1967 single by the Beatles

1967 single by the Beatles

"I Am the Sea horse"
I Am the Walrus cover

US picture sleeve (turn off)
Single aside the Beatles
from the EP and album Magical Secret Tour
A-side "Hello, Goodbye"
Released 24 November 1967 (1967-11-24)
Recorded 5, 6, 27 and 29 September 1967
Studio apartment EMI, Capital of the United Kingdom
Music genre
  • Acid rock[1]
  • psychedelic pop[2]
Length 4:33
Judge
  • Parlophone (UK)
  • Capitol (United States)
Songwriter(s) Lennon–McCartney
Producer(s) St. George Martin
The Beatles singles chronology
"All You Need Is Making love"
(1967) 		"Hello, Goodbye" / "I Am the Walrus"
(1967) 		"Lady Madonna"
(1968)
Sound sample
  • charge
  • help

"I Am the Walrus" is a song away the English rock band the Beatles from their 1967 television film Magical Enigma Tour. Written by John Lennon and attributable to John Lennon–McCartney, it was released as the B-broadside to the individual "Hello, Goodbye" and along the Magical Mystery Tour EP and album. In the film, the song underscores a segment in which the band mime to the recording at a deserted airfield.

Lennon wrote the Sung dynasty to confound listeners World Health Organization had been affording serious learned interpretations of the Beatles' lyrics. He was partly inspired by two LSD trips and Lewis Carroll's 1871 poem "The Seahorse and the Carpenter". Producer George III Martin arranged and added orchestral accompaniment that included violins, cellos, horns, and clarinet. The Mike Sammes Singers, a 16-voice choir of occupational group studio vocalists, also joined the transcription, diversely singing folderal lines and imperative whooping noises.

Since the "Hello, Goodbye" single and the Wizardly Mystery Tour EP both reached the top 2 slots on the British singles chart in December, "I Am the Walrus" holds the distinction of reaching numbers one and two simultaneously. Soon after release, the song was prohibited by the BBC for the line "Son, you've been a naughty missy, you let your breeches down".

Composition [edit]

According to author Ian MacDonald, the "model" for "I Am the Walrus" was most likely Procol Harum's "A Whiter Shade of Pallid", which was a hit single during the summer of 1967 and Lennon's favourite Song of the period.[3] The lyrics came from trio song ideas that Lennon had been working happening, the first of which was inspired by hearing a police siren at his range in Weybridge; Lennon wrote the lines "Mis-ter cit-y law-man" to the rhythm and melody of the Delilah. The second idea was a short rhyme about Lennon sitting amidst his garden, while the tertiary was a nonmeaningful lyric about seance on a corn flake. Unable to last the three different songs, he cooperative them into matchless. The lyrics also enclosed the phrase "Lucy in the flip", a reference to the Beatles' earlier song "Lucy in the Pitch with Diamonds".

The walrus refers to Harry Sinclair Lewis Dodgson's verse form "The Walrus and the Carpenter" (from the book Direct the Looking-Tras).[4] Lennon later expressed dismay upon belatedly realising that the walrus was a villain in the verse form.[5]

The final examination piece of the song came together during a visit from Pete Shotton, Lennon's friend and former fellow member of the Quarrymen, when Lennon asked him about a playground nursery verse they Panax quinquefolius as children. Shotton recalled the rhyme as follows:

Yellow matter custard, putting green slop pie,
All heterogenous together with a suddenly dog's eye,
Slapdash it on a butty, ten-foot thick,
Then wash it whol down with a cupful of cold sick.[6]

Lennon borrowed few images from the first two lines. Shotton was also responsible for suggesting that Lennon alteration the lyric "waiting for the man to amount" to "waiting for the van to come". The Beatles' official biographer, Hunter Davies, was present while the Sung was being written and wrote an accounting in his 1968 book The Beatles. According to this life, Lennon remarked to Shotton, "Let the fuckers work that one out." While the lo were studying Otherworldly Speculation in India in betimes 1968, Harrison told journalist Meriwether Lewis Lapham that one of the lines in "I Am the Walrus" incorporated the personal mantra he had received from their meditation teacher, Maharishi Mahesh Lawrence Peter Berra.[7] Reported to Pattie Boyd, George Harrison's wife at the time, the words "semolina pilchard" touch o to Sergeant Pilcher of the London Drug Team, who waged a safari against British rock stars and underground figures during the late 1960s.[8]

Lennon claimed he wrote the first-year two lines on carve u acid trips; he explained much of the song to Man-about-town in 1980:[9]

The first line was shorthand connected one acid trip one weekend. The second line was written on the next acid turn on the close weekend, and IT was filled in after I met Yoko... I'd seen Allen Ginsberg and another citizenry who liked Dylan and Jesus going on just about Rabbit Krishna. It was Ginsberg, in particular, I was referring to. The words 'Element'ry penguin' meant that it's naïve to just go more or less chanting Hare Krishna or putting each your faith in nonpareil idol. In those days I was composition obscurely, à la Bob Dylan. [...] It never dawned on Pine Tree State that Lewis Carroll was commenting connected the capitalistic system. I never went into that flake about what he real meant, like people are doing with the Beatles' figure out. Later, I went rearwards and looked at it and realized that the walrus was the bad laugh at in the story and the carpenter was the good guy. I thought, Ohio, shit, I picked the wrong guy. I should take in said, 'I am the carpenter.' Only that wouldn't have been the same, would IT? [Sings, laughing] 'I am the carpenter ...'

Musical social organisation [edit]

The birdsong is in the discover of A, and the helpful initiation starts in the Lydian mode of B starring.[10] Verse 1 begins with a I– ♭ III–4–I shake shape: "I am he" (A harmonize)..."you are me" (C chord) "and we are all toge..." (D chord) "...ther" (A chord). Verse 2, however, involves a ♭ VI– ♭ VII–I Aeolian ascent: "waiting" (F chord) "for the van" (G chord) "to derive" (A harmonize). The chorus uses a ♭ III–IV–V pattern: "I am the eggman (C chord) "they are the eggmen (D chord). "I am the walrus (E chord), "coo coo cachoo" pendent as an imperfect cadence until resolved with the I (A chord) on "Mister. City Officer".[11] At the line "Nonmoving in an English garden" the D ♯ melody note (as in the instrumental introduction) establishes a Lydian style (penetrating 4th note in the scale), and this mode is accented more than strongly with the addition of a D ♯ note to the B harmonize on "If the sun don't come".[12]

The song ends exploitation a Shepard tone, with a harmonize advancement built on ascending and descending lines in the bass and strings, repeated A the song fades. Musicologist Alan W. Sydney Pollack analyses: "The chord progression of the outro itself is a tone Moebius strip with scales in bassline and go past voice that draw in contrary motion."[13] The bassline descends step by step A, G, F, E, D, C, and B, while the strings part rises A, B, C, D, E, F ♯ , G: this sequence repeats as the call fades, with the strings rising high on all looping. Sydney Pollack also notes that the repeated cell is vii bars long, which way that a different chord begins each four-bar articulate. The fade is described aside Walter Everett as a "false conclusion", in the form of an "unrelated finale" consisting of the orchestral chord progression, chorus, and sampling of the radio play.[14]

Recording [edit]

"I Am the Walrus" was the first studio apartment recording made by the Beatles after the death of their manager, Brian Epstein, in August 1967. The basic backing track featuring the Beatles was free in 1996 on Anthology 2. George Martin arranged and added orchestral accompaniment that included violins, cellos, horns, and clarinet. Paul McCartney said that Lennon gave instruction manual to Dean Martin as to how he wished the orchestration to be scored, including singing nigh of the parts as a maneuver. The Microphone Sammes Singers, a 16-voice choir of professional studio vocalists, too took separate in the recording, variously singing "Ho-ho-holmium, hee-hee-hee, hour angle-ha-ha", "oompah, oompah, stick it up your jumper!", "everybody's got one" and making a series of shriek whooping noises.[15]

In 2022, institution Ill-natured Vapors member Ray Thomas said in an interview that he and fellow dance orchestra member Mike Pinder contributed backing vocals to the song, Eastern Samoa well atomic number 3 harmonicas to "The Motley fool on the Hill".[16]

Internalisation of text from King Lear [delete]

The impressive reading in the integrate is Shakespeare's King Lear (Play Quaternity, Scene 6), lines 219–222 and 249–262.[17] Information technology was added to the song on 29 September 1967,[18] canned directly from an AM tuner John Lennon was fiddling with. Lennon tuned around the dial and settled on the 7:30 pm to 11 pm[19] broadcast of the play happening the BBC Third Programme.[20]

The first excerpt (ll. 219–222) moves in and out of the text, containing fragments of lines only. It begins where the disguised Edgar talks to his estranged and maliciously unsighted father the Earl of Gloucester (timings given[17]):

Gloucester: (2:35) Now, good sir, wh— (John Lennon appears to change the channel out from the station here)[17]
Edgar: (2:38) — pauper, ready-made tame by fortune — (2:44) good pity —

In the play Edgar so kills Oswald, Goneril's steward. During the fade of the song the second main extract (ll. 249–262), this time of continuous text, is heard (timings given[17]):[17] [21]

Oswald: (3:52) Slave, K hast slain me. Villain, occupy my purse.
If ever so chiliad wilt thrive, (4:02) bury my body,
And commit the (4:05) letters which thou find'st approximately ME
To (4:08) Edmund, Earl of Gloucester; (4:10) try out him out
Upon the British political party. O, (4:14) untimely Last!
Edgar: (4:23) I know thee well: a (4:25) serviceable villain;
As duteous to the (4:27) vices of thy mistress
As severeness would desire.
Gloucester: What, is he dead?
Edgar: (4:31) Baby-sit you down father, rest you.

Connected the radio set programme the roles were read by Mark Dignam (Gloucester), Philip Safety device (Edgar), and Privy Bryning (Oswald).[18]

Otherwise versions [edit]

In the original (1967) stereo release, at around two minutes done the song, the mix changes from true stereo to "fake stereo". This came about because the receiving set broadcast had been added "subsist" into the mono ruffle-down and so was unobtainable for inclusion in the stereo mix; thu, fake stereo from the mono mix was created for this portion of the song.[22]

The mono version opens with a four-beat chord, while the stereoscopic photograph mix features sextuplet beats along the first harmonise. The four-beat-only presentation is also enclosed on a several stereophony conflate (overseen past George Martin) for the previous MPI Home Video version of Charming Mystery Tour of duty, particularly the US Magical Mystery Tour album. The US mono single mix includes an extra stop of music before the run-in "yellow matter custard". This is in reality the original uncut version of the monaural desegregate called RM23. An early, overdub-free mix of the song released along Anthology 2 reveals John singing the lyrics "Sensationalistic mat-" too early—this was edited out. A intercrossed version processed for the 1980 US Rarities LP combines the six-beat first step with the extra bar of music that precedes the words "yellow matter custard" (from the aforementioned US single-channel single mix).[23] An entirely new full stereo remix was done in 2012 for Apple's DVD and Blu-ray release of the restored version of Wizard Mystery Duty tou.

A 5.1 wall in fit full stereo system remix of the song appeared on the DVD release of Anthology in 2003, on disc 4. A wide stereoscopic photograph appendage remix was also sunk the Cirque du Soleil show Love and record album of the same describ, released in 2006. Producers George and Giles Martin were allowed access to archeozoic generations of the original master tapes. Mellisonant parts that had previously been mixed were now available as separate elements. To boot, a copy of the BBC broadcast of King Lear was acquired. Now, with every last the sound sources used in the original mono mix present, a proper binaural remix could be accomplished. These tracks were transferred digitally and lined up to create a new multi-track master, from which a new mix would be made.

In add-on to the stereo remixes embattled for the Have sex show and the 2012 Malus pumila reprinting referenced higher up, the DVDs that were released for those same projects contain a 5.1 environment sound amalgamate of the song, making three distinguishable 5.1 remixes of the same song.

Danny Elfman's Oingo Boingo performed a cover of the song on Boingo, the band's last album. The rough detour from their previous genres, the experimenting of samples for abstract tracks (such as "Change", the album's last track), the circus-like tasteful, and the addition of the "I Am the Walrus" cover suggest a significant charm of the late-Beatles era on the band.

Haven performed the song many times throughout their history, and a live recording of them performing the song at the Gleneagles Hotel was included as a B-incline to "Cigarettes & Alcohol" and was subsequently added to the 25th anniversary edition of Definitely Maybe.[24]

Personnel [delete]

  • John Lennon – lead vocals, electric piano, Mellotron
  • Paul McCartney – freshwater bass guitar, tambourine
  • George Harrison – electric guitar
  • Ringo Starr – drums
  • Orchestrated, directed and produced by George I Martin
  • Session musicians – strings, brass, and woodwinds
  • Mike Sammes singers – backing vocals
  • Ray Thomas – financial backing vocals[16]
  • Mike Pinder – backing vocals[16]
  • Engineered by Geoff Emerick and Ken Scott

Reception [edit]

Critical reception at the time of the track's release was largely prescribed. Author Derek Andrew Johnson explicit: "John growls the nonsense (and sometimes significative) lyric, backed by a complex grading incorporating violins and cellos. You need to hear it a few times before you give the axe absorb IT."[25] Goug Logan wrote: "Into the world of Alice in Wonderland now and you can almost visualise John huddled happening a deserted shore singing 'I am the walrus' to some beautiful strings from further away happening the skyline and a whole bagful of Beatle sounds, wish a ringing doorbell and somebody sawing a plank of Sir Henry Wood. A fantastic track which you volition need to accept for a while to fully appreciate."[26]

Richard Goldstein of The New York Times wrote that the Song was "their virtually realised wreak since 'A Day In The Life'" and described it as "a fierce collage" with a "musical structure [that] mirrors this fragmentation". He said IT "suggests a world much like that of 'A Day In The Life,' where the news is bad and John Lennon (now a Walrus, with a drooping mustache) would like to turn us on. Because he is an artist, he does."[27]

In a highly unfavourable follow-up of Magic Mystery Tour, Male monarch Reed of HiFi/Stereo Review same that "I Am the Seahorse" "defies any openhearted of verbal description notable to civilized man. Not only is IT frightful to pick up, deficient any coherency of style Beaver State technique, but it is utterly silly and pointless." He stated that the song "begins with an intro sounding suspiciously like one of John Barry's James Bond certificate film heaps", then quoted any of the lyrics before locution that "the whole thing fades out to what sounds same people beingness deep-fried on electric fences and pigs rooting in a pail of swill."[28]

The song was banned by the BBC for the economic consumption of the Book "knickers" in the line "You've been a naughty girl, you've let your knickers downwardly".[29] [30]

Graph history [edit]

Chart (1967–68) Peak
position
New Zealand Islands (Listener)[31] 17
US Hoarding Hot 100[32] 56
US Hard cash Box Top 100[33] 46

The single achieved sales of over 50,000 copies in Commonwealth of Australi, being eligible for the award of a Aureate Disc.[ Citation needed ]

Interpretation [edit]

Although it has been reportable that Lennon wrote "I Am the Walrus" to confuse those who tried to represent his songs, thither consume nonetheless been many attempts to analyze the significance of the lyrics.[ citation needed ]

Seen in the Magical Enigma Tour picture show singing the Sung, Lennon, apparently, is the walrus; on the go after-name of the accompanying soundtrack record album, however, underneath "I Am the Seahorse" are written the words " 'No you'Ra not!' said Little Nicola" (in the film, Nicola Hale is a little daughter who keeps contradicting everything the some other characters say). Lennon returned to the subject in the lyrics of three of his subsequent songs: in the 1968 Beatles Song "Deoxyephedrine Onion" helium sings, "I told you 'tear the sea horse and Maine, man / You know that we're as careful as butt glucinium, man / Well hither's some other clue for you every / The walrus was Paul";[34] in the thirdly verse of "Close" he sings the origin "he bag production, he got sea horse gumboot"; and in his 1970 solo song "God", admits: "I was the walrus, but now I'm John".

Eric Burdon, principal singer of the Animals, claimed to comprise the "Eggman" mentioned in the song's lyric.[35]

References [edit]

  1. ^ Clark, Tyler (8 May 2022). "Ranking: The Beatles' Albums from Pip to Best". Consequence of Sound. Archived from the original on 19 January 2022. Retrieved 22 December 2022.
  2. ^ Williams, Stereo system (26 November 2022). "The Beatles' 'Magical Mystery Tour' at 50". The Daily Beast. Archived from the original on 9 November 2022. Retrieved 29 January 2022.
  3. ^ MacDonald 2005, pp. 268, 443.
  4. ^ MacDonald 2005, p. 268.
  5. ^ Sheff 2000, p. 185.
  6. ^ Davies 2002.
  7. ^ Lapham 2005, p. 56.
  8. ^ Boyd 2007, p. 129.
  9. ^ Sheff 2000, p. 184.
  10. ^ Pedler 2003, p. 270.
  11. ^ Pedler 2003, pp. 233–234.
  12. ^ Pedler 2003, pp. 270–271.
  13. ^ Sydney Pollack 1996.
  14. ^ Walter Everett. The Foundations of Rock: From "Blue Suede Place" to "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes". p. 154
  15. ^ Lewisohn 1988, p. 68.
  16. ^ a b c "Discussions Magazine Euphony Blog: An EXCLUSIVE interview with THE MOODY Blue devils' Ray Thomas!". Discussionsmagazine.com. 15 January 2022. Archived from the original on 23 March 2022. Retrieved 1 October 2022.
  17. ^ a b c d e Henry M. Robert Fontenot, "I Am the Sea horse", on Oldies Music page from about.com Archived 12 April 2014 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 2 May 2014
  18. ^ a b Dave Rybaczewski, "I Am The Seahorse", on Beatles Medicine History Archived 17 June 2013 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 2 May 2014.
  19. ^ "Network 3 Programme Listings for Friday, 29 September, 1967". BBC Genome Project. BBC. Archived from the original happening 23 October 2022. Retrieved 26 December 2022.
  20. ^ Lewisohn 1988, p. 128.
  21. ^ Walter Everett. The Beatles Eastern Samoa Musicians. Revolver Through the Anthology. Oxford University Press. NY. 1999. ISBN 0-19-509553-7. ISBN 0-19-512941-5. pp. 134–35.
  22. ^ Emerick, Geoff; Massey, Howard (2006). Here, There and Everyplace: My Life-time Recording the Music of the Beatles. Penguin Publication Radical. p. 272. ISBN978-1-101-21824-2. Archived from the original on 22 November 2022. Retrieved 28 October 2022.
  23. ^ Dowlding, William J. (2009). Beatlesongs. Simon and Schuster. p. 199. ISBN978-1-4391-4719-1. Archived from the original on 22 November 2022. Retrieved 28 Oct 2022.
  24. ^ "Track by Track: Noel Gallagher on the Masterplan | Oasis Recording Information". Archived from the innovative on 28 August 2022. Retrieved 23 January 2022.
  25. ^ Johnson 1967.
  26. ^ Logan 1967.
  27. ^ Goldstein, Richard (31 December 1967). "Are the Beatles Waning?". The New York Multiplication. p. 62.
  28. ^ Reed instrument, Rex (Marching music 1968). "Entertainment (The Beatles Magical Mystery Tour)" (PDF). HiFi/Stereo Recap. p. 117. Archived (PDF) from the original on 22 November 2022. Retrieved 6 April 2022.
  29. ^ www.telegraph.co.U.K. Archived 21 February 2022 at the Wayback Political machine.
  30. ^ beatlesebooks.com Archived 17 June 2013 at the Wayback Machine.
  31. ^ "flavour of New Zealand - search auditor". flavourofnz.atomic number 27.nz. Archived from the freehanded on 27 September 2022. Retrieved 20 May 2022.
  32. ^ Joel Whitburn's Go past Pop Singles 1955–1990 - ISBN 0-89820-089-X
  33. ^ "Cash Box Top 100 12/23/67". tropicalglen.com. Archived from the original on 9 March 2022. Retrieved 20 May 2022.
  34. ^ Aldridge 1990, p. 145.
  35. ^ Miles 1997, p. 357.

Bibliography [delete]

  • "I Am the Walrus". About The Beatles. 2008. Archived from the original on 29 February 2008. Retrieved 12 March 2008.
  • Aldridge, Alan, male erecticle dysfunction. (1990). The Beatles Illustrated Lyrics. Boston: Houghton Mifflin / Seymour Lawrence. ISBN0-395-59426-X.
  • Boyd, Pattie; with Junor, Penny (2007). Marvelous Nowadays: The Autobiography. London: Newspaper headline Review. ISBN978-0-7553-1646-5.
  • Davies, Orion (2002). "My Quaker John". Archived from the groundbreaking on 16 July 2011. Retrieved 7 December 2007.
  • "Styx's Unrecorded Seahorse Recording to Debut on iTunes; Styx's Version of "I Am the Seahorse" Hits Top 10 happening Classic Rock Charts". Encyclopedia.com. 17 November 2004. Archived from the original on 22 December 2008. Retrieved 23 July 2007.
  • Fontenot, Robert (2007). "I Am the Walrus". About.com. Archived from the original on 20 January 2008. Retrieved 7 December 2007.
  • Johnson, Derek (18 November 1967). "Hello Goodbye/I am the Seahorse". NME.
  • Lapham, Lewis (2005). With the Beatles. Brooklyn, Unprecedented York: Melville House. ISBN978-1-612193977.
  • Lewisohn, Mark (1988). The Beatles Recording Roger Huntington Sessions. Greater New York: Harmony Books. ISBN0-517-57066-1.
  • Logan, Ding (25 November 1967). "Supernatural Mystery Tour". NME.
  • MacDonald, Ian (2005). Rotation in the Head: The Beatles' Records and the Sixties (2nd rpm. edn) . Chicago Review Press. ISBN978-1-55652-733-3.
  • Miles, Barry (1997). Paul McCartney: Many Old age From Now. New York: Henry Holt & Company. ISBN0-8050-5249-6.
  • Pedler, Dominic (2003). The Songwriting Secrets of the Beatles. New York City: Omnibus Press.
  • Pollack, Alan W. (1996). "Notes on 'I Am the Walrus'". Archived from the original along 13 February 2022. Retrieved 8 June 2007.
  • Sheff, Jacques Louis David (2000). Completely We Are Locution: The Last John Roy Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono. Recent York: St. Martin's Press. ISBN0-312-25464-4.
  • Deezen, Eddie (2012). "Who was the seahorse? Analyzing the strangest Beatle's song". Retrieved 9 July 2022.

External golf links [edit]

  • Alan W. Pollock's Notes on "I Am the Walrus"

John Lennon㣢¬™s â€唩 Am the Walrus㣢¬❠Was Written to Spite Some Fans

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_the_Walrus