A song written by legendary musician John Lennon was released “just to confuse everyone” as he believed listeners were reading too much into his lyrics.
The Imagine hitmaker pulled no punches with the song, which featured on The White Album. Though the song was considered a “throwaway” by Lennon, it still leaves fans of the track stunned. Glass Onion would mention I Am the Walrus, Strawberry Fields Forever, Lady Madonna, The Fool on the Hill, and Fixing a Hole. Most notably of all is referring to fellow Beatles songwriter Paul McCartney as the “walrus” featured on the Hello Goodbye B-side. Answering this question, even ironically, has cemented the song as one of The Beatles’ many greatest hits, though Lennon would later admit he wrote the song as a chance to separate himself from those who took his lyrics too seriously.
Lennon would rather bluntly put it as a spoof of “everything I’ve ever written,” and would go on to suggest he wrote it merely to “confuse everybody”. He said: “That’s me, just doing a throwaway song, à la ‘Walrus’, à la everything I’ve ever written.”
Speaking with interviewer David Sheff in 1980, Lennon added: “And I thought Walrus has now become me, meaning ‘I am the one.’ Only it didn’t mean that in this song. It could have been ‘the fox terrier is Paul,’ you know. I mean, it’s just a bit of poetry. It was just thrown in like that.
“Well, that was a joke. The line was put in partly because I was feeling guilty, because I was with Yoko, and I was leaving Paul. I was trying – I don’t know. It’s a very perverse way of saying to Paul, you know, ‘Here, have this crumb, this illusion – this stroke, because I’m leaving’.”
Further explanations featured in The Beatles Anthology would note the song is playing around with the idea of finding new meanings in already released work. Lennon suggested it was written as a light jab at those who believed you could play Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band backwards and find hidden moments.
Lennon would use the “fox terrier” comparison again, though some fans remain unconvinced the song is just a throwaway. Some listeners believe the track is an affectionate tribute to his writing partner, while others have noted the mention of The Cazzy, a coastal area of south east Liverpool.
He explained: “I threw the line in — ‘the Walrus was Paul’ – just to confuse everybody a bit more. … It could have been ‘the fox terrier is Paul’. I mean, it’s just a bit of poetry. I was having a laugh because there’d been so much gobbledygook about Pepper—play it backwards and you stand on your head and all that.”
Whoah!