Paul confirmed this in Barry Miles’ 1997 book: ‘It’s actually an ode to pot, like someone else might write an ode to chocolate or claret. If anyone asks me for real advice, I would say stay straight. But in a stressful world, it really is one of the best tranquilizer drugs.’
Tomorrow Never Knows
This is their most psychedelic song, their most Indian, and so far their most influential in that it had an effect on millions of young people in America and Europe.
The title never appears in the song. It was one of Ringo’s blurted-out remarks that John was forever writing down (other Ringo remarks, never used in a song, included ‘slight bread’ for sliced bread and ‘safely beds’ for safe in bed).
The first line makes it clear it is about drugs: ‘Turn off your mind and float downstream’. And it is about the use of drugs to create, supposedly, a religious experience. But what the song is really about is religion and the Indian Buddhist concepts of transcendentalism and reincarnation, the need to subdue the ego and enter the void. Under LSD, people often begin to think life is all an illusion. Several influential thinkers of the time experimented with the drug, including Aldous Huxley.
Many of the references are from the Tibetan Book of the Dead. In a letter to Dr Lester Grinspoon of Harvard Medical School, written in 1979, John revealed that he had come across the Tibetan Book of the Dead after reading about it in Timothy Leary’s The Psychedelic Experience. Leary was the American high priest of LSD and his book was a treatise on the good he thought it could do, setting people free from their minds and their bodies so that they wouldn’t end up as drones for capitalist, war-mongering governments that wanted them to bomb innocent civilians with napalm in Vietnam.
The song became a feature of many stoned parties of idealistic, right-on, young men and women in the middle sixties.
The music is of course marvellous, and, yes, mind-blowing. As well as Indian instruments, like sitar and tambura, it features many specially devised and original sound effects swirling and whooshing and wailing. A lot of these they brought in from home after experimenting with backwards loops on their tape machines. John wanted it to sound like a group of chanting Tibetan monks, on the top of a mountain, and for him to be like a faint Dalai Lama in the distance–which George Martin and engineer Geoff Merrick, knowing their duties, managed to create.
However the final three lines of the lyric suggest another way of getting through life, without necessarily giving up your mind and body and entering the void–and that is to ‘play the game Existence to the end’. Or the beginning of the beginning…
In an interview with Rolling Stone journalist Jonathan Cott, John admitted that he didn’t know what he was trying to say in ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’: ‘You just find out later. It’s really like abstract art. When you have to think about it to write it, it just means you’ve been laboured at it. But when you just say it, man, it’s a continuous flow. The people who analyse the songs–good on ’em–I don’t mind what they do with them.’
The manuscript, in John’s hand, is an early version with phrases not used in the final recording, such as ‘all the colours of the earth you’ll hear’ and ‘there’s no dying’.
It was remarkable final track from a remarkable album. They’d travelled so far, it’s hard to believe that only four years had passed since ‘Love Me Do’. In lyrics and sounds, they had progressed so far, becoming more complex and profound, yet still with a mass audience, selling millions of records round the world. While educating themselves they had educated their audience.
Turn off your mind relax and float down stream
It is not dying, it is not dying
Lay down all thought, surrender to the void,
It is shining, it is shining.
That you may see the meaning of within
It is being, it is being
That love is all and love is everyone
It is knowing, it is knowing
That ignorance and hate may mourn the dead
It is believing, it is believing
But listen to the colour of your dreams
It is not living, it is not living
Or play the game Existence to the end
Of the beginning, of the beginning…
‘Tomorrow Never Knows’, the last track on Revolver, 1966, an extensive early manuscript in John’s hand. The title never appears in the lyrics.
8
STRAWBERRY FIELDS FOREVER
February 1967
I went to see Brian Epstein on 26 January 1967, at his Belgravia home, to discuss my plan for a biography of the Beatles, an idea I had first put to Paul the previous month. Paul said I would have to see Brian, but he would help me write a suitable letter. Brian cancelled several times, for reasons I never knew until later.
I remember how elegant and sophisticated he was; so well-dressed, well-spoken, a man of the world. Yet at the time he was just thirty-two–two years older than me. I remember noticing two oil paintings on the wall by L.S. Lowry. But what I remember most about that meeting was ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’.
He had an acetate recording of it–a sort of proof–as the record was not officially released till 17 February. Sitting back in an armchair, arms folded with fatherly pride, he waited as I listened to it.
I was stunned. Could this be the Beatles? My first thought was Stockhausen–not that I knew much about him or his music. The sounds were so avant-garde, futuristic, experimental, multi-layered that it was impossible to take in at one go, least of all the words, so I got him to play it again.
When it finished, I asked what the title meant–and he didn’t know. I asked what the lyrics meant–and he didn’t know that either. He had clearly not been involved in its production, and seemed slightly embarrassed by his ignorance; after all, he was their personal manager, responsible for expertly organizing their career since 1961.
He then played the other side: ‘Penny Lane’. That was much easier to understand and enjoy, and as a Liverpudlian he was familiar with most places.
Afterwards he put the acetate away, saying he could not be too careful. One had already been stolen, for the recording would be worth lot of money to the pirate radio stations. I didn’t believe him–it seemed far-fetched that a pirate station would pay big money, just to get the record a few days ahead of their rivals. I later discovered that one theft of an acetate had been his fault. He had brought home some young man, a sailor–butch not gay–given him drinks and pills and tried to get him into bed. The sailor had then beaten Brian up and left–taking the acetate with him. Overwhelmed by humiliation and guilt, Brian then took more pills and went into a deep depression, cancelling everything for a few days–including two appointments with me–until he could face the world. The Beatles were aware that he was gay, but they knew none of the details of his personal life.
During that first meeting, Brian suggested a clause in the contract neither I nor my agent had mentioned. He said he would give no access to the Beatles to any other writer for two years after my book came out. It came out in October 1968; two years later, in 1970, the Beatles had disbanded. So mine was to be the one and only authorized biography of the Beatles, though I had no idea of it at the time. How lucky was that?
Although I was astounded by ‘Strawberry Fields’, I rather wondered what some of the fans would make of it. It was yet another tremendous leap forward for the Beatles, when they’d already made so many in the last two years. How fortunate I would be–if the book came to pass, if we didn’t all fall out, if the project didn’t get cancelled–to witness firsthand the Beatles at home and in the studio, making more music like this, making yet further progress.
Strawberry Fields Forever
John wrote the song in Spain in September 1966, while filming How I Won the War. Once the touring had stopped, and the public performances were coming to an end, each of them was free to do their own thing until they assembled together in the studio for the next record.
They had been thinking
of a concept album about their childhood and Liverpool, as the unused verses of ‘In My Life’ indicated, but it was never completed.
Now, far from home, stuck out in Almeria, John began thinking back to his childhood when he used to visit the nearby Salvation Army home, Strawberry Field (without the s), a gothic mansion with a large overgrown garden. He loved going to the annual fête or breaking in and playing there with his friends Pete Shotton and Ivan Vaughan, climbing the trees, imagining he was in an Alice in Wonderland magic world. ‘As soon as we could hear the Salvation Army band playing,’ so his Aunt Mimi told me, ‘John would jump up and down shouting, “Mimi, come on, we’re going to be late.” ’
His random childhood memories got mixed up and fused with drug-related images and influences–tune in, take you down, nothing is real. John was always conscious of the feelings of displacement and disorientation he had experienced as a child–or told himself he had. He was also aware of his own habit of thinking or saying one thing, then the next moment the opposite, believing it each time. It’s getting hard, but it all works out, it doesn’t matter much, it’s all wrong, I think I know, yes, I think I disagree. Two of the best lines are: ‘Nothing is real and nothing to get hung about’ and ‘Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see.’
The earliest known demo of the sung, done by John on a tape recorder in Almeria, had no chorus and only one verse which began, ‘There’s no one on my wavelength, I mean it’s either too high or too low.’ Wavelength was later changed to tree.
John and George in the Apple studio, 1969.
In 1980, he explained that he had felt different all his life, which is what he was saying with the phrase ‘No one I think is in my tree’. At the same time he felt he was too shy and self-doubting–or a genius. ‘I mean it must be high or low.’ The phrase ‘nothing to get hung about’ suggests not having any hang-ups, but also hanging from a tree possibly, remembering Aunt Mimi telling him not to climb over the wall and play there, and John replying, ‘They can’t hang you for it.’
The song sums up everything about the Beatles at this stage: introspection, disorientation, self-doubt, all wrapped up in beautiful, original, multi-layered, disturbing music. Even if you take away the musical sounds and trimmings, it is still a fine song.
John always considered it one of his best–along with ‘I Am The Walrus’, ‘Help!’, ‘In My Life’ and ‘Across The Universe’. He reckoned the lyrics to all of those were pretty good. ‘The best lyrics stand alone. They don’t have to have a melody.’ John always thought he was a poet. ‘Except I am not educated.’
‘Strawberry Fields’ became the most analysed of all the Beatles songs they had done so far, with the experts attempting to unravel how every sound was made–identifying the trumpets and cellos, maracas and slide guitar, explaining the electronic wizardry and background sounds. It took the Beatles an unprecedented amount of time–fifty-five recording hours in all, spread over five weeks–to get it to their satisfaction: a sign of their power but also their perseverance.
The music press were a bit confused by it. In the New Musical Express on 11 February 1967, Derek Johnson wrote that it was ‘certainly the most unusual and way out single the Beatles have yet produced–both in lyrical content and scoring. I don’t really know what to make of it.’ But he did find it ‘completely fascinating’ and more spellbinding every time he played it.
‘Strawberry Fields’ was their first single since ‘Please Please Me’ in January 1963 not to go straight to number 1 in the UK. It got stuck at number 2–kept out of the top spot by Engelbert Humperdinck’s ‘Release Me’. Ringo said he was relieved–it took away the pressure.
The manuscript, which I believe is the only copy that has ever turned up, given to me by John, has only twelve lines, several of them slightly different from the final version, but you can see his thought process, writing one thing, then commenting on it in his mind, as if thinking, er, I disagree.
I can’t quite make out what that scribbled-out first line was originally, before he inserts ‘I think in my tree’. But it does look like that line he had sung on the tape–‘There’s no one on my wavelength’. At this stage, in these lines, ‘Strawberry Fields’ is not mentioned.
‘Strawberry Fields’ single, January 1967, early version written by John on Lufthansa airline notepaper, with no reference to Strawberry Fields.
Let me take you down
’Cos I’m going to Strawberry Fields
Nothing is real
And nothing to get hung about
Strawberry Fields forever
Living is easy with eyes closed
Misunderstanding all you see
It’s getting hard to be someone
But it all works out
It doesn’t matter much to me
No one I think is in my tree
I mean it must be high or low
That is you know you can’t tune it
But it’s all right
That is I think it’s not too bad
Always, no, sometimes, think it’s me
But you know I know when it’s a dream
I think I know I mean a ‘Yes’
But it’s all wrong
That is I think I disagree
Let me take you down
’Cos I’m going to Strawberry Fields
Nothing is real
And nothing to get hung about
Strawberry Fields forever
Penny Lane
The other side of the ‘Strawberry Fields’ single–and the other side of the Beatles. This is Paul, writing at his piano in his music room in his new house, taking the same subject of childhood memories, but treating it openly, straightforwardly, cheekily, cheerfully, cleverly–in fact very like Paul himself. No hang-ups here–his memories are fun: blue suburban skies, nice images, nice people.
The musical arrangement is just as clever and rich as ‘Strawberry Fields’, though not as confusing, with the use of top-class trumpets, flutes, and oboes, along with bells and other appropriate noises.
John’s preoccupation with loss, anger and disorientation in his childhood is often put down to the death of his mother when he was fifteen, but Paul also lost his mother, equally tragically, at the age of fourteen–and yet I have never heard him say that it made him angry, depressed, screwed up, or affected his outlook on life and his subsequent behaviour.
In the original version of ‘In My Life’ (page 131), written in John’s hand, there are some unused verses which list places remembered, including Penny Lane. Both John and Paul had Penny Lane in their life–John living very near it and Paul singing in the local church choir at St Barnabas. It was also where Paul’s dad took him and brother Michael to have their hair cut.
Penny Lane is not a lane, as such. ‘Lane’ conjures up the image of a quiet country byway, which it originally was, but the Liverpool version today is a busy, rather featureless thoroughfare. The name is used to refer to the immediate neighbourhood, as well as the road itself. In reality, the only attractive thing about it is the name–which I am sure appealed to Paul. It sounds made-up, like a street in a children’s picture story, and that is how the lyrics read; it becomes a mythical place where the sun always shines with stock characters like a barber, a fireman, a poppy seller. The name Strawberry Fields is equally sylvan and picture-bookish. Weren’t they lucky, having real but fictional-sounding places from their childhood.
The places mentioned in Penny Lane are on the whole genuine–there was a barber, a fire station, a roundabout–but the little additions, like the fireman with an hourglass in his pocket, sound more surreal. We also have pouring rain with blue skies, which sounds rather unlikely. So Paul could do opposites as well as John. And the barber did not have photographs of every head ‘he’s had the pleasure to know’–but photos of different hairstyles. Lyrical licence.
There are a couple of sexual innuendos that were put in, so Paul said, to amuse the smuttier Liverpool teenagers. ‘Finger pie’ was a
local term, referring to the female genitalia area, and there is slight smirk around the word ‘machine’ and keeping it clean. There is also a suggestion that the fireman has some dodgy habits. All good clean schoolboy fun.
The narrative structure of the lyrics is lightly done. There is a slight development, in that we go back to the barber, fireman and the banker, but seen from an outside observer, telling us about it in the third person. There is no I, no first-person memories. ‘Meanwhile back’ is an amusing device, making it clear it is a story, a fictional, stylized childhood place. The pretty nurse selling poppies feels she is in a play–she is anyway. He could have gone on to suggest we are all in a play, as John and George might have done, but avoided it.
In the USA, where there is no tradition of artificial poppies being sold to commemorate the 1918 Armistice, there was some consternation when fans misheard the words and wondered why the nurse was selling puppies from a tray.
The manuscript of ‘Penny Lane’ has turned up in several bits and pieces, now owned by different collectors. In both, Paul has written ‘In Penny Lane’ but dropped the ‘In’ when he came to sing it. They contain a few odd lines never used, such as one about the barber: ‘It was easy not to go–he was very slow’. A good line, so it’s surprising it wasn’t used.
Sheet music for ‘Penny Lane’, on the reverse of ‘Strawberry Fields’ single, January 1967.
Penny Lane–there is a barber showing photographs
Of every head he’s had the pleasure to know
And all the people that come and go
Stop and say hello
The Beatles Lyrics Page 18