Music

Rock History's Greatest Muses

by Anne T. Donahue

Behind every great song there lies a story, and in the case of many iconic tracks, each story is inspired by a woman who’s come to define a movement, era or band.  Therefore, here are four of our favourite and most iconic muses who’ve inspired history’s most famous artists and the songs we can’t forget.

Pattie Boyd

The subject behind George Harrison’s Something and Eric Clapton’s Layla and Wonderful Tonight, Pattie Boyd has been cemented as one of the most iconic muses in music history, as her love affairs with The Quiet One and the “God of Guitar” (see: “Clapton is God” graffiti of the 1960s) inspired several songs that are as memorable today as they were then. After meeting the Beatle on the set of the band’s  1964 film, A Hard Day’s Night, Boyd and Harrison embarked on a nearly ten year marriage that resulted not only in musical offspring (1969’s For You Blue and 1970’s Isn’t It A Pity), but a friendship that lasted until George Harrison’s death in 2001.  However, as their marriage declined and Clapton’s love for Boyd became apparent (he wrote Layla while dating her sister Paula), the two eventually married, and though they divorced in 1989, there remains no animosity and Boyd currently lives as both a successful photographer and author, having released her bestselling autobiography, Wonderful Tonight in 2007.

Yoko Ono

Both a muse and relevant artist in her own right, Yoko Ono’s influence on John Lennon has undoubtedly been controversial, as their intense and unconventional relationship has been cited as both a creative pinnacle and ultimate disaster (though anyone who’s truly researched The Beatles can’t actually pin the group’s break-up on Yoko).  After meeting at one of her art exhibitions in 1966, Lennon and the artist became inseparable, as she began to spark the Beatle’s political and social awareness while simultaneously inciting resentment within the group and its fanbase. In addition to referring to Yoko in several of his songs, Lennon went on to pen The Ballad of John and Yoko, and collaborate with his wife on various albums that managed to straddle both the accessible and the innately avant-garde.  Daring, bold and still controversial, Yoko Ono continues to create, inspire and politically challenge, maintaining and upholding various causes and memorials, as well as the John Lennon Museum in her native Japan.

Sara Dylan

The first wife of legendary singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, Sara (born Shirley Marlin Noznisky) was the inspiration for several songs and albums, with the two most referenced tracks being 1966’s Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands, and Sara, the 1976 song written in hopes of inviting reconciliation following the couple’s 1975 estrangement. A woman shrouded in mystery, Sara was previously married to photographer Hans Lownds before marrying Dylan, whom she wed in a secret ceremony in 1965 that went unknown for several months, but lasted until their divorce in 1977.  Though the two eventually became friends and nearly remarried in the early 1980’s, the separation and divorce was tense and bitter, and Dylan’s 1975 record, Blood on the Tracks has be said to reflect the distinct dynamic between the musician and his former muse.

Chris O’Dell

While Chris O’Dell worked and socialized with some of music’s biggest personalities and most influential presences, her role was primarily behind the scenes, beginning with her stint at Apple in the 1960’s, and continuing with her role on various big name tours that saw her do everything from scheduling sound checks to picking up drugs. However, it was her role as the supportive and compliant observer that saw “Miss O’Dell” enter the inner sanctum of rock ‘n roll royalty, as she embarked on a lifelong friendship with George Harrison and Pattie Boyd (Harrison’s song, Miss O’Dell, is about her), inspired Leon Russell’s Pisces Apple Day after a brief but tumultuous affair, and became “the woman down the hall” in Joni Mitchell’s song Coyote (a song written about a complicated love triangle that took place on Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue).  Though her influence went relatively unknown until recently, it was O’Dell’s 2009 autobiography that finally brought her role as muse to light, detailing her life in the music industry, the inner workings of various big-name bands and the infamous drama that seemed to follow nearly everyone in the golden age of rock ‘n roll.