Beware Of Young Girls

Album: On My Way To Where (1970)
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Songfacts®:

  • Unlike the Wishbone Ash song "Jail Bait," this is an intensely personal song, one tinged with sarcasm and bitterness.

    Lyricist Dory Langdon married the composer André Previn in 1959. She was his second wife, and he was her second husband. They went on to write songs together, and their marriage would very likely have been successful, but Dory was terrified of flying, so did not accompany her husband to the UK, where he began an affair with the actress Mia Farrow while she was working on the film A Dandy In Aspic.

    Farrow became pregnant by Previn, and would become his third wife in 1970. She was some 16 years younger than him; Dory was nearly four years older than her then husband, and was clearly and understandably resentful of this young girl.

    "Beware Of Young Girls" uses some poetic licence, but Farrow was 23 when she and André began their affair, and the subject of the song is 24.
  • "Beware Of Young Girls" was recorded with solo acoustic guitar and runs to a shade over four minutes. It has a Janis Ian feel to it in more ways than one. >>
    Suggestion credit:
    Alexander Baron - London, England, for above 2
  • This was used in a 2015 episode of the TV series Scream Queens that was also titled "Beware of Young Girls."

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