John's friend Pete Shotton was there when John wrote the line "Semolina Pilchard, climbing up the Eiffel Tower". After he wrote it John said " Let the fuckers work that one out, Pete".
Lyrically loosely based on writings of James Thurber & Lewis Carroll....but....the idea was from Lennon was to twist words & ideas to suit his current state of mind & things happening in his life. By this time the Beatles were massively popular & many music critics pulled apart their lyrics for " the deeper meaning.!"...John was both amused & appalled by this thinking they weren't worth all that pretentious fuss. So he had some fun with the words. Semolina is made up( It's actually a wheat porridge) Pilchard was a crooked London cop who loved to bust rock celebrities for drug possession...even though he was on the take. This era ( 1967) was the heighth of psychedelic music so Lennon through in lots of sound effects & musical flourishes....The brilliant producer George Martin scored a great string arrangement & 15 voice choir at the fadeout. Lennon accidentally cued in the BBC radio broadcasting Shakespeare's play " King Lear" & decided to add snippets of that in the final recording as well. You can clearly hear it in the final seconds. Many consider "I Am the Walrus " one of the Beatles Psychedelic masterpieces....John probably would have still had a good laugh about it.
This was probably the trippiest period for the Beatles. I personally liked it. They were so far beyond what anyone else was capable of producing musically. Tough place to start if you want to understand them. It’s like climbing Everest when you get tired walking around the block.
The lyrics of the song do not make sense or mean anything, they are random words that John used on purpose, he was inspired if I remember correctly by some writers of the time who did the same thing and I replicate it in this song just to confuse people , John said "this song will be heard in 50 years because of how rare it is" he said something like that, and look if he was right haha
The Beatles were so high when they did this tune that they had to scrape Ringo off the ceiling with a rake bruv. It means nothing, but in such a beautiful way 💗
For me, this has always been one of my top five favorite songs since it came out. I can't help it. I LOVE everything about it. I hope he was able to fully hear the strings, as the recording in this video has them a bit weak--and it's one of the strongest elements of the song. The BBC broadcast of Shakespeare's "King Lear"--the segment in this song--is available on youtube. It's fun to hear, and I believe the text is written out. I cannot imagine what it would have been like building this song. Simply incredible. Great post!
This was great. I needed that laugh right now. The Magical Mystery Tour EP accompanied their movie of the same name. And this song is infamously about nothing lol (but I appreciate your efforts in trying to understand it.) But, today is the anniversary of John Lennon’s death and you dissed his signature song (Strawberry Fields Forever) 😬 I’m a Beatles fan but not a Lennon stan so I’m praying for you once they see this lol
Hi Reina! The track isn't really about "nothing", it was John Lennon's attempt to mislead the people, who put every word, every song of the Beatles on the gold scales. And he did that here with his crazy, extraordinary eloquence (and as our. colleague rapper suspects, certainly with a few more or less illegal substances...). Result: Psychedelic Masterpiece from 1967.
Some of their lyrics are just combinations of words and cadences that sounded cool and interesting together, just wordplay for the sake of it; McCartney once commented that "Lucy in the Sky..." was not about LSD at all, just an odd coincidence but "Got to Get You Into My Life" was actually about his new found love of marijuana and no one was the wiser, people totally missed that one
You have to understand the times. It’s the psychedelic era. The weirder the better mixing the orchestral parts with rock never tried before mixed with genius lyrics “Sitting on a cornflake” just incredible. Read the lyrics while listening next time 😎
you are smart enough, I've been listening to this since it came out and I will never understand it and I never cared!!! ...it was written with that intent, there is no meaning on purpose!!!👍👍👌👌✌✌😁😁
The Magical mystery tour LP (Album) was originally an American release, in the UK it was released as a double EP and lacked a few songs compared to the LP, the added songs on the LP were taken from singles, Strawberry fields was one of them.
By the way, no one is smart enough to figure those lyrics out. The nonsense lyrics were intentional. The musical dimension was complex and fabulous. Bizarre but super fun to listen to. Thanks for reviewing.
Once you hear it, you can't unhear it. A friend pointed out to me that near the end of this song, what sounds like they're just chanting ompah ompah or whatever they're doing, if you listen, they're actually saying "smoke pot smoke pot everybody smoke pot" over and over. Listen for it. You'll hear it.
the song was taken from a lewis carrol story called the walrus and the carpenter concerning the marxist relationship tween worker and boss but john got the roles mixed and cast himself as the boss! he said he was writing 'dylanesque' and trolling the conspiracy mob
Written in 1967..he was on acid in his garden,....in the distance he heard a police siren wailing and wrote a melody that mimicked the siren (if u listen to it, or hum it, in a “woooo-wooooo-woooo” kind of way [british police sirens are a little different than american ones] anyway, if u do that, u can totally hear it/the resemblance ) ....the words mean absolutely zilch, nada, zero nothing, theyre are 1000% jibberish, people had been over-analyzing everything they said for years at that point, and lennon was like “pick this one apart, weirdos.....put this under your microscope” ....anyway, what he/they ended up with is a pretty interesting piece of art.....at least, idk
You had the right response to the song . It's surreal and confusing the lyrics are meaningless and meaningful at the same time, they juxtapose real things with strange ones with snippets of philosophical, political, magical, religious, nature, everyday things. It's genius and yes, there were drugs in the air.
First time listener. I liked the honesty and knowledge you brought to your reaction. Drugs was a factor that combined with the Beatles' innovative drive. John Lennon was a visual artist which comes through loud and clear here. The imagery is riveting. From my readings, I learned that John intentionally spun a web of nonsense to prank music connoisseurs who claimed to understand the meaning behind the more cryptic of Beatles' lyrics. I know my comment comes a year after you posted this video. Still I would love to hear more Beatles reactions from you! Cheers!
John Lennon said it was a nonsense song. It was cool though. At the end you hear something roughly like "Oompha oompha stick it up your oompa", and then there's spoken words supposedly from Shakespeare's plays. It's Weird but cool in my opinion.
The meaning of this song is, try and figure this one out!! 😆 John wanted people to take a song the way they wanted to and how it felt to them. It might mean something different to me than to you. Atleadt that what I took from him talking about lyrics.
Nothing to do with politics, nothing to do with drugs. Not an American thing. Just having fun. What an incredible vocal though. You plenty smart enough to just love it.
😂😂john said in a imterview one weekend when he wrote this first verse they took acid then on the second verse they took another acid teip thays what makes john a genius the words arent pose to make.sense thats what makes this so trippy so you can feel how it is floating on acid even smoking weed it takes you to another level image you play this in Compton while they smoking weed at the end when the beatles aay everybody smoke pot they be out there crip walking dancing to this beat😅😅😅
This is the Beatles lsd phaze.,you right it is ment to sound like drugs in the it Psychedelic music, Psychedelic meaning hallucinagenic drugs this and Sgt peppers lonely hearts club band album were the made a lot of breakthroughs in sound engineering and sound recording the woul phaze sound left to right from each speaker which sounds amazing wearing head phones they woul also experiment placing Mike's down hally way and bathrooms and layer it it in also quite famously useing backword lyrics and music voices and singing. Ps hey bulldog and fixing a hole, lovely rita a great tunes too
Semolina is a dessert made from durum wheat and a pilchard fish which is commonly pickled. John and co-writer Pete Shotton wanted two two vastly contrasting foods. The song has no meaning whatsoever because John, after reading an essay on Beatles' music, said the writer had no idea what he was talking about. The inspiration for the song came from Lewis Carroll's "The Walrus And The Carpenter" and the children's ditty "Green Snot Pie".
All the people reacting to the song never catch that at the end of the song The Beatles are saying smoke pot smoke pot everybody smoke pot. I just find it interesting.
The lyrics were mean't not to be understood. Lennon got pissed off when he heard universities were analyzing Beatles lyrics, so he wrote a song of gibberish and said "let them figure out this one."
Dude it’s so obvious what the song is about. Sitting on a corn flake Waiting for the van to come Corporation T-shirt, stupid bloody Tuesday. Come on my guy! 😅
Please react to Milli-Billi from BE:FIRST. They are a popular dance and vocal group in Japan. Member SOTA is the winner of WORLD HIPHOP DANCE CHAMPIONSHIP. Curious how you feel about it.
Lennon is fucking with your head. People were always trying to find out the meaning of Beatles songs, so John’s challenging you, the listener to find any meaning to this song. Good luck! Plus, John was also reading Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice in Wonderland. Starting to connect the dots now? Plus, as you say, lots of drugs. In John’s case at that time, this was LSD.
You are wrong about Lucy in the Sky and even this song. It ain’t about acid or even inspired from it. Lucy was about his son’s drawing and imagination. I Am the Walrus isn’t supposed to have meaning. Lennon wrote it to troll people who tried to analyze his music.
The lyrics were complete nonsense. The reason is that for years all the music press and fans have tried to interpret this meaning or that meaning into Beatles songs, so Lennon decided to come up with something they couldn't decipher. He said "Let the fuckers work that one out, Pete," to Pete Shotton, an old friend of his. This was basically to fuck with the critics and have a little laugh at their expense.
Hating Strawberry Fields Forever shows your age & "ear"! At this point the Beatles were EXPERIMENTING! LOL John Lennon wrote this COMPLETELY NONSENSICAL song because he heard professors were analyzing Beatle's lyrics;IT WAS A COMPLETE LARK! LMAO
You start the video off strong saying that you effing hate Strawberry Fields Forever and Penny Lane makes you depressed - made me laugh. Then you say this song is drugs and the Beatles smoked a gang of weed
It's a nonsense song John wrote to thumb his nose at people who were trying to find the "deeper meaning" behind to lyrics. So, none of it makes sense and isn't supposed to make sense - on purpose.
Strawberrys fields forever is deep. It is inspired by a mix of something called an ego drop which u experience during an ac*d trip (which makes you feel small in comparison to the universe , kind of a spiritual awakening similar to meditation etc) and mix of self reflection and reflection on the universe and realisation that he viewed the world in a way that was different to most ppl at the time, he saw past organised relig*on and mental conditioning and saw the truth ..that were all the same souls, all equal, all one whatever r*ce, lgbt, nationality ,it didn't matter...were all one ,but in seeing this and the manipution against peace and oneness etc and lies of politicians and society and many others didnt see this it can be lonely and frustrating and he's just longing for a time when everything was simple in his childhood aka a place called Strawberrys fields. But instrumentally nothing like that was ever heard before
