The album’s deliriously decorated jacket featured marijuana plants in the garden behind which the Beatles stood. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in the late spring of 1967, fans and critics alike were quick to find references to drugs throughout the LP. When the Beatles released their album Sgt. In the exclusive excerpt below, Kasser applies the techniques of linguistic analysis to better understand the meaning of the song, as well as the life and mind of John Lennon. Unless you literally have two tusks and some blubber, quoting this lyric will lead to a long winded discussion and kill your dinner party's buzz.I n his recent book, Lucy in the Mind of Lennon (Oxford University Press), Psychologist Tim Kasser (Knox College) utilizes the methods of psychological science to explore John Lennon’s life through one of Lennon’s most famous and controversial songs: Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds. If you were to drop this quote at a dinner party, would you get an in-unison 'awww' or would everyone roll their eyes and never invite you back? Here it is, on a scale of 1-10. Learn more than you ever wanted to know about 'I Am the Walrus' in this essay by musicologist Alan Pollack.Or it's just sandwiched between 'Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds' and 'Strawberry Fields' on your Beatles road trip playlist. This is a song whose lyrics you end up thinking about at the end of a dark night of the soul. Long story short, 'I Am the Walrus' is a very weird song. He is the constant in this 'curious and curiouser' equation of a song.īut is John the walrus or the egg man? We'll likely never know, and music journalists, fans, and academics will continue to debate this important question until the end of time. And the word salad of 'I Am the Walrus' is the product of illegal substances, Alice in Wonderland, and John Lennon's vivid imagination.īut between lines about fishwives, getting sunburnt from rain in England, and references to Edgar Allan Poe, Lewis Carroll, and the Hare Krishna religion, there is the ol' faithful walrus. One of The Beatles' super secret talents was turning the strangest and seemingly inane lyrics into amazing pop rock songs. This line was sung by the Beatles in the song 'I Am the Walrus,' written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, from the album Magical Mystery Tour (1967). Dreams Society Happy Knowledge Imagination Art The Beatles Music Context

John lennon between the lines