John Lennon hit was written after legendary Beatles performer ‘gave up’ trying

A frustrating five hours led to one of The Beatles‘ most recognisable songs when John Lennon “gave up” trying.

The hitmaker had been writing for hours without a breakthrough as he chased another “meaningful and good” song for the Fab Four. But after several hours with no words of quality to show for it, the And Your Bird Can Sing songwriter had just about given up. Ironically, the act of not being able to nail a song during these five hours is what inspired the song Nowhere Man, as Lennon would share in an interview. Speaking to Playboy back in 1965, Lennon would confirm that the trying period of songwriting is more akin to being “possessed” than anything else.

He said: “I’d spent five hours that morning trying to write a song that was meaningful and good, and I finally gave up and lay down. I’d actually stopped trying to think of something. Nothing would come. I went for a lie down, having given up. Then I thought of myself as Nowhere Man, sitting in this Nowhere Land.”

Lennon would go on to say Nowhere Man had a “possessed” quality to the writing, with the “whole damn thing” coming to him just as he’d given up on writing. He added: “Songwriting is like… being possessed. Then Nowhere Man came, words and music, the whole damn thing as I lay down.”

Biographer Hunter Davies also claimed Lennon had spoken to him about the possession which preceded Nowhere Man. He quoted Lennon as saying: “I’d actually stopped trying to think of something. Nothing would come. I went for a lie down, having given up. Then I thought of myself as ‘Nowhere Man’, sitting in this Nowhere Land.”

Even bandmate Paul McCartney would confirm this rather strange style of writing in an interview with Playboy nearly twenty years later. Speaking in 1984, McCartney said: “That was John after a night out, with dawn coming up. I think at that point, he was a bit…wondering where he was going, and to be truthful, so was I. I was starting to worry about him.”

The Beatles would pull from all sorts of strange influences in creating their scene-changing Rubber Soul album. The title was inspired by The Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger, according to The Fab Four’s Rubber Soul album was seemingly inspired by a description given of Jagger, which was overheard by McCartney. Fans asked where The Beatles had gotten the name for the album from on the r/Beatles subreddit.

A fan wrote: “Mostly already covered here, but, yeah, Paul got Rubber Soul from the quote about The Rolling Stones, and Revolver was originally going to be called Abracadabra, Pendulums, Fat Man And Bobby, After Geography (Ringo Starr’s pun on The Rolling Stones’ Aftermath), Beatles On Safari, Magic Circle and Four Sides Of The Circle.

“Magic Circle was the leading contender, as the idea of a record as a magic circle was clever, then the idea of a record revolving, being a ‘revolver,’ was next down the line of clever thinking.”

Another fan confirmed the origins of the Rubber Soul name, writing: “Rubber Soul is a play on the term ‘Plastic Soul’, a term used to describe white musicians playing a traditionally black style of music- essentially ‘fake’ soul music. The term was applied to The Rolling Stones a lot, who drew a lot of influence from the blues and black artists.”