Strawberry Fields Forever
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"Strawberry Fields Forever" is the title of a 1967 song recorded by The Beatles. Widely considered to be one of the group's best recordings, it is also one of the defining works of the psychedelic rock genre. Although conventionally credited to both John Lennon and Paul McCartney, "Strawberry Fields Forever" is known to have been composed solely by Lennon.
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Release
The single was first released on February 13, 1967, in Britain and on February 17, 1967 in the United States, as one side of a double A-side single, teamed with the McCartney composition "Penny Lane". The Beatles had originally planned to release "Strawberry Fields Forever" backed with "When I'm Sixty-Four". When manager Brian Epstein asked producer George Martin about the sessions for the single, Martin told Epstein the group had recorded its two finest songs ("Strawberry Fields Forever" and "Penny Lane"). Epstein urged Martin to issue the songs on a double A-sided single in order to regain popularity, as they had done with their previous single "Yellow Submarine/Eleanor Rigby".
The single reached #2 in the UK charts, behind Englebert Humperdinck's "Release Me". "Penny Lane" did reach #1 in the United States, with "Strawberry Fields Forever" peaking at #8.
In the U.S., both songs were also subsequently included on the LP Magical Mystery Tour, which was only released as a six-track double-EP in the UK. The LP format is now the official version in The Beatles discography.
The two songs were recorded in late 1966, the first fruits of the extended sessions for Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, and both were originally intended to be included on the LP. They were also the first works released by The Beatles after their retirement from touring.
After their final American tour, the group had taken a lengthy break over the last months of 1966. Under pressure from EMI and Capitol, who had not had any new Beatles material to release for some time, George Martin rush-released the two songs to fill the gap, and it would be four more months before the album was completed and released.
Composition, music, and lyrics
Lennon began writing the song in late 1966, while in Almeria, Spain filming Richard Lester's How I Won the War, though he can be seen and heard playing the introductory notes on a melodica in a hotel room in the film "The Beatles: The First U.S. Visit" which was filmed in February 1964.
Lennon and McCartney's songs shared a similar theme of nostalgia for their childhood in Liverpool and both referred to actual locations there, but they also had strong surrealistic and psychedelic overtones. The title of Lennon's song referred to the Salvation Army orphanage in Woolton, which was called Strawberry Field, where he and his childhood friends Pete Shotton and Ivan Vaughan used to play in the trees behind the orphanage.
The period of its composition was one of momentous change and dislocation for Lennon: The Beatles had just retired from touring after one of the most difficult periods of their career, including the infamous "more popular than Jesus" controversy and their disastrous tour of the Philippines; Lennon's marriage was failing; perhaps most significant of all, he was using increasing quantities of drugs, especially the powerful hallucinogen LSD.
The song's groundbreaking production and complex arrangement gave clear evidence of the band's near-total mastery in the studio and their increasingly avant-garde approach to their music. Although there are no obvious references to drugs, the song's style and tone and oblique, stream of consciousness lyrics were undoubtedly influenced by his experiences with acid. This is also suggested by the electronic treatment, "through implied contrast with the 'normal' timbres previously used in pop songs, which are about 'real life' (love, dancing, and so on). The use of collage, together with the irregular rhythms and lurching harmonies, may signify 'in the unconscious' (which often manifests itself in irrational jumbles of material). Finally, the heterogeneous texture, the ever-changing relationships of instruments, may on one level simply suggest 'influence of art music'." (Middleton 1990, p.28)
The released version of the song is actually an edit of two different performances. The band recorded multiple takes of two quite distinct versions of the song. The first version was (reputedly) an attempt to emulate the acid rock sound of American bands like Jefferson Airplane, and it featured a relatively basic instrumentation including keyboard, guitars and drums. By the time they cut the second version, recorded some weeks later, Lennon had opted for a much more complex arrangement, scored by George Martin and featuring a brass section and a string quartet.
Reviewing the various takes, Lennon decided that he liked the first minute of Take 7 (the "acid rock" version), and the ending of Take 26 (the "chamber" version). He wanted the finished master to combine these sections from the two versions, so he nonchalantly gave producer George Martin the task of somehow joining them together.
The problem was that both takes were played in slightly different pitches and tempos. So, one take had to be sped up slightly, and the other had to be slowed down, but fortunately for Martin and his engineers, the two takes proved to be almost exactly half a tone apart in pitch and so were reasonably easy to combine. The edit is subtle but detectable, at one minute into the song, though some CDs may show the edit at 59 seconds.
The coda makes (further) use of collage and "The structure is also disrupted by the way the regular phrase-lengths and pulse usual in popular songs are subverted. In the first phrase, for example, the normal eight bars are stretched to nine. Throughout the song the rhythm of the vocal follows not the regular periods of dance music but the irregular accents of the words. The harmonic language has become more complex, less predictable too." (ibid, p.28)
Undoubtedly spurred on by the recent, dazzling Beach Boys single "Good Vibrations", "Strawberry Fields Forever" was clearly intended to be the most musically and technically advanced pop record released up to that time. It featured extensive overdubbing, the prominent use of reverse tape effects and tape loops, and extensive audio compression and equalisation. The slight pitch-shifting caused by the splicing together of the two versions also gave Lennon's lead vocal a subtle "off-kilter" quality. As well as the standard guitar-bass-drums (keyboard) backing, the arrangement also included piano, slide guitar, woodwinds, a brass section, a string quartet and some very unusual instruments including the swarmandel, an Indian stringed instrument which provided the sitar-like sound at the end of each chorus.
Perhaps most distinctive of all was the instrument (played by McCartney) that produced the flute-like sound in the song's introduction — a Mellotron, the innovative British-made electronic keyboard which used eight second tape segments of real instruments such as flutes and strings for each key. The Beatles were one of the first rock bands to acquire a Mellotron and "Strawberry Fields Forever" is believed to be the first use of the instrument on a pop recording. As a result of The Beatles' patronage, the instrument was rapidly taken up by other groups and used on other famous recordings of the psychedelic era by Traffic, Family and The Rolling Stones. The Mellotron used in this song is currently owned by Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails.
Contrary to belief of the Paul Is Dead hoax supporters, Lennon is actually saying "Cranberry Sauce" at the end of the song and not "I buried Paul", a fact that Lennon himself confirmed in a 1980 Playboy interview. He stated it was a kind of icing on the cake of the weirdness of song, where anything he might have imagined saying would have been appropriate. When one hears the original recording of the song, it is easier to understand why he was inspired to say it. The end featured Ringo pounding the drums in a more and more loud and monotonic rhythm (that would later have been called a heavy metal style) as the other instruments dropped away. Hearing his often exquisite song dissolve into a primitive noise, Lennon seemed to want to encapsulate in words what remained of the song and add a bit of lightness to the hypnotically heavy thudding. In the mix of the released version, the drum track was entirely removed from the coda, making Lennon's reason for saying what he did more obscure.
Promotion and reception
The song made it to number two on the British charts. The number one single at the time was Engelbert Humperdinck's "Release Me".
The promotional film for the song is now recognized as one of the first and most successful conceptual music videos, featuring reverse film effects, stop motion animation, disconcerting jump cuts from daytime to nighttime and (among other things) The Beatles playing, then pouring paint over and smashing an upright piano. It was filmed on January 30, 1967 in Knole Park in Sevenoaks. The exact location is fairly easy to find, being on one of the main roads through the park with a recognisable tree. Though filmed at the same time as the Penny Lane video, it is considerably more groundbreaking and adventurous (which probably has to do with the harsher tone of the song). Both videos were selected by New York's MoMA as two of the most influential music videos in the late 1960s.
The song gave its name to the Strawberry Fields Memorial in New York City's Central Park, near the site of John Lennon's assassination.
Brian Wilson claimed that 'Strawberry Fields Forever' was partially responsible for the collapse of the Beach Boys' legendary unfinished album 'SMiLE'. Wilson first heard the song on his car radio while driving, and was so affected by it that he had to pull over until the song finished. He then remarked to his companion (either wryly or in despair, according to the version of the story) that The Beatles had "got there first" (ie. to the sound he was trying to achieve with the new album). SMiLE was shelved shortly afterwards.
Before playing the song on his radio show in Jan 2006, BBC Radio Two DJ Mark Radcliffe said it could be described "without fear of contradiction as the greatest double-A side ever".
Pop culture
- American baseball player Darryl Strawberry was known as a "good hit, no field" kind of player during his career in the 1980s and 1990s, and was also a troubled man off the field. A wag at Sports Illustrated hypothesized what his version of Purgatory would be like: "Strawberry fields forever!"
- After he was arrested for illegal drugs, parody music maker Bob Rivers recorded a parody of "Strawberry Fields Forever" (titled "Strawberry Rehabs Forever") which popped up on radio stations (mostly morning "comedic" radio shows such as John Boy and Billy).
- Jack Jones' biography of Mark David Chapman (John Lennon's murderer) is entitled Let Me Take You Down, which is the first line of the song.
- Dominic Monaghan (of Lord of the Rings fame, and who plays Charlie Pace on Lost) has "Living is easy with eyes closed" tattooed on his left arm. He also said he can play Strawberry Fields Forever on his guitar.
Covers and Derivations
Tomorrow cover the song on their 1968 album, Tomorrow.
Brazilian singer and songwriter Caetano Veloso evidently pays tribute to The Beatles' collage technique in his own "Sugarcane Fields Forever", on his experimental 1973 album Araçá Azul.
The Jamaican group The Pyramids sing "Let me take you back, cause I'm goin, goin, goin to Ethiopia" on their (late 60s?) tune "Ethiopia".
A capella group "The Bobs" cover it in one of their albums.
Argentinean band Los Fabulosos Cadillacs covered the song in Spanish during the 90's.
Candy Flip had a hit single with a suitably psychedelic cover of the song in the early 90's.
Me First and the Gimme Gimmes recorded a purposefully terrible version of the song on their album Ruin Jonny's Bar Mitzvah.
Ben Harper recorded a cover of the song in 2003 for the soundtrack to the film I Am Sam. This is probably the most faithful interperetation of the song ever recorded, at least in terms of instrumentation.
External links
- MoreThings Song analysis, including "how The Beatles led me away from Christ"
- Alan Pollack's notes on Strawberry Fields Forever
- Song lyrics
- Golden Oldies of Music Video a presentation from New York's MoMA originally screened on April 17, 2003
| The Beatles |
|---|
| John Lennon | Paul McCartney | George Harrison | Ringo Starr Pete Best | Stuart Sutcliffe |
| Management |
| Brian Epstein | Allen Klein | Apple Records |
| Production |
| George Martin | Geoff Emerick | Norman Smith | Abbey Road Studios |
| Official Studio Albums |
| Please Please Me (1963) | With the Beatles (1963) | A Hard Day's Night (1964) | Beatles for Sale (1964) | Help! (1965) | Rubber Soul (1965) Revolver (1966) | Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967) | Magical Mystery Tour (1967) | The Beatles (1968) | Yellow Submarine (1969) | Abbey Road (1969) | Let It Be (1970) |
| Films |
| A Hard Day's Night (1964) | Help! (1965) | Magical Mystery Tour (1967) | Yellow Submarine (1968) | Let it Be (1970) |
| Related Articles |
| History | Discography | Bootlegs | Long-term influence | Beatlemania | Beatlesque | Fifth Beatle | Paul Is Dead | British Invasion | Yoko Ono | 1960s | Apple Corps |
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