The Beatles I Am The Walrus - What Does It Mean



Posted: Monday, March 16, 2009

by Vince Platania
http://www.classic-rock-music.com

Few songs have sparked as much debate over lyrical meaning as the Beatles I Am The Walrus.  Released in 1967 as the B-side to 'Hello, Goodbye', the track's bizarre wordplay and pastiche of vocal and musical samples have confounded amateur rock scholars in cafeterias, basements and garages for decades.  In addition to its single release, 'I Am The Walrus' was also featured on the album 'Magical Mystery Tour'.  The album was tied in with the television film of the same name, a rambling piece of cinema verite that never really left the ground. 

Like many of the Beatles' seemingly incomprehensible songs, 'I Am The Walrus' was a result of the amalgamation of three separate ideas that John Lennon had been working on.  These random points of inspiration ranged from Lennon writing a verse to match the rise and fall of a police siren he heard driving past his house to a re-jiggering of a nursery rhyme he had sung as a child.

The catalyst for the fusion of these disparate ideas came when Lennon was contacted by a British student who explained to him in a letter that he and his classmates had been asked to analyze the lyrics of the Beatles in order to find their true meaning.  It tickled Lennon to no end that a professor had decided to make his musical work the subject of such scrutiny, and he decided to try and create the most confusing set of verses he possibly could.  He grabbed the bits and pieces of the songs that had been floating about in his head and pasted them together, creating the Beatles I Am The Walrus with a kind of malevolent glee.

Lennon went on to explain that the glue holding the strange elements of the song together was a series of acid trips that he had gone on prior to the final arrangement.  Parts of the song are self-referential, including snatches of 'Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds', while others sampled monologues from Shakespearian plays.  The entire track is arranged as a blustery, winding-up explosion of sound, layering vocals on top of strings on top of noise.   The 'walrus' in the song had been derived from a Lewis Carroll poem recited in Alice in Wonderland, while the 'Eggman' was thought to be a reference the Eric Burdon, who was at the time the lead singer of the Animals.  His nickname of 'Eggman' referred to one of his more bizarre sexual predilections.

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