I think John was having a go at 'intellectuals' analysing Beatles lyrics for deep meaning ..... and chucked this one in as a 'there you go, analyse that'!
One of my fave top 3 of the Beatles! So glad you did a reaction video to it. When I was married and raising my stepson.... when things got really crazy in the house I would just pop out "Coo coo Cachoo".... letting everyone know we were headed or in a nonsense situation and to just go with the crazy. Peace and love ❤️
John said so many were asking him what songs meant that he just decided to make a song with nonsensical lyrics to screw everyone up.One song I forget which, he says that Paul is the walrus. It fit into the 60's well!
Hey I love the line if the sun don't come you get a tan from standing in the English rain that's great man how is it the Hari krishnas were criticizing Edgar Allan Poe? That's even funnier but I also love all the radio station stuff and and if you listen real carefully at the end hearing all these background singers he have like some people that are baritone and some that are just falsetto or really high voices sopranos and if you notice they're all saying smoke pot smoke pot everybody smoke pot smoke pot smoke pot everybody smoke pot
The Eggman is his reference to Eric Burdon from the band The Animals who used to crack raw eggs over groupies bodies while he was having sex with them. He told Lennon about it and Lennon thought it was a hoot. John and Paul both loved Lewis Carroll so he threw many references of his writings into the song like he did in Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. He had mentioned in interviews that he liked wordplay and confusing the fans. And John asked engineer Geoff Emerick to make his voice different so Emerick took the cheapest condenser mic in the studio he can find, one that would be used to talk from one room to the other and had him sing it to it to give him that far away sound. Ameren claims it was the same microphone that he used to have him sing Tomorrow Never Knows The whole track was experimental.
This is just a brilliant piece of music. John's lyrics were meant to confuse those who tried to analyze every Beatles song. Great reaction, Harri the Eggman👍👍
I am the 18th. Hahaha! I love how different people react to the lyrics of this song. Just know that John Lennon absolutely loved it when people said, “It doesn’t make any sense!” That’s the whole point. Lennon’s messin’ with ya’!!
I know you love ELO, they drew much of their inspiration from this period of The Beatles. Jeff Lynn got to pay them back by producing their '90's reunion songs where Paul, George and Ringo completed John's unfinished songs: Free as a Bird and Real Love.
Isn't it amazing these guys were doing She Loves You (a great song too!) four years ago and come up with this? That's one of their biggest appeals, they always changed their musical style.
By chance the next year detective Pilcher arrested John and Yoko for marijuana possession. John always claimed it was planted. Detective Pilcher was making a lot of drug busts during the time of famous celebs, before the song came out as well. Some have theorized that's what John was getting at. Curiously that detective later was put into prison for being corrupt! I don't think the line means that but it sure is a coincidence...
GOOD ONE!! Hahaha!! Remember, we all thought at the end, that they were saying, “Smoke pot, smoke pot, everybody smokes pot - smoke pot, smoke pot, everybody smokes pot - Everybody smoke pot - everybody smoke pot - everybody smoke pot - everybody smoke pot”. Still sounds like that to me.
This is one of my favorite John Lennon songs! John is actually singing through a Leslie speaker so his voice sounds fuzzy and otherworldly. Even though the lyrics make no sense, the song creates a strange world, just like Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. But you gotta admit that John Lennon is the Original Troll! Props to him!
@@tombeyerlein3813 OK. So, it looks like Lennon did distort his voice on the vocals but not with a Leslie Speaker. Instead, he sang through a low fidelity talk-back microphone used by engineers when they 'talk back' to musicians in the recording studio. I knew that Lennon had distorted his voice somehow, just not the exact manner in which he did it.
Your observations are spot on! Lennon was amazed& annoyed that Beatles lyrics were being dissected & analyzed....so he took bits of Thurber, Lewis Carroll & his own whimsy & came up with this.Kudos to George Martin once again for a brilliant string & choral arrangements.
@@HarriBestReactions Their Fan Club Friend was Reading Fan Letters, and a Student wrote that His Teacher was making the Students Analyze Beatle songs to look for Hidden Messages. So John wrote Walrus, with a Goose Step March to Scare the Military Nuts, Backwards Talking, and Nothing made Sense, BUT Sounded Fishy. Then He ended the Set with, " Now let Them Figure that One Out"
Someone said: "The Beatles were not a band, they were a miracle!" I couldn´t agree more!!!... It was as if God decided we needed a boost of sheer joy in our lives... And gave us an enormous one...
In his autobiography, Pete Shotton, John's childhood friend who remained friends with the Beatles throughout their career, tells the story of John wanting to write a song based around a police siren that had kept him up the night before, and then they came across a letter from a student in their old grammar school who told them about one of their former teachers -- one who had hated John and Pete -- who was making them analyze Beatles lyrics and their meanings. John and Pete basically brainstormed the lyrics of this tune to mess with that teacher. John was partially inspired by the Lewis Carroll poem The Walrus and the Carpenter from Alice Through The Looking Glass and got the title from that.
This is one of John's best vocal performances. He's not putting power behind it it's almost like a secretly telling us something. This is a bitching album
John said he based the "melody" on a police siren. The lyrics are inspired by Lewis Carroll's "The Walrus and the Carpenter" John later said he misunderstood the work and he was actually in fact the carpenter. "I Am the Carpenter" just doesn't sound right.
From my understanding Lennon based this on the works of Lewis Carroll, who often wrote in madeup nonsense words, and whose output includes the Walrus and the Carpenter and Alice in Wonderland, which included Humpty Dumpty, the Eggman. To me, his influence is obvious here. Cheers, brother Harri, you have literally gone down the rabbit hole with this one!
Maybe not _quite_ literally, but certainly literarily. :-) And probably the most famous literary rabbit hole. Do you (or anybody else for that matter) happen to know if the phrase "going down the rabbit hole" is derived from the story, or if Carroll took the phrase/metaphor and made Alice turn it into a literal rabbit hole (in the story anyway)?
Lennon said later after he read the Lewis Carroll poem he realized the walrus was really the villain. He said, "dammit, I wrote the song about the wrong guy, I probably should have gone back and made it, "I Am The Carpenter."
Recently I found out who “The Eggman” was by chance. Reading Eric Burdon’s Wikipedia page it said that John had nicknamed him that because of something involving an egg.I can’t go into it here, so curious minds can go there to read for yourselves .......
@Thomas Dodd Let's add another layer to this and speculate that Constable Ventriss of the Aidensfield police was often seen snacking on boiled eggs in the office... which was set in the mid-60's time period. Clearly a shout-out to Beatle fans who could identify him as the eggman! :-) [reference to 1990's British TV show "Heartbeat" for those not in the know]
My college roomate pointed out that some buried lines 'A servicable villian...", "Oh, untimely death...", "Sit you down father, bless you", are from Shakespeare. Brilliant and timeless.
Can you imagine being one of those actors - on one of the most famous songs in the world? Closing line, even. I doubt if they could sue. Thank you for identifying King Lear -- I was wondering.
Harri @ 2:10, the phrase, "...like Lucy in the Sky..." is reference to a very interesting Lennon song off the previous Sgt. Peppers album called "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds". A Beatles song you should do next. For another song that does this try "Glass Onion" that also has a couple of throwbacks to earlier songs. In fact, you'll hear a reference to I Am the Walrus! Beatles were probably the first band (and perhaps only) to include in lyrics that references earlier hit songs. Listening to their albums as they came out, we immediately got those references. I just heard you say "abstract" describing this song. That is so spot-on! That's exactly how I describe it, either as abstract or surreal forms of music like the visual art forms. So many people today are used to songs with a story, understandable situations, a lost love, a new love. Well the Beatles, particularly John, created abstract music forms too as you see (hear) here. 😁 It's the early experimentation in the so-called emerging psychedelic rock, that others like Pink Floyd and Yes flourished in. Also keep in mind the social/political unrest going on at the time, and the scores of interpretations coming from the public in that regard. Anyway, another awesome reaction. BTW, I (we) first heard this when it came out in late '67, and we are STILL trying to figure it out! LOL! Doesn't matter if we do or not. The song just grooves, man! ✌️😎
@@yohannbiimu Thank you for pointing that out, and I fixed the comment. It was Glass Onion I meant. Harri, if your read all this recommend you do "Fool on the Hill" and "Lady Madonna", before doing "Glass Onion", to get the references. I think you've covered the other song references for Glass Onion and Savory Truffle. Enjoy! ✌️😎
You have that kind of references back and forth also in Frank Zappa's texts. It is slightly later (and Zappa was well aware of Beatles' music and text) but I think it is quite independent anyway. It is the way of internal jokes between friends - but made public!
A teacher at John's old school would give assignments to analyze Beatles lyrics. When John heard of this, this song became a project to really set that teacher off.
I don’t think John had any idea what he was talking about either. I believe he stated, let them figure this one out, referring to some school children who were studying Beatle songs in class. He refers to the Walrus in his song “Glass Onion” from the White Album. Great and fun reaction, as usual. Thanks...
Okay Harri, I think you are now ready to listen to "Tomorrow Never Knows." It was the precursor to "I Am the Walrus" and all their psychedelic period. I predict you will love it and stand in awe. You're right, the Beatles used the power that their fame gave them, to push artistic boundaries, do whatever the hell they wanted in the studio, and have it played on the radio. Never content to rest on their laurels!
I love that you described the song with the word “abstract.” It’s the perfect word to describe this. As usual, I love watching you react to hearing this song for the first time. You’re coming at it after watching the band mature professionally, just as we did back in the day. Love you, Harri!
Your love of E.L.O. is well founded, Jeff Lynne stated that the bands inspiration was to carry on from where I Am The Walrus ended. This was a perfect stating point for them
FYI - a lot of radio stations refused to play this one. Mostly due to the line ‘you let your knickers down’; plus ‘yellow matter custard dripping from a dead dog’s eye’. There water only a few renegade stations
@@larrydavis8249 Oh! Canada! And that makes sense if the BBC banned it. Sheesh. So I guess THAT’S how I got corrupted way back when🤪. I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area that had “free-form” radio stations that played it with no problem.
A classic Lennon song - John saying "figure this one out". The spoken words at the end are from King Lear that John had recorded off the radio. "Oh what an untimely death" was one of the "Big Clues" in the Paul Is Dead rumors at the time. You need to watch the Magical Mystery Tour film to see how this was presented. ps - The walrus was Paul.
I posted this in the comments but here is the direct link to those voices it's a radio play in 1967 of Shakespeare ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Q-1-6_WiUxY.html
Well I’ll be... at the time I totally missed that King Lear line being a clue related to Paul being dead. Thanks. This kind of Beatle trivia is VERY important haha
Interesting tidbit: The notes on the first line beginning "I am he as you are he..." as well on the later lines "Mister City policeman sitting..." and "Expert textpert choking smokers..." bring to mind many European country's police sirens. I don't know if it was on purpose or if it was of any significance.
Each part of the song is its own narrative . Mister city p'leeceman , etc. Lennon would often put nonsense lyrics in as a guide to establish the rhythm and pacing for when the right lyric came to him . Famously on 'A day in the life ' "Now they know how many holes it takes to . . . . . ." the word 'fill' never occurred to him until afterwards . here he purposefully left the guide lyrics in, just for laughs. The Eggman. In post war Britain there were many traders who came to streets and sold out of vans . Ice cream man , vegetable man , and . . . . .Eggman . Figures of mystery and intrigue to small curious boys . I know . I was one.
Yeah, there's something about music listeners today - most can't comprehend the use of abstract poetry. They think you have to have a meaning. Maybe John's lyrics here had meaning and maybe they didn't. But it makes you think. It takes you on a stream of consciousness. And it takes to a place that you couldn't go to in a song of today. It generates a mood that would not be achieved otherwise. Maybe someday people will be open to abstract again, and understand the significance.
Am I wrong, or is Harri's head really busy during the song? 😁 The Mike Sammes Singers are responsible for the extraordinary background choir. They have often been hired for TV and film productions.
"Boy, you should have seen them kicking Edger Allen Poe..." This line always fascinated me because the cause for Poe's death is a mystery, and people did "kick" Poe around with lurid gossip of overdosing on drugs and STDs. I wonder if that's what Lennon is talking about.
Yay! You reacted to my second favorite Beatles song! My first favorite is A Day in The Life, which I think you have already reacted to. Third, for me, is Eleanor Rigby (which you have also reacted to). Tomorrow Never Knows is my fourth favorite Beatles song, and I'll bet I'm not alone in recommending it to you. It's a classic, and historical in the context of audio recording and engineering. Cheers!
Incredible track! So much fun. An answer of John for those people who were dissecting their lyrics searching for hidden meanings that were not there. "Let's see what they make out of this!" he said. The orchestration, so tasty! Kudos to George Martin. Besides the Beatles in the basic track (piano, guitar, bass and drums), and the orchestra (violins, cellos, clarinet and horns), there is a choir singing all the oooohs and aaaaaahs, and at the end they chant "oompah oompa stick it up your jumper" and "got one got one everybody got one". And on top of that, there is a LIVE feed from the radio, a play that was being broadcasted by the BBC, The Tragedy of King Lear, at the time they were recording the track (and John wanted to include that!, a serviceable villain!). Notice that (in the stereo version) the first part of the song is in stereo, and when the "sitting in an English garden" starts it is in mono. That's because the live radio feed was added to the mono mix, and it was impossible to redo it in the stereo (because there was no way to go back in time and get again that BBC program!) so they stitched both takes. King Lear: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Q-1-6_WiUxY.html&ab_channel=DavidJones Orchestra isolated: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-hcXtWJ5lKO0.html&ab_channel=JK
Great analysis as always. I think we can't ignore Semolina Pelchard climbing up the Eiffel Tower and Sgt. Norman Pilcher of the Metropolitan Police Department, who in the ‘60s was climbing the ranks, and who quite recently published a book called 'Crooked Coppers,' who planted contraband on members of The Rolling Stones and The Beatles. There is 'The Walrus And The Carpenter' and then there’s Humpty Dumpty who sat on the wall and had a great fall, as a possible source for the egg man.
The best part of this song is the chanting at the end "Oompah, oompah, stick it up your jumper" while the alternate chorus sings "Everybody's got one"....not that part, but the high voices that are going "yop! yop!" or something like that....it's HILARIOUS!
Welcome to the birth of funky cello - which ELO would go on to use to great effect. Contains one of my favourite Ringo moments (1.33 in your video) - just three chops but he STILL manages to swing it!..:-)
No one mentions the ending background vocals calling Smoke pot ,smoke pot, everybody smoke pot, followed by Get F'd,get f'd everybody get f'ed! What a chorus!
It's an Acid song, Harri....and I'm pretty sure that the Walrus is from Alice in Wonderland..." The time has come the Walrus said, to speak of other things." This was late 1967....suddenly, there was so much more to consider...peak Acid time...." If the sun don't come you get a tan from standing in the English rain" pure LSD....Thanks, Harri
This song is one of my favorites, because John has a great sense of humo(u)r, and whimsey, plus he toys with language devices such as alliteration, and the orchestration is amazing.
"To:Mr Harribest',search recently posted on RU-vid Video (from December I,2012,by actual British Orchestra):The band'The Beatles'Magical Orchestra"I Am The Walrus".The lead vocalist was Mr.Anthony Pomes,a young fellow. . .6--17--2022'
It's simply John admitting he's a walrus, very straightforward.... ;D Pastafied pisces scaling Parisian landmarks, crustaceans in storage, the usual stuff...
I know this song since my youth (German, *1964, so 57 by now). I used to sing along whenever it was played on the radio back then. But until just now I didn't catch the line "Pornographic Princess, let your knickers down". Guaranteed, my vocabulary wasn't as advanced as now as to understand what knickers were. There's one mention of "Lucy In The Sky" which might refer to the song "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds" (I'm not sure if it's from the Beatles themselves or another artist). Another Beatles song which gives me a similar vibe is "Yellow Submarine" - another happy funny feelgood song which you should react to. Fun fact: In Germany your balls are referred to as "Eier" which means eggs... So me an Harri and every other man on this blue marble is an "eggman" quite naturally by design. You in Anglo countries refer to our "eggs" as "marbles" as far as I know. In DE the total of your male genitalia are also sometimes referred to as your "Kronjuwelen" (Crown Jewels). You can easily see why - To every man they are as valuable as the Queen's Crown Jewels In the Tower of London and must be equally safeguarded at all costs (No man wants to get a kick in his balls/marbles/Crown Jewels)!
John was a prankster. Smarmy. And whimsical. A fan of Lewis Carroll, he was inspired this time by Alice innWonderland and... I'm trying to remember... The character in a poem by LC, the Walrus and Crocodile? Anyway, trippy song in 66/67... And still a trippy song in 2021.
There might be incidental snippets of meaning; just enough to make people crazy, but for Lennon the sound of words were a musical instrument, like the poet he was.
This song was paired with HELLO GOODBYE on the single and many American top-40 stations wouldn't/couldn't play WALRUS because of the SMOKE POT chant... which may have been intentional just to set them off. So, HELLO received lots of airplay (too much, of course) and everyone who wore out their vinyl 45s wore out WALRUS' side. Does anyone know whose moog synthesizer was used? George bought one of the first in ?? 1966 ?? and during the Anthology filming, The Lads are playing one - it wasn't clear if that was The One used for recording - I assumed so.
This is John Lennon writing in a jibberish beat poetry style. There is a coded insult to beat poet Allen Ginsberg - who would often sing Hare Krishna songs publicly -, but mostly its John playing nonsensical mind games with Beatle "experts" who were always looking for hidden meaning in Beatles lyrics. While the soundtrack album this song was on was a hit, the made-for-British-TV Movie "Magical Mystery Tour" was the Beatles first MAJOR flop -- bad plot, poorly produced -- that was the Beatles first venture WITHOUT manager and guiding hand Brian Epstein who had died a month earlier. At the time, it left fans wondering about their future.
Hi, loved your reaction. I'm over here after listening to fellow reactor, Jamel_AKA_Jamal. He's been struggling with blocks and censoring. He just tried the audio version of this song and it was entirely cut out except for his intro and thoughts on the song. I'd like to ask a HUGE favor of you. Could you, PLEASE, contact him and talk to him? He really needs support right now. I'm not a creator and can't do other than sympathize. He needs someone like him.
It's insane that the biggest band in the world, constantly in the news and on most young people's minds, dropped something like this, and it landed. People loved it (not so much the MMT movie unfortunately lol). That's crazy to me. You just don't get risk like this in popular culture anymore. Labels don't take chances like this anymore. It could only have been them, after proving themselves and making a lot of people a lot of money. There will never be another 1967, and there will never be another Beatles. It's better that way, it makes them all the more special.
Hi Harri--you're a good egg for doing this one. The song is a nonsense mashup of lots of references, generally designed to thwart attempts to make sense of it. Lennon was frustrated that critics were dissecting the Beatle's music and trying to impose meanings on the lyrics as a means of criticizing the band, so he wrote this as a glorious middle finger to those critics. There are references to Lewis Carrol and naughty childhood rhymes, and as a whole, the song doesn't 'mean' anything, though certain lines do have distinct origins. The 'eggman' is a reference to Eric Burdon, lead singer of the band The Animals. Apparently, Lennon attended an all-night orgy with Burdon, and at one point, Burdon was cracking raw eggs on a naked woman's back. This was confirmed by Bob Spitz, author of the the book, The Beatles: The Biography.
I do remember The Eggman from old time radio. It was a character on either The Great Gildersleeve or maybe Fibber McGee and Molly. It was so long ago, I don't recall which.The show was from the 1940's, an impressionable time for young Mr. Lennon. Whether that influenced John in the lyrics, I have no idea, as I don't know if these shows played in England.
I’m thinking that the “egg man” must be Humpty Dumpty from Alice In Wonderland. Nevertheless, the song is one of the multitude of masterpieces that only the incomparable Beatles could create.
Harry, I Am The Walrus was released in 1967 and was featured on their art film (short movie) Magical Mystery Tour. What inspired John Lennon to create the amazing lyrics of the song was he loved the author of "Alice in Wonderland", Lewis Carroll who let his imagine run wild while constructing his word play. The Walrus is inspired by the poem, "The Walrus and the Carpenter", which is part of Alice's memories in Wonderland. The "Eggman" is derived from Carroll's "Through The Looking Glass" character, Humpty Dumpty who has a section where he exchanges non-sequiturs with Alice. Just another example to prove The Beatles were way ahead of their time.
Hit it right on the head, Harri...Just a fun, surreal trip for the too-serious "fans" who insisted on dissecting everything he wrote. And, yes, the bass, drums, strings, "found" voice samples, tapes, whatever bit of studio wackiness and trickery/wizardry appealed in the moment..as you say, avant-garde, experimental, and purposefully meaningless fun overburdened with significance, 'coz...Beatles, maaaan. Cheers, m8. 8>D
The Walrus may or may not have been Paul, but AFAIK the Egg-man was definitely Eric Burdon (of the Animals). (Referring to a certain erotic practice a lady of Eric's acquaintance had once performed on him, involving an egg...John heard about it, thought it was hilarious, and immediately christened Eric 'the Egg-Man'..) :-)
That particular song always struck me like an auditory, and lyrical, version of a Salvador Dali, or some other, surrealist painting. Very stream of consciousness lyrics, made more to create vivid mental pictures, while allowing the listener to fill in their own blanks. No preconceived story or moral to weigh down your experience. Lennon (and Dylan as well) both had a knack for that.
Advanced. Pushing 4-track studio recording and making the best of what was available. All credit to the group and those involved at EMI. One lyric insight - Norman Clement Pilcher is a former British police officer. After a transfer from the Flying Squad to the Drug Squad in 1967, Norman Pilcher became notorious for the vigour with which he pinned possession of drugs charges on pop stars and hippies, and for the dubious methods employed in his undercover operations, which included paying off informers with drugs. In The Guardian Alan Travis wrote that it is widely believed that the lyric "Semolina Pilchard" in the Beatles' song "I Am the Walrus" refers to Pilcher. - Wikipedia. Thanks for uploading - Liked.
I'm crying- Brian Epstein, the Beatles manager had just died from a drug overdose.Tbe ending- everybody got one and everybody smoke pot! My favorite Beatles song!When The Anthology version was released in the 90s it was like getting a new Beatles record. I wore it out naturally
There are people who just love to make themselves feel important by attempting to over analyze Beatles' songs - This one is very simple...........Lennon loved to occasionally play with words and this was a prime example - fueled by a tad bit of LSD, maybe? 🤣🤣
Just read John Lennons books "In his own write" and "A spaniard in the works", written in 1965 and you're into his special sense of word humor. The Beatles were real artists who didn't care about conventions and traditional boundaries. They were far beyond their time as real explorers, conquerors and inventors.
