OK then.
Yeah - it rhymes, but it's pretty basic stuff. I think a 15 year old submitting this for a poetry contest wouldn't get past the first round.
Walrus and A Day In The life are much better - very evocative with great imagery.
Walrus isn't poetry. It's just playing with the words. Iamheasyouareheasyouaremeandwearealltogether... etc.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_the_Walrushttp://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=138John Lennon wrote this, but it was released as the B-side to "Hello Goodbye," which Paul McCartney wrote. This angered Lennon because he felt this was much better.
Lennon wrote most of this while tripping on acid. The up and down rhythm was inspired by a police siren he heard.
Lennon made sure the lyrics didn't make sense so he could confuse all the people trying to analyze his songs. He got the idea for the oblique lyrics when he received a letter from a student who explained that his English teacher was having the class analyze Beatles songs. Lennon answered the letter; his reply was sold as memorabilia at a 1992 auction. (thanks, Emery - San Jose, CA)
The voices at the end are from a BBC broadcast of the Shakespeare play King Lear.
The idea for the Walrus came from the poem The Walrus and The Carpenter from Alice in Wonderland. In his 1980 Playboy interview, Lennon said: "It never dawned on me that Lewis Carroll was commenting on the capitalist and social system. I never went into that bit about what he really meant, like people are doing with the Beatles' work. Later, I went back and looked at it and realized that the walrus was the bad guy in the story and the carpenter was the good guy. I thought, Oh, s--t, I picked the wrong guy. I should have said, 'I am the carpenter.' But that wouldn't have been the same, would it?"
When Lennon decided to write confusing lyrics, he asked his friend Pete Shotton for a nursery rhyme they used to sing. Shotton gave them this rhyme, which Lennon incorporated into the song:
"Yellow matter custard, green slop pie, all 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."
The song's opening line, "I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together" is based on the song "Marching To Pretoria," which contains the lyric, "I'm with you and you're with me and we are all together." (thanks, bertrand - Paris, France, for above 3)
The choir at the end sings "Oompah, oompah, stick it in your jumper" and "Everybody's got one, everybody's got one."
This song helped fuel the rumor that Paul McCartney was dead. It's quite a stretch, but theorists found these clues in the lyrics, none of which are substantiated:
"Waiting for the van to come" means the 3 remaining Beatles are waiting for a police van to come. "Pretty little policemen in a row" means policemen did show up.
"Goo goo ga joob" were the final words that Humpty Dumpty said before he fell off the wall and died.
During the fade, while the choir sings, a voice says "Bury Me" which is what Paul might have said after he died.
During the fade, we hear someone reciting the death scene from Shakespeare's play "King Lear." (thanks, Tommy - flower mound, TX)
The BBC banned this for the lines "pornographic priestess" and "let your knickers down."
Lennon got the line "Goo Goo Ga Joob" from the book Finnegan's Wake by James Joyce.
In The Beatles song "Glass Onion," Lennon sang, "The Walrus was Paul." He got a kick out of how people tried to interpret his lyrics and figure out who the Walrus was.
"Semolina Pilchard" was Detective Sergeant Norman Pilcher, head of the Scotland Yard Drugs Unit. He led the arrests of both John Lennon and Brian Jones et al, before being investigated himself for blackmail and bribery in the '70s. (thanks, Matt - London, England)
Eric Burdon (of Animals and War fame) stated in his biography that he is the Egg Man. It seems he told John Lennon of a sexual experience he was involved in where an egg played a major part. After that, John called him Egg Man.
ELO's song "Hello My Old Friend" has an identical form to this - almost the same tune and orchestration but different words. No wonder Jeff Lynne is sometimes referred to as the 6th Beatle.
In the Anthology version of this song, they experiment with 4 octaves in the intro. Also, just before Lennon says, "Sitting in an English garden waiting for the sun," Ringo does 2 hits on snare and floor tom before hitting crash. (thanks, Riley - Elmhurst, IL)
In an episode of The Simpsons, "The Bart Of War," airing May 18, 2003, Bart and Milhouse break into a secret room in the Flanders' household to discover that Ned is a Beatles fanatic. Bart takes a sip from a can of 40-year-old Beatles-themed novelty soda and quotes this song: "Yellow matter custard dripping from a dead dog's eye," while Milhouse takes a trip and sees various Beatles inspired hallucinations. (thanks, Ashley - Moncton, Canada)
Styx covered this song in 2004. They made a music video for it with a cameo from Billy Bob Thornton. (thanks, Caitlyn - Farmington Hills, MI)
Home
Calendar
Search
Register
Login
real01
Female
Male
Logged
