The Stories Behind These Great Songs Named After Women

“When I eventually met Mr. Right I had no idea that his first name was Always.” — Rita Rudner

Photo byMercury Records

“Come On Eileen” by Dexys Midnight Runners

“Come On Eileen” was a monster hit for Dexys Midnight Runners in 1982, reaching №1 in the US and seven other countries. The band was on the verge of breaking up early in the year, singer Kevin Rowland told Spin. “A good few in the band were starting to give up on the dream.

“Some of them weren’t getting paid too often. There was a bit of an atmosphere, quite a lot of an atmosphere. I was a very strict leader as well, too strict, I’m sure. I really felt under pressure. The last couple of singles hadn’t really set the world alight. We weren’t flavor of the month with the record label.”

“Come On Eileen” was written by Rowland and trombonist Big Jim Patterson. After a heated rehearsal session, Patterson quit the band and performed on the record as a session player. “Billy Adams, who was a guitar player in the band, he helped me finish it,” said Rowland. We finished it off and as we were writing it, I did feel this could be a really good one.”

Rowland told the Daily Mail that his religious upbringing inspired the song. “Eileen was a composite of Irish Catholic girls that I grew up with. The one thing you weren’t supposed to do when you reached puberty was go with the Irish Catholic girls.

“You were supposed to go with the English girls because they were ‘sluts.’ That’s how it was. These are the good ones — these are the ones you marry.”

“Come On Eileen” by Dexys Midnight Runners

“Help Me, Rhonda” by the Beach Boys

Written by Brian Wilson and Mike Love, the Beach Boys released a version of “Help Me, Rhonda” that appeared on their 1965 album The Beach Boys Today! Wilson, sensing the song’s commercial potential, replaced its ukulele-driven arrangement with guitars and re-recorded the track. The tune became a №1 hit and was included on 1965’s Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!).

“The songwriting process itself was very spontaneous,” Love told Uncut. “It was either an idea that I had, or one that Brian had. On ‘Help Me, Rhonda’ he had a great track going, and I went and wrote the lyrics, tailoring the lyrics to the melody.

“We’d go into the studio with a couple of musicians, and with Carl and Dennis, and we’d bang out a track, Brian on piano or bass. My forte was literature and poetry. I was very enamored of all that, so it meant that he could focus 100% on the music.”

Wilson chose Al Jardine to sing lead on “Help Me, Rhonda,” only the second lead vocal for Jardine. “I had a sixth sense for knowing who to give what vocal to,” Wilson told Goldmine. “Like for instance, I gave Al Jardine the lead vocal on ‘Help Me, Rhonda.’ I’d heard Al sing a lot and liked his voice and wanted to write a song for him that showed off the quality of his voice and sure enough I did.”

“Ariel” by Dean Friedman

“Ariel” was a №26 hit for Dean Friedman in 1977. “I really think it was the opening line that launched the song,” Friedman explained in Songfacts. “I wrote it while I was living in the Bronx, but most of my family was in Paramus, New Jersey, and a lot of my friends still lived there. And so you’re conscious that there are two sides to the Hudson.

“I was also conscious that where I grew up was very much this side, supposedly idyllic suburbia, the home of shopping centers, the Garden State Plaza, and the Bergen Mall. The specific details were pretty common to life growing up in the bosom of suburbia. In terms of Ariel herself, it was really an amalgamation of all these cute teenage girls in peasant blouses I had a crush on growing up in Paramus.”

Friedman recorded “Ariel” for Lifesong, a small independent label. “They liked the song, but after I delivered it, I was called in for a very serious meeting where they warned me that stations in the South would not play it because of the line ‘She was a Jewish girl / I fell in love with her.’

“So when they released the single version they had me change that line. The replacement line was, ‘Her name was Ariel / I fell in love with her.’ It was my first single off my first album. I had no influence or leverage. One regret I have is that I let them change the single. In any case, stations in the South refused to play the edited version and they played the full album cut with ‘Jewish girl’ in it.

Friedman followed “Ariel” with “Lucky Stars,” a Top 10 hit in the UK that failed to chart in the US. ”I am not a one-hit wonder,” said Friedman. “I’m proud of ‘Ariel.’ It’s a good song. But I did not stop writing in 1977.”

“Ariel” by Dean Friedman

“Mary Mary” by the Monkees and the Paul Butterfield Blues Band

Fans of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band were surprised to learn that one of the songs from their 1966 East-West album was written by Michael Nesmith of the Monkees. The Butterfield Band recorded the song at a time when Elektra Records hoped for a hit single from the group. Producer Barry Friedman, who had worked with the Monkees, suggested “Mary Mary” to the band.

“We got real hot for a while to cut commercial records,” guitarist Mike Bloomfield recalled in Michael Bloomfield: The Rise and Fall of an American Guitar Hero. “We went with these guys who used to cut records for the Stones, Bruce Botnick and Dave Hassinger.

“We cut ‘Mary, Mary’ and a song called ‘If I Had My Way,’ which never came out. All sorts of weird attempts to make rock ’n’ roll singles. We really wanted to do that, but it never happened.”

Nesmith produced and recorded the song with the Monkees and the Wrecking Crew session musicians in July 1966. Micky Dolenz performed lead vocals. The song appeared on the 1967 album More of the Monkees.

“This was an early song,” Nesmith told Rolling Stone. “I hadn’t been writing long, but I was interested in finding a place that was between country and blues. At the time, I was working for Randy Sparks. He had started a publishing company after his success with the New Christy Minstrels, who were a folk-rock band. He hired me as a writer, and one day in his office I wrote ‘Mary Mary.’ Frazier Mohawk took it to the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, and they recorded it. That was very encouraging.

“Randy then sold my catalog to Screen Gems Columbia Music, which was the music catalog for the Monkees television show. They picked it to go on the second record. That was all fine, but they didn’t want me to play or sing on it. ‘They’ being Screen Gems, which was run by Don Kirshner. Run-DMC covered it years later. I just loved their take on it. They changed around the lyrics some, but I didn’t care. The song isn’t exactly deep.”

“Lola” by the Kinks

“Lola” was written by the Kinks’ Ray Davies for their 1970 album Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, Part One. Davies recalled in You Really Got Me: The Story of the Kinks that the song was inspired when Kinks manager Robert Wace spent a night in Paris dancing with a cross-dresser.

“It was a real experience in a club,” said Davies. “I was asked to dance by somebody who was a fabulous-looking woman. I said ‘No thank you.’ And she went in a cab with my manager straight afterwards. It’s based on a personal experience. But not every word.”

“Obviously there were a lot of people we knew who were transgender at the time, and we knew a lot of gay people, but you have to remember, when the Kinks first started, homosexuality was illegal in England,” Ray’s brother, guitarist Dave Davies told Yahoo! Entertainment.

“Ray wrote this interesting song, to say the least — and a lot of people didn’t really know what it was about! They just thought it was a ‘quirky Kinks song.’ But there was an awful lot of difficult times we had, so it was really quite handy that most people didn’t know what the song was about.

“When it came to light, people were quite, quite shocked. But actually, nowadays, it’s really quite a very common subject, gender. So, it’s very topical now.”

“Alison” by Elvis Costello

“Alison” is one of Elvis Costello’s most popular songs but it did not chart in 1977 when released as a single from his debut album My Aim Is True. Costello explains the song’s inspiration in his 2015 autobiography Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink.

“I’ve always told people that I wrote the song ‘Alison’ after seeing a beautiful checkout girl at the local supermarket. She had a face for which a ship might have once been named. Scoundrels might once have fought mist-swathed duels to defend her honor.

“Now she was punching in the prices on cans of beans at a cash register and looking as if all the hopes and dreams of her youth were draining away. All that were left would soon be squandered to a ruffian who told her convenient lies and trapped her still further.”

Costello patterned his phrasing of the song after the Spinners’ “Ghetto Child” and revealed that “the other song that was playing in my head when I wrote ‘Alison’ was ‘The Wind Cries Mary’ by Jimi Hendrix. It had been playing in there for a long time.

“The name that I chose was almost incidental. I knew it couldn’t be a name of a glamorous, sophisticated woman, like Grace or Sophia, or a poetic heroine, like Eloise or Penelope. I needed a name that sounded like a girl anyone might know, and ‘Alison’ fitted the tune.”

“Alison” by Elvis Costello

“Elenore” by the Turtles

Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan were the core members of the Turtles from their first hit, 1965’s “It Ain’t Me Babe” until the band broke up in 1970. Along the way the Turtles notched a string of Top 10 hits that included their only №1, 1968’s “Happy Together.”

The success of “Happy Together” led the Turtles’ record label, White Whale to demand more of the same. The band’s follow-up, “Elenore” was written by Kaylan in 30 minutes after locking himself in a hotel room.

“I didn’t use an instrument to write that, I just sort of juxtaposed the chords in my head and knew exactly what I was doing with them,” Kaylan explained in Rock Cellar. “It’s an easy song. When you sing the melody to any musicians they knew the chords instantly; it has a very Neapolitan chord change.”

“Elenore was a parody of ‘Happy Together,’” Kaylan revealed in the liner notes of Solid Zinc: The Turtles Anthology. “It was never intended to be a straightforward song. It was meant as an anti-love letter to White Whale, who were constantly on our backs to bring them another ‘Happy Together.’”

“So I gave them a very skewed version. Not only with the chords changed but with all these bizarre words. It was my feeling that they would listen to how strange and stupid the song was and leave us alone. But they didn’t get the joke. They thought it sounded good.”

Despite Kaylan’s efforts, “Elenore” was a №6 hit in 1968. “Truthfully, though, the production on ‘Elenore’ was so damn good,” Kaylan wrote. “Lyrically or not, the sound of the thing was so positive that it worked. It certainly surprised me.”

“America really never got the joke and most of the world never did either,” said Kaylan. “But I’m thrilled because it was a big hit. If it goes over your head and it says ‘pride and joy etcetera,’ then I’m thrilled to death.

“You can never underestimate the naïveté of the American public.”

“Brandy (You’re a Fine Girl)” by Looking Glass

The members of Looking Glass were students at Rutgers University in NJ when the band formed in 1969. Singer-guitarist Elliot Lurie told The College Crowd Digs Me how the band got its name.

“We were all sitting in my car trying to come up with a name for the group and we may have been slightly under the influence of something [laughs]. And we started looking at the rearview mirror in the car and we thought, ‘Well, we are sort of reflections of ordinary folks here, why don’t we call ourselves The Mirrors?’ But then we said, ’No, that’s no good.’

“It was the psychedelic days and we started talking about how a mirror is just a looking glass. And we all thought that was cool. We’ll do that. We’ll call ourselves Looking Glass.”

Lurie wrote and sang lead on “Brandy (You’re a Fine Girl),” a №1 hit in 1972. “I wrote the song the way I usually do,” said Lurie. “I grab my acoustic guitar and play a chorus until I get a progression that I kinda like. And then I sort of free-associate nonsense lyrics over it.

“I had a girlfriend in high school named Randy. And I was just singing her name as the story came together. But then I thought, ’Well, Randy’s a problem because that could be a male or a female name. And the character in the song is a barmaid.’

“So I changed it to Brandy. I just wrote it up in my bedroom in New Jersey. The story just kinda came together from the first verse and I wrote it from there. But, you know, it’s a really very, very short story in three minutes.”

Looking Glass followed “Brandy” with “Jimmy Loves Mary-Anne.” “People think we’re a one-hit wonder, but technically we weren’t because that record did enter the Top 40,” Lurie explained. ”In certain cities, it was a big hit. In other cities, not so much.

“Since the charts were made up of a combination of airplay and sales, it lingered around on the charts from the airplay it was getting, but it didn’t get way up there because of the lack of sales, I guess.”

“Maggie May” by Rod Stewart

“Maggie May” was written by Rod Stewart and guitarist and composer Martin Quittenton. The song was first released as the B-side to “Reason to Believe” in 1971 and appeared on Stewart’s third solo album Every Picture Tells a Story.

“At first, I didn’t think much of ‘Maggie May,’” Stewart recalled in the Wall Street Journal. “I guess that’s because the record company didn’t believe in the song. I didn’t have much confidence then. I figured it was best to listen to the guys who knew better. What I learned is sometimes they do and sometimes they don’t.”

Stewart told Far Out “I even wondered for a while about leaving it off the album. It didn’t have a chorus. It just had three rambling verses. It didn’t really have a hook. How could you hope to have a hit single with a song that was all verse and no chorus and no hook?

“And it went on for a bit: it was five minutes long, for God’s sake, which was pretty much operatic by the standards of the pop single. ‘Reason to Believe’ was much more like the kind of thing that might wind up on the radio.”

“Maggie May” became Stewart’s first №1 hit as a solo artist. He revealed in Rod: The Autobiography that the song’s inspiration was a woman he met at the Beaulieu Jazz Festival in Hampshire, UK.

“I lost my, by then, not remotely prized virginity to an older woman who has come on to me very strongly in the beer tent. How much older, I can’t tell you exactly — but old enough that she was highly disappointed by the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it brevity of the experience.”

This story appeared in Rock Cellar March 6, 2024.

Frank Mastropolo is the author of 200 Greatest 60s Rock Songs and 200 Greatest 70s Rock Songs.