Playboy Interview 1980
Page 19
John: It's from "The Walrus and
the Carpenter." "Alice in Wonderland." To me, it was a beautiful
poem. 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, shit, I picked the wrong guy. I should have said,
"I am the carpenter." But that wouldn't have been the same, would it?
[Singing] "I am the carpenter..."
Playboy: How about "She Came in Through the Bathroom Window?"
John: That was written by Paul when we were in New York forming Apple, and he
first met Linda. Maybe she's the one who came in the window. She must have. I
don't know. Somebody came in the window.
Playboy: "I Feel Fine."
John: That's me, including the guitar lick with the first feedback ever
recorded. I defy anybody to find an earlier record - unless it is some old blues
record from the Twenties - with feedback on it.
Playboy: "When I'm Sixty-Four."
John: Paul completely. I would never even dream of writing a song like that.
There are some areas I never think about and that is one of them.
Playboy: "A Day in the Life."
John: Just as it sounds: I was reading the paper one day and I noticed two
stories. One was the Guinness heir who killed himself in a car. That was the
main headline story. He died in London in a car crash. On the next page was a
story about 4000 holes in Blackburn, Lancashire. In the streets, that is. They
were going to fill them all. Paul's contribution was the beautiful little lick
in the song "I'd love to turn you on." I had the bulk of the song and
the words, but he contributed this little lick floating around in his head that
he couldn't use for anything. I thought it was a damn good piece of work.
Playboy: May we continue with some of the ones that seem more personal and see
what reminiscences they inspire?
John: Reminisce away.
Playboy: For no reason whatsoever, let's start with "I Wanna Be Your
Man."
John: Paul and I finished that one off for the Stones. We were taken down by
Brian to meet them at the club where they were playing in Richmond. They wanted
a song and we went to see what kind of stuff they did. Paul had this bit of a
song and we played it roughly for them and they said, "Yeah, OK, that's our
style." But it was only really a lick, so Paul and I went off in the corner
of the room and finished the song off while they were all sitting there,
talking. We came back and Mick and Keith said, "Jesus, look at that. They
just went over there and wrote it." You know, right in front of their eyes.
We gave it to them. It was a throwaway. Ringo sang it for us and the Stones did
their version. It shows how much importance we put on them. We weren't going to
give them anything great, right? That was the Stones' first record. Anyway, Mick
and Keith said, "If they can write a song so easily, we should try
it." They say it inspired them to start writing together.
Playboy: How about "Strawberry FieldsForever?"
John: Strawberry Fields is a real place. After I stopped living at Penny Lane, I
moved in with my auntie who lived in the suburbs in a nice semidetached place
with a small garden and doctors and lawyers and that ilk living around - - not
the poor slummy kind of image that was projected in all the Beatles stories. In
the class system, it was about half a class higher than Paul, George and Ringo,
who lived in government-subsidized housing. We owned our house and had a garden.
They didn't have anything like that. Near that home was Strawberry Fields, a
house near a boys' reformatory where I used to go to garden parties as a kid
with my friends Nigel and Pete. We would go there and hang out and sell lemonade
bottles for a penny. We always had fun at Strawberry Fields. So that's where I
got the name. But I used it as an image. Strawberry Fields forever.
Playboy: And the lyrics, for instance: "Living is easy... "
John: [Singing] "With eyes closed. Misunderstanding all you see." It
still goes, doesn't it? Aren't I saying exactly the same thing now? The
awareness apparently trying to be expressed is - let's say in one way I was
always hip. I was hip in kindergarten. I was different from the others. I was
different all my life. The second verse goes, "No one I think is in my
tree." Well, I was too shy and self-doubting. Nobody seems to be as hip as
me is what I was saying. Therefore, I must be crazy or a genius - "I mean
it must be high or low," the next line. There was something wrong with me,
I thought, because I seemed to see things other people didn't see. I thought I
was crazy or an egomaniac for claiming to see things other people didn't see. As
a child, I would say, "But this is going on!" and everybody would look
at me as if I was crazy. I always was so psychic or intuitive or poetic or
whatever you want to call it, that I was always seeing things in a hallucinatory
way. It was scary as a child, because there was nobody to relate to. Neither my
auntie nor my friends nor anybody could ever see what I did. It was very, very
scary and the only contact I had was reading about an Oscar Wilde or a Dylan
Thomas or a Vincent van Gogh - all those books that my auntie had that talked
about their suffering because of their visions. Because of what they saw, they
were tortured by society for trying to express what they were. I saw loneliness.
Playboy: Were you able to find others to share your visions with?