mixed together with a dead dog’s eye, Slap it on a butty, ten foot thick, Then wash it all down with a cup of cold sick’.
John proceeded to invent some ludicrous images (‘semolina pilchards, elementary penguins’) and nonsense words (‘texpert, crabalocker’), before adding some opening lines he’d written down during an acid trip. He then strung these together with the threeunfinished songs he’d already shown Hunter Davies. “Let the fuckers work that one out”, he apparently said to Shotton when he’d finished. Asked by Playboy to explain ‘Walrus’ some 13 years later, he remarked that he thought Dylan got away with murder at times and that he’d decided “I can write this crap too.”
The only serious part of the lyric, apparently, was the opening line with its vision of the unity behind all things.
The ‘elementary penguin’ which chanted ‘Hare Krishna’ was John having a dig at Allen Ginsberg who, at the time, was chanting the Hare Krishna mantra at public events. The walrus itself came from Lewis Carroll’s poem ‘The Walrus and the Carpenter’.
The ‘eggman’ was supposedly a reference to Animals’ vocalist Eric Burdon who had an unusual practice of breaking eggs over his female conquests while making love and became known among his musical colleagues as the ‘egg man’. Marianne Faithfull believes that ‘semolina pilchard’ was a reference to Det. Sgt. Norman Pilcher, the Metropolitan police officer who made a name for himself by targeting pop stars for drug possession.
The recording of ‘I Am The Walrus’ began on September 5. It lasted on and off throughout the month because George Martin was trying to find an equivalent to the flow of images and word play in the lyrics by using violins, cellos, horns, clarinet and a 16-voice choir, in addition to the Beatles themselves. On September 29, some lines from Shakespeare (King Lear Act IV Scene VI) were fed into the song from a BBC broadcast.
LADY MADONNA
‘Lady Madonna’ was the first single to show that the way forward for the Beatles now lay in returning to the basic rock’n’roll of their early days. After Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and Magical Mystery Tour , it was assumed that musical progression would mean more complexity, but the Beatles again defied expectations.
The main riff was taken from Johnny Parker’s piano playing on the instrumental ‘Bad Penny Blues’, a 1956 hit in Britain for jazz trumpeter Humphrey Lyttelton and his band, that had been produced by George Martin. “We asked George how they got the sound on ‘Bad Penny Blues’,” said Ringo. “George told us that they used brushes. So I used brushes and we did a track with just brushes and piano and then we decided we needed an off-beat, so we put an off-beat in.” Lyttelton didn’t mind at all, as Parker had taken the riff from Dan Burley anyway. “You can’t copyright a rhythm and rhythm was all that they had borrowed,” he said. “I was very complimented. Although none of theBeatles cared for traditional jazz, they all knew and liked ‘Bad Penny Blues’ because it was a bluesy, skiffley thing rather than a trad exercise.” (Dan Burley and His Skiffle Boys, formed in 1946, was the source of the description ‘skiffle music’ first applied to the folk-blues-country style of Lonnie Donegan in Britain during the early 1950s.)
The song was intended by Paul to be a celebration of motherhood which started with an image of the Virgin Mary but then moved on to consider all mothers. “How do they do it?”, he asked when interviewed by Musician in 1986. “Baby at your breast – how do they get the time to feed them? Where do they get the money? How do you do this thing that women do?”
The singer Richie Havens remembered being with Paul in a Greenwich Village club when a girl came up to him and asked whether ‘Lady Madonna’ had been written about America. “No,” said Paul. “I was looking through this African magazine
John proceeded to invent some ludicrous images (‘semolina pilchards, elementary penguins’) and nonsense words (‘texpert, crabalocker’), before adding some opening lines he’d written down during an acid trip. He then strung these together with the threeunfinished songs he’d already shown Hunter Davies. “Let the fuckers work that one out”, he apparently said to Shotton when he’d finished. Asked by Playboy to explain ‘Walrus’ some 13 years later, he remarked that he thought Dylan got away with murder at times and that he’d decided “I can write this crap too.”
The only serious part of the lyric, apparently, was the opening line with its vision of the unity behind all things.
The ‘elementary penguin’ which chanted ‘Hare Krishna’ was John having a dig at Allen Ginsberg who, at the time, was chanting the Hare Krishna mantra at public events. The walrus itself came from Lewis Carroll’s poem ‘The Walrus and the Carpenter’.
The ‘eggman’ was supposedly a reference to Animals’ vocalist Eric Burdon who had an unusual practice of breaking eggs over his female conquests while making love and became known among his musical colleagues as the ‘egg man’. Marianne Faithfull believes that ‘semolina pilchard’ was a reference to Det. Sgt. Norman Pilcher, the Metropolitan police officer who made a name for himself by targeting pop stars for drug possession.
The recording of ‘I Am The Walrus’ began on September 5. It lasted on and off throughout the month because George Martin was trying to find an equivalent to the flow of images and word play in the lyrics by using violins, cellos, horns, clarinet and a 16-voice choir, in addition to the Beatles themselves. On September 29, some lines from Shakespeare (King Lear Act IV Scene VI) were fed into the song from a BBC broadcast.
LADY MADONNA
‘Lady Madonna’ was the first single to show that the way forward for the Beatles now lay in returning to the basic rock’n’roll of their early days. After Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and Magical Mystery Tour , it was assumed that musical progression would mean more complexity, but the Beatles again defied expectations.
The main riff was taken from Johnny Parker’s piano playing on the instrumental ‘Bad Penny Blues’, a 1956 hit in Britain for jazz trumpeter Humphrey Lyttelton and his band, that had been produced by George Martin. “We asked George how they got the sound on ‘Bad Penny Blues’,” said Ringo. “George told us that they used brushes. So I used brushes and we did a track with just brushes and piano and then we decided we needed an off-beat, so we put an off-beat in.” Lyttelton didn’t mind at all, as Parker had taken the riff from Dan Burley anyway. “You can’t copyright a rhythm and rhythm was all that they had borrowed,” he said. “I was very complimented. Although none of theBeatles cared for traditional jazz, they all knew and liked ‘Bad Penny Blues’ because it was a bluesy, skiffley thing rather than a trad exercise.” (Dan Burley and His Skiffle Boys, formed in 1946, was the source of the description ‘skiffle music’ first applied to the folk-blues-country style of Lonnie Donegan in Britain during the early 1950s.)
The song was intended by Paul to be a celebration of motherhood which started with an image of the Virgin Mary but then moved on to consider all mothers. “How do they do it?”, he asked when interviewed by Musician in 1986. “Baby at your breast – how do they get the time to feed them? Where do they get the money? How do you do this thing that women do?”
The singer Richie Havens remembered being with Paul in a Greenwich Village club when a girl came up to him and asked whether ‘Lady Madonna’ had been written about America. “No,” said Paul. “I was looking through this African magazine
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