie (1966).

She also appeared in numerous television programs, including the British series The Adventures Of Robin Hood, and appeared as a panelist on the BBC music show Juke Box Jury.

“I met Jane when she was sent by the Radio Times to cover a concert we were in at the Royal Albert Hall – we had a photo taken with her for the magazine and we all fancied her,” said Paul.

“We’d thought she was blonde, because we had only ever seen her on black-and-white telly doing Juke Box Jury, but she turned out to be a redhead. So it was: ‘Wow, you’re a redhead!’ I tried pulling her, succeeded, and we were boyfriend and girlfriend for quite a long time.”

“Paul fell like a ton of bricks for Jane,” said Cynthia Lennon.

“The first time I was introduced to her was at her home and she was sitting on Paul’s knee. My first impression of Jane was how beautiful and finely featured she was. For Paul, Jane Asher was a great prize.”

By ‘63, the Beatles had become household names, and found it difficult staying in hotels and walking around London. Although they often went to plays and clubs, Paul and Asher often stayed in at her parents’ home, a townhouse with six floors. Jane suggested he regard the house as his London home, and her mother agreed to let him move into the attic room.

“There we’re people there and food and a homey atmosphere, and Jane being my girlfriend, it was kind of perfect!” said Paul.

“Really, I suppose what solidified London for me was the house that they lived in at 57 Wimpole Street.

It was really like culture shock in the way they ran their lives, because the doctor obviously had a quite tight diary, but all of them ran it that way. They would do things that I’d never seen before, like at dinner there would be word games. Now I’m bright enough, but mine is an intuitive brightness. I could just about keep up with that and I could always say, ‘I don’t know that word.’ I was always honest. In fact, I was able to enjoy and take part fully in their thing.”

Paul lived at the Asher family house for three years. The change of environment greatly broadened his cultural horizons; not least with the music lessons Margaret Asher informally gave him. She taught him to play the recorder – he later played the instrument on ‘The Fool On The Hill’ – and gave music tuition in a music room in the basement.

Paul and John wrote many songs in the music room.

“We wrote a lot of stuff together, one-on-one, eyeball to eyeball,” said John.

“Like in I Want To Hold Your Hand, I remember when we got the chord that made the song. We were in Jane Asher’s house, downstairs in the cellar playing on the piano at the same time. And we had ‘Oh you-u-u… got that something…’ And Paul hits this chord and I turn to him and say, ‘That’s it!’ I said, ‘Do that again!’ In those days, we really used to absolutely write like that – both playing into each other’s nose.”

“I eventually got a piano of my own up in the top garret,” said Paul.

“Very artistic. That was the piano that I fell out of bed and got the chords to Yesterday on. I dreamed it when I was staying there. I wrote quite a lot of stuff up in that room actually. ‘I’m Looking Through You’ I seem to remember after an argument with Jane. There were a few of those moments.”

Jane’s main passion was for acting. She was independent-minded and wanted to have a profession in her own right, rather than merely be a Beatle’s partner. She was opinionated and refused to sacrifice her career for Paul, which caused friction in their relationship.

“My whole existence for so long centred round a bachelor life,” said Paul.

“I didn’t treat women as most people do. I’ve always had a lot around, even when I’ve had a steady girl. My life generally has always been very lax, and not normal.

“I knew I was selfish. it caused a few rows. Jane left me once and went off to Bristol to act. I said OK then, leave, I’ll find someone else. It was shattering to be without her.”

Their five-year relationship came to an abrupt end when Jane discovered Paul in bed with Francie Schwartz, an employee at Apple.

Jane walked out and sent her mother to collect her belongings. Although she and Paul subsequently tried to mend their relationship but by July 1968 it was over.

Jane met the political cartoonist Gerald Scarfe in 1971. They married in 1981 and have three children.

Jane’s acting career continues successfully today. She has also written three novels and more than a dozen books on lifestyle, cake decoration and costuming, and has developed the best-selling Jane Asher range of cake mixes.

She is the president of Arthritis Care, the National Autistic Society, the Parkinson’s Disease Society and the West London Family Service Unit, and vice president of the Child Accident Prevention Trust.

She is also a Distinguished Supporter of the British Humanist Association, and patron of Bowel Cancer UK, the Scoliosis Association and the Leukaemia and Lymphoma Unit.

THE LEGENDARY HOLLYWOOD