As Lennon himself said, the lyrics are nonsense. It was meant to mess with people who were pouring over Beatles songs trying to find hidden meanings in the lyrics.
Magical Mystery Tour was a made for TV movie by The Beatles. The soundtrack is great but the film is out there. If you ever see it you will quickly realize that there may have been some mind altering substance use before, during and after the fact! Lol
Part of what you hear as the song slowly fades was dramatic readings from Shakespeare's King Lear. It was recorded directly from an AM radio that Lennon was playing with and contains mostly fragments of lines from the broadcast. Other parts were sung by The Mike Sammes Singers, a professional 16-voice choir based in the UK. They added various lines such as, "oompah, oompah, stick it up your jumper", "everybody's got one" and a series of whooping noises. It must've been a fun atmosphere in the studio that night.
By the time this song came out the Beatles were proven hit makers and basically had complete control of the studio and what they could record. This song is John trolling the world. People were always looking for hidden meanings. John had already written a couple of celebrated books that were full of this kind of nonsense. So, since they couldn't stop people from looking for hidden meanings, he put this together. Overall it means nothing. Parts of it were inspired by LSD, some were inspired by warped rhymes he picked up as a child, some inspired by the Alice in Wonderland books. It has been reported that the 'eggman' he mentions was Animals frontman Eric Burdon and a sex act involving eggs. This song was also considered one of many instances where there are 'clues' about the alleged death of Paul McCartney. A crazy weird time but I do recall so well how my friends and I would push our ears against the record player to detect these alleged clues.
While the lyrics were surreal, and therefore didn't make logical or linear sense, Lennon also said that sometimes he himself doesn't know what his lyrics are about until years later, when he gains insight into their meaning. That may or may not apply to this song, but it doesn't matter to me. This song is so great because of the swirling strings, the otherworldly vibe, Lennon s incredibly acidic singing style, Ringo's propulsive drumming, the creepy sound of King Lear dialogue in the fading moments of the song, etc, etc. Only Lennon seemed to have the ability to create bizarre, avant garde songs that were still accessible, catchy, and created their own hard to describe unforgettable world of sound and mood. Other examples of this kind of Lennon magic include "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "A Day In The Life". Nobody else but Lennon could have created these masterpieces. And they were just a few of them. There were many more, to be sure.
Maybe because you don't understand the meaning of the song is because you were never meant to. The Beatles were yanking us. Back in the day, everyone tried to decipher and understand their songs because many times they were so deep. So... John Lennon decided to write a song about complete nonsense. Brilliant. The joke's on us!
John Lennon was into Lewis Carroll, thus "I am the walrus", from Carroll's "The Walrus and the Carpenter". As mentioned, Lennon was very much into word play. In a nutshell, there's no real meaning to the song. One thing he included in the song was "Semolina Pilchard". There was a Sgt. Pilcher with the police force who had a thing about raiding British Rock Star homes (including the Beatles) looking for drugs. Pilcher earned the name of "Head Hunting Cop".
If you search for literal sense in the lyrics, you'll only be frustrated. Think of it instead as something imagistic that provokes an emotional response. It's like surrealism.
It's just John Lennon messing about with words. The song doesn't mean anything except wordplay that sounds good. If you listen carefully, the tempo of the song mimics a siren.
The idea for this song is that it suppose to mean nothing. John Lennon, who wrote this song, learned that there were classes that were devoted to analyzing Beatle music so he wrote this just to basically to screw with peoples minds. Listen to the lyrics, they really mean nothing. So the people who tried to analyze this song just got punked by a dead guy...just like you.
I wouldn’t look too deeply into the lyrics. John liked to have fun with words and his fans' reactions- sort of like what you're doing. He was the original troller. I don't think he knew what he was writing half of the time. Just enjoy the ride.
I love the lyrics. They're nonsense, but English literature has a fine tradition of nonsense in poetry and prose, from the likes of Edward Lear, Lewis Carroll, Spike Milligan etc., all of whom John revered. It means whatever you want it to mean, so analysis is fruitless.
As a Beatles fan from 1965 on, man am I glad you reacted to this one ❤❤.!!!
One of my favs it's John having fun with nonsense words and for me Alice in wonderland??
As Lennon himself said, the lyrics are nonsense. It was meant to mess with people who were pouring over Beatles songs trying to find hidden meanings in the lyrics.
Magical Mystery Tour was a made for TV movie by The Beatles. The soundtrack is great but the film is out there. If you ever see it you will quickly realize that there may have been some mind altering substance use before, during and after the fact! Lol
Part of what you hear as the song slowly fades was dramatic readings from Shakespeare's King Lear. It was recorded directly from an AM radio that Lennon was playing with and contains mostly fragments of lines from the broadcast. Other parts were sung by The Mike Sammes Singers, a professional 16-voice choir based in the UK. They added various lines such as, "oompah, oompah, stick it up your jumper", "everybody's got one" and a series of whooping noises. It must've been a fun atmosphere in the studio that night.
By the time this song came out the Beatles were proven hit makers and basically had complete control of the studio and what they could record. This song is John trolling the world. People were always looking for hidden meanings. John had already written a couple of celebrated books that were full of this kind of nonsense. So, since they couldn't stop people from looking for hidden meanings, he put this together. Overall it means nothing.
Parts of it were inspired by LSD, some were inspired by warped rhymes he picked up as a child, some inspired by the Alice in Wonderland books. It has been reported that the 'eggman' he mentions was Animals frontman Eric Burdon and a sex act involving eggs.
This song was also considered one of many instances where there are 'clues' about the alleged death of Paul McCartney. A crazy weird time but I do recall so well how my friends and I would push our ears against the record player to detect these alleged clues.
While the lyrics were surreal, and therefore didn't make logical or linear sense, Lennon also said that sometimes he himself doesn't know what his lyrics are about until years later, when he gains insight into their meaning.
That may or may not apply to this song, but it doesn't matter to me. This song is so great because of the swirling strings, the otherworldly vibe, Lennon s incredibly acidic singing style, Ringo's propulsive drumming, the creepy sound of King Lear dialogue in the fading moments of the song, etc, etc.
Only Lennon seemed to have the ability to create bizarre, avant garde songs that were still accessible, catchy, and created their own hard to describe unforgettable world of sound and mood.
Other examples of this kind of Lennon magic include "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "A Day In The Life". Nobody else but Lennon could have created these masterpieces. And they were just a few of them. There were many more, to be sure.
Oh, an untimely death strangely prophetic
Maybe because you don't understand the meaning of the song is because you were never meant to. The Beatles were yanking us. Back in the day, everyone tried to decipher and understand their songs because many times they were so deep. So... John Lennon decided to write a song about complete nonsense. Brilliant.
The joke's on us!
John Lennon was into Lewis Carroll, thus "I am the walrus", from Carroll's "The Walrus and the Carpenter". As mentioned, Lennon was very much into word play. In a nutshell, there's no real meaning to the song. One thing he included in the song was "Semolina Pilchard". There was a Sgt. Pilcher with the police force who had a thing about raiding British Rock Star homes (including the Beatles) looking for drugs. Pilcher earned the name of "Head Hunting Cop".
To me the lyrics are like scat. It’s the feeling of the song and the musical composition that matters most.
If you search for literal sense in the lyrics, you'll only be frustrated. Think of it instead as something imagistic that provokes an emotional response. It's like surrealism.
It's just John Lennon messing about with words. The song doesn't mean anything except wordplay that sounds good. If you listen carefully, the tempo of the song mimics a siren.
Listen to the end again and again smoke pot yes really said it😊😊😊😊🎉🎉🎉❤❤❤❤
The idea for this song is that it suppose to mean nothing. John Lennon, who wrote this song, learned that there were classes that were devoted to analyzing Beatle music so he wrote this just to basically to screw with peoples minds. Listen to the lyrics, they really mean nothing. So the people who tried to analyze this song just got punked by a dead guy...just like you.
I wouldn’t look too deeply into the lyrics. John liked to have fun with words and his fans' reactions- sort of like what you're doing. He was the original troller. I don't think he knew what he was writing half of the time. Just enjoy the ride.
Don't overthink it.
I love the lyrics. They're nonsense, but English literature has a fine tradition of nonsense in poetry and prose, from the likes of Edward Lear, Lewis Carroll, Spike Milligan etc., all of whom John revered. It means whatever you want it to mean, so analysis is fruitless.
John's way of confusing People looking for hidden meaning in Beatle Songs Like you! And all the Rest of us! he said this,in an interview!
Like this if you are high enough to understand the lyrics.
Semolina Pilchard...Semolina is a kind of flour and a Pilchard is a fish. It's a complete nonsense song - on purpose