working man through each day of the week, while "Lady Madonna" does the same from a female perspective. John Lennon helped write the lyrics, which give an account of an overworked, exhausted (possibly single) mother, facing a new problem each day of the week. McCartney explained the song by saying: "'Lady Madonna' started off as the Virgin Mary, then it was a working-class woman, of which obviously there's millions in Liverpool. There are a lot of Catholics in Liverpool because of the Irish connection." The lyrics include each day of the week except Saturday, which McCartney only noticed many years later: "I was writing the words out to learn it for an American TV show and I realised I missed out Saturday... So I figured it must have been a real night out." McCartney said his inspiration for the song came after seeing a photograph in National Geographic magazine of a woman breastfeeding, titled "Mountain Madonna". Speaking later about "Lady Madonna", Lennon said, "Good piano lick, but the song never really went anywhere", adding: "Maybe I helped him on some of the lyrics, but I'm not proud of them either way." Author Howard Sounes identifies both a relevance to McCartney's Catholic upbringing, and an autobiographical quality that belies the song's upbeat melody and delivery. He writes: "the lyric is also tender and personal, evoking the image of Mary McCartney as midwife, tending mothers and their babies in Liverpool as she had during Paul's childhood. The phrase 'Lady Madonna' also has a clear Christian meaning, of course, conflating Paul's memory of his mother with the Virgin Mary in what is a boogie-woogie hymn." Recording The Beatles decided to record "Lady Madonna" for their first single of 1968. The release was intended to cover the group's absence while they attended a Transcendental Meditation course in India under the guidance of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. The sessions took place on 3 and 6 February at EMI Studios (subsequently Abbey Road Studios) in London. Although the song was a return to the Beatles' musical roots, this aesthetic was not carried over to the band taping the basic track as an ensemble. McCartney first recorded his piano part, using EMI's "Mrs Mills" Steinway Vertegrand upright, accompanied by Ringo Starr playing a snare drum with brushes. Starr recalled that when recording the track the Beatles consulted Martin on how to re-create the sound that Lyttelton had achieved