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The lyrics
'Walrus' is just saying a dream - the words don't mean a lot. People draw so many conclusions and it's ridiculous... What does it really mean, 'I am the eggman'? It could have been the pudding basin for all I care. It's not that serious.
Anthology
The song's title came from Lewis Carroll's poem The Walrus And The Carpenter, from the book Through The Looking Glass. Lennon later realised with dismay that he'd identified with the villain of the piece.
It never dawned on me that Lewis Carroll was commenting on the capitalist 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 realised 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?
All We Are Saying, David Sheff
The eggman of the chorus, while possibly a reference to Carroll's Humpty Dumpty, was more likely The Animals' lead singer Eric Burdon following a particularly notable incident recounted to Lennon at a London party.
It may have been one of my more dubious distinctions, but I was the Eggman - or, as some of my pals called me, 'Eggs'.The nickname stuck after a wild experience I'd had at the time with a Jamaican girlfriend called Sylvia. I was up early one morning cooking breakfast, naked except for my socks, and she slid up beside me and slipped an amyl nitrate capsule under my nose. As the fumes set my brain alight and I slid to the kitchen floor, she reached to the counter and grabbed an egg, which she cracked into the pit of my belly. The white and yellow of the egg ran down my naked front and Sylvia slipped my egg-bathed cock into her mouth and began to show me one Jamaican trick after another. I shared the story with John at a party at a Mayfair flat one night with a handful of blondes and a little Asian girl.
'Go on, go get it, Eggman,' Lennon laughed over the little round glasses perched on the end of his hook-like nose as we tried the all-too-willing girls on for size.
Eric Burdon with J Marshall Craig
I Am The Walrus contained words ("crabalocker", "texpert", the chorus refrain "goo goo g'joob") coined by Lennon. As such, it owed more to his books In His Own Write and A Spaniard In The Works than anything The Beatles had previously recorded.
According to Lennon's childhood friend Pete Shotton, he was further inspired to turn the song into a nonsense tour-de-force after receiving a letter from Stephen Bayley, a pupil at his old primary school Quarry Bank. The letter revealed that a teacher was having his class analyse Beatles lyrics.
Lennon asked Shotton to remind him of a playground rhyme they'd known from childhood:
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.
This became "Yellow matter custard, dripping from a dead dog's eye", followed by a stream of mostly meaningless nonsense. "Let the fuckers work that one out," was his response to Shotton when he'd finished.
'Semolina pilchard', according to Marianne Faithfull, was a reference to Detective Sergeant Norman Pilcher, the notoriously anti-drug zealot who made it his mission to bust people from the music world for possession of illegal substances. Elsewhere, the beat poet Allen Ginsberg made an oblique appearance:
I'd seen Allen Ginsberg and some other people who liked Dylan and Jesus go on about Hare Krishna. It was Ginsberg, in particular, I was referring to. The words 'Elementary penguin' meant that it's naive to just go around chanting Hare Krishna or putting all your faith in one idol.
All We Are Saying, David Sheff
The BBC banned the song for the lines "pornographic priestess" and "let your knickers down". As Hunter Davies recorded, the lines were particularly admired by George Harrison.
Why can't you have people fucking as well? It's going on everywhere in the world, all the time. So why can't you mention it? It's just a word, made up by people... It doesn't mean a thing, so why can't we use it in a song? We will eventually. We haven't started yet.
The Beatles, Hunter Davies
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Related articles:
- Recording, mixing, editing: I Am The Walrus, Your Mother Should Know
- Recording, mixing: I Am The Walrus
- Mixing, editing: Hello, Goodbye, I Am The Walrus, Your Mother Should Know, Magical Mystery Tour
- Recording, mixing: I Am The Walrus, The Fool On The Hill, Blue Jay Way
- Hunter Davies' biography of The Beatles is published
Simply fantastic, with Lewis Carrol words and precise metrics. Even in Brazil we consider this song and lyric as absolutely brilliant
even in Brazil?
In my view, it is the very best of all Beatles' songs. Most creative, both for the music and the words, and still very fresh... it really stands the test of time.
Many of my friends are all avid John Lennon fans. However most of my favorite Beatle songs turn out to be Paul McCartney's. I have always considered I Am the Walrus to be a minor masterpiece and one of several Beatle songs at the height of their creativity.
A minor masterpiece? Weird inaccurate description.
There are expressions here that have some relation to reality. Selmelina Pilchard is liverpool slang for sardine. Yellow matter custard is a reference to Eric Burdon's penchant for breaking eggs on the torsos of female groupies. At least that is the story I have heard. This song is a major masterpiece not a minor masterpiece because there is nothing else quite like it lyrically and musically. Listening to it now Walrus still amazes me with its audicity.
Semolina is a wheat derivative used to make pasta and cereal. Pilchards are, indeed, sardines. The 'yellow matter custard' derives as the article notes - John getting Pete Shotton to recall an old grotesque schoolyard rhyme. The use of 'eggman' is also likely to have come about as the article above professes. But I do agree - "I Am The Walrus" is simply a masterpisece in every sense. Strangely enough it really isn't that far removed in the evolutionary scale from 'Revolution 9' which most people, except me, hate.
Superb Lennon Song, great sounding song and one his most fantastic vocals. Thanks also to the Abbey Road engineer for recording his vocal on a cheap microphone done on purpose.
you forgot to say that ringo chanted as well, it says in beatles monthly/weekly thing, my guitar teacher told me.
Smoke pot, smoke pot! Everybody smoke pot! Is that what they are saying at the end?
That was the rumour in the 1960s, but I'm pretty sure it's "Got one, got one, everybody's got one". I also once read that some people thought it was "Everybody fuck off", which clearly isn't the case!
With today's modern CDs the ability to hear more clearly what resides in the soundtrack is much better. Even though a good vinyl copy has a warmth that is lacking in CDs, vinyl has a tendency to wear until the sound muddies. Even after muliple pressings of an album the 1000th copy isn't quite as pristine as the 1st. I have a lot of Beatles' vinyl in my collection. Some of the sound quality in songs like this are fairly atrocious and, yes, one could think that the singers are possibly maybe perhaps saying --- something else.
I read that "semolina pilchard" was a reference to Detective Sgt. Norman Pilcher, the junkie-buster whose crossed path with The Beatles' a few times.
It may have been, but John wasn't busted until October 1968 - or about a year after this song. Semolina is a wheat used for pasta and cereals - in John's case - pudding.
No Beatle crossed Norman Pilcher's path in 1967 when Walrus was released.
His phony drug planting scheme originally nailed several pop stars including two Beatles (in 1968 & 1969).
He was eventually caught smuggling drugs into the U.K. and was sentenced to a term in prison.
Thanks---the sardine explanation was a lot more rational.
Also--- doesn't "see how they run like pigs from a gun" stike an almost Pink Floyd-esque chord?
Those lyrics are somewhere on the fine line between brilliant lyricism and acid nonsense.
Heard that John wrote this song because he was amused by the fact that school teachers in Britain were analyzing his songs in class, as if they were literature. True?
Yes. Have a look at page two of the article.
Where's that video from? It's not the original from Magical Mystery Tour.
Yes it is. I saw the original broadcast.
I, too, have seen the original broadcast. It is what was shown. John with that huge flower put me on the floor the first time I saw it.
Do you think that the original mono mix of I Am the Walrus made on September 29 1967 has an extra bar before "Yellow Matter Custard" part?
If I do recall, the extra bar is only found on the U.S. single 45. (B side of Hello Goodbye) And if I'm not mistaken, the extra bar of music was because John missed his cue to come back in with his vocals.
I wish the extra music stroke on I Am The Walrus at 1:34 was mixed for true stereo so that we can hear the orchestra more clearly.
Listen to the track on the "Love" album. Amazing to hear that section in true stereo at last.
Who played the Mellotron in the song? It's not mentioned at the top? Was it left out of the final mix?
I think John played the Mellotron and no it was never left out in the final mix.
As there is no Mellotron audible in the final mix (just electric piano and the cellos), so it is fair to say that it's "left out". I've owned several Mellotrons and worked on the one John used at home; I do know them VERY well.
Hi Brian. Thanks for the message (and I loved your book too). I didn't realise you've used John's Mellotron - now I'm incredibly jealous!
one of the beatles finest b-sides that could have been an a-side or equal.i am the walrus is an excellent song just like revolution, rain , and don't let me down, who went out as a b-side.
Neither Paul, George or Ringo sang back-up vocals.
You're absolutely right. I'm not sure why I listed them as having done so. I've corrected it now.
I can't believe this was a B-side to Hello, Goodbye...I mean I can't think of two songs more different in style, although i've never really heard a song like Walrus, so what else could go with this? This was Lennon at his best!
Totally agree. "Hello, Goodbye" is not a bad song but "Walrus" is musically much more valuable. It should have been on the A-side.
"The third part started from the phrase "sitting in an English country garden" which, as Davies noted, Lennon was fond of doing for hours at a time. Lennon repeated the phrase to himself until a melody came."
I double checked the book, but I couldn't find anything about that. Hunter Davie never said that. Where did you get that?
"He also had another piece of tune in his head. This had started from the phrase, 'sitting in an English country garden'. This is what he does for at least two hours every day, sitting on the step outside his window looking at his garden. This time, thinking about himself doing it, he'd repeated the phrase over and over again till he'd put a tune to it."
I have a first edition of the book. It's on page 292, in the section 'The Beatles and their music'. Later editions may be different.
It doesn't matter if John Lennon played the piano or the organ or the Mellotron.
Actually, re EGG MAN/Eggman - if you read Eric Burdon's autobiography, it's a Jamaican girlfriend who cracked an egg on Burdon during sex. Whoever runs this site should change this in the body text because it now reads as though Burdon traditionally cracked eggs on his sex partners. Totally the opposite, and a one-time-deal, it appears. Burdon told the story to Lennon and Lennon laughingly said to Burdon: "Go on, go get it, Egg Man"
Thanks for the clarification. Any chance you could transcribe the relevant part of Eric's autobiography, so I can quote it in the article?
==Warning: adult themes==
"It may have been one of my more dubious distinctions, but I was the Eggman--or, as some of my pals called me, 'Eggs'.
The nickname stuck after a wild experience I'd had at the time with a Jamaican girlfriend called Sylvia. I was up early one morning cooking breakfast, naked except for my socks, and she slid up beside me and slipped an amyl nitrate capsule under my nose. As the fumes set my brain alight and I slid to the kitchen floor, she reached to the counter and grabbed an egg, which she cracked into the pit of my belly. The white and yellow of the egg ran down my naked front and Sylvia slipped my egg-bathed cock into her mouth and began to show me one Jamaican trick after another. I shared the story with John at a party at a Mayfair flat one night with a handful of blondes and a little Asian girl.
"'Go on, go get it, Eggman,' Lennon laughed over the little round glasses perched on the end of his hook-like nose as we tried the all-too-willing girls on for size."
Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood
by Eric Burdon with J Marshall Craig
(Rowville, Victoria; 2003), pp. 61-62.
Thanks for transcribing that Deadman. My, what a fruity tale (although fruity isn't really the right word in this case!).
An overrated piece of Muzak from the surrealist king
What? I think literally every part of this statement is incorrect. Muzak? Surrealist king? What and who are you talking about?
Overrated? Absolutely! Surrealistic King? I'm pretty sure. Muzak? Not hardly - it's too disturbing for that. I LOVE Beatle songs, but if "Walrus" comes on, I TURN IT OFF. That's how much it bothers me. Even more than "Blue Jay Way," and that one is pretty creepy too! Even "Revolution # 9" is not as disturbing - it just sounds stupid to me.
Listening to the isolated vocal track is a real treat. The background vocal "swoops" are incredible. There are two distinct chants at the end of the song, the low voices are chanting, "Oompa, oompa, stick it up your jumper" while the high voices are saying, "Everybody's got one, everybody's got one".
The orchestra track is simply astounding. What a fantastic arrangement. This song is surely a masterpiece in every sense of the word.
Whilst I agree that IAtW is excellent, I suggest that "a masterpiece in every sense of the word" is unnecessarily hyperbolic.
A masterpiece, originally, was a physical piece of work by a craftsman accepted as qualification for membership of a guild as an acknowledged master. A masterpiece was also the thesis submitted by a student in order to gain the degree of Master of Arts. A masterpiece can also refer to any very famous, valuable painting.
So, "I Am the Walrus" is not a masterpiece in EVERY sense of the word.
Guys, do you know what I wish? I wish the extra bar before "Yellow Matter Custard" part was mixed for stereo since it was never located anywhere such as the Love Soundtrack and The Beatles: Rock Band video game except one of the worldwide single releases.
George Martin is often under-rated for his significant contribution to Beatles songs, like this one. If there was ever a 5th Beatle, it's George Martin.
Regarding the words "elementary penguin, singing Hare Krishna ", at this time the devotees of Krishna were completing renovations on their first temple in Bury Place, London, and there was no place for their visiting spiritual master, Srila Prabhupada to reside, so John sent his paisley painted Rolls Royce to the airport to pick up the Swami so that he could reside at John & Yoko's ( former Cadbury family estate ) in Ascot, Tittenhurst, for three months, enlightening John, Yoko and George about Krsna consciousness.
Instant Karma was later inspired by this visit. The 'elementary penguin singing Hare Krishna" is actually Allen Ginsburg, the New York poet who used to begin his poetry recitals dressed in a tuxedo, looking like a penguin, while he pumped a harmonium he had purchased in India, while chanting the Hare Krishna mantra. Allen and Prabhupada became good friends.
One pertinent issue is missing on this page. Certainly Lewis Carroll's Looking Glass served as inspiration for the characters in the song, but so too were they inspiration for James Joyce 's Finnegan's Wake. Joyce uses many Carroll characters, not least cosmic eggman Humpty Dumpty whose last words after he falls off the wall and as his yolk is running out are "Goo, goo, g'joob".
The literary references along with Liverpudlian slang and gutter rhymes and the Eric Burdon anecdote help underscore why this is such a great song and Lennon such a great lyricist. The song really does work on so many levels.
Where in Finnegans Wake (no apostrophe, btw) does Humpty Dumpty say those words? It's been a long time since I read it but I'm all but almost certain that Lennon invented the phrase. It's not in Carroll either.
Truth be told, it's been awhile since i carved my way through FW; I got this story ages ago from an old Paul Simon interview in Rolling Stone where he was asked specifically about the similar phrase in Mrs. Robinson. A quick web search brought up the following
"It has also been noted that James Joyce's Finnegans Wake contains the words googoo goosth at the top of page *557, where it appears:
...like milk-juggles as if it was the wrake of the hapspurus or old Kong Gander O'Toole of the Mountains or his googoo goosth she seein, sliving off over the sawdust lobby out of the backroom, wan ter, that was everywans in turruns, in his honeymoon trim, holding up his fingerhals...
It is not clear that Joyce is the source, or what it would mean if he were, but it has been a hypothesis put forward by fans of both artists alike."
Either way, even if it's not true, it certainly has permeated the legend surrounding the lyric, and should be included in the discussion if only for debunking purposes. Here is some further reading on the IATW/FW connection:
http://www.themodernword.com/Joyce/muSic/beatles.html
Interesting. Thanks for that. I know Lennon was asked about James Joyce after publishing In His Own Write and A Spaniard In The Works, and said he'd never read him before they were published. In a 1968 interview he said he'd since got a copy of Finnegans Wake and couldn't see much resemblance between his and Joyce's writing, apart from a bit of wordplay, and had only read a chapter of it.
"Q: A lot of people wrote about your book and said 'Oh, James Joyce, Edward Lear,' and so on. What did you think when they said that?
JL: Well, when they said James Joyce I hadn't... I must have come across him at school but we hadn’t done him like I remember doing Shakespeare and remember doing so-and-so. I remember doing Chaucer a bit, or somebody like him doing funny words. But I don't remember Joyce, you see. So, the first thing they say 'Oh! He's read James Joyce,' you know. So I hadn't. And so the first thing I do is buy Finnegans Wake and read a chapter. And it's great, you know, and I dug it, and I felt as though he's an old friend. But I couldn't make it right through the book, and so I read a chapter of Finnegans Wake and that was the end of it. So now I know what they’re talking about. But I mean, he just went... he just didn’t stop, you know. Yeah.
Q: What actually, though, had you read that you KNOW was important to you when you were young?
JL: Only kids' books, you know. Alice In Wonderland. The poems are all from Jabberwocky... started me into that kick."
There's a lot of gobbledigook in the Wake, and I think it's probably a bit fanciful to imagine that Lennon happened upon the words "googoo goosth" and decided to incorporate it into IATW. Personally I'd file it under coincidence.
I'm willing to leave it to coincidence also, and that FW similarly co-opts Carroll's characters. I'm trying to find that Rolling Stone Interviews book so I can re-read the Simon interview just to make sure my memory hasn't completely failed me.
I've always been under the asumption that they're saying "Everybody's got one" as well but when I listen to the vocals isolated (Youtube) I swear it sounds like they're saying `everybody smoke pot.' I detect an `s' sound after `everybody.' Check it out let know what you think.