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Strawberry Fields Forever
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"Strawberry Fields Forever" is a song by The Beatles. Recorded at the end of 1966, the song was written by John Lennon during the filming of How I Won The War and is formally credited to the Lennon/McCartney songwriting team. It is named after a Salvation Army house in Liverpool where Lennon played as a child.
While "Strawberry Fields Forever" was originally recorded for Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967), it was instead released on 13 February 1967 in the UK, and 17 February 1967 in the United States as a double A-side single, backed with Paul McCartney's "Penny Lane".
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Encyclopedia
"Strawberry Fields Forever" is a song by The Beatles. Recorded at the end of 1966, the song was written by John Lennon during the filming of How I Won The War and is formally credited to the Lennon/McCartney songwriting team. It is named after a Salvation Army house in Liverpool where Lennon played as a child.
While "Strawberry Fields Forever" was originally recorded for Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967), it was instead released on 13 February 1967 in the UK, and 17 February 1967 in the United States as a double A-side single, backed with Paul McCartney's "Penny Lane". "Strawberry Fields Forever" reached number eight in the US, with numerous critics describing it as one of the group's best recordings. It is one of the defining works of the psychedelic rock genre and has been covered by many other artists. The song was later included on the Magical Mystery Tour LP (1967). The Strawberry Fields memorial in New York City's Central Park (near the site of Lennon's murder at The Dakota apartment building) was named after the song.
Background and composition
Strawberry Field was the name of a Salvation Army Children's Home just around the corner from Lennon's childhood home in Woolton, a suburb of Liverpool. Lennon and his childhood friends Pete Shotton, Nigel Whalley, and Ivan Vaughan used to play in the wooded garden behind the home. One of Lennon's childhood treats was the garden party held each summer in Calderstones Park (located next to the Salvation Army Home) every year, where a Salvation Army band played. Lennon's aunt Mimi Smith recalled: "As soon as we could hear the Salvation Army band starting, John would jump up and down shouting, 'Mimi, come on. We're going to be late.'"
Lennon's "Strawberry Fields Forever" and McCartney's "Penny Lane" both shared the theme of nostalgia for their early years in Liverpool. Although both referred to actual locations, the two songs also had strong surrealistic and psychedelic overtones. Producer George Martin said that when he first heard "Strawberry Fields Forever" he thought it conjured up a "hazy, impressionistic dreamworld".
The period of its composition was one of 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 unintentionally snubbing Imelda Marcos, the First Lady of the Philippines. Lennon's marriage with Cynthia Powell was failing, and he was using increasing quantities of drugs, especially the powerful hallucinogen LSD, as well as Cannabis, which he had smoked during his time in Spain. Lennon talked about the song in 1980: "I was different all my life. The second verse goes, 'No one I think is in my tree.' Well, I was too shy and self-doubting. Nobody seems to be as hip as me is what I was saying. Therefore, I must be crazy or a genius—'I mean it must be high or low'", and explaining that the song was "psycho-analysis set to music".
Lennon began writing the song in Almería, Spain, during the filming of Richard Lester's How I Won the War in September–October 1966. The earliest demo of the song, recorded in Almería, had no refrain and only one verse: "No one is on my wavelength / I mean, it's either too high or too low / That is you can't you know tune in but it's all right / I mean it's not too bad". He revised the words to this verse to make them more obscure, then wrote the melody and part of the lyrics to the refrain (which then functioned as a bridge and did not yet include a reference to Strawberry Fields). He then added another verse and added the mention of Strawberry Fields. The first verse on the released version was actually written last, close to the time of the song's recording. For this verse, Lennon was again inspired by his childhood memories: the words "nothing to get hung about" were inspired by Aunt Mimi's strict order not to play in the grounds of Strawberry Field, to which the young Lennon once replied, "They can't hang you for it." The first verse Lennon wrote became the second in the released version, and the second verse Lennon wrote became the last in the release. The song was complete.
Musical structure
The song was originally written in the key of C major. The recorded version is approximately in B-flat major; owing to the manipulation of recording speed that the group often used, the finished version is not in standard pitch. The introduction was played by McCartney on a mellotron, and the vocals begin with the refrain instead of a verse. A half-measure complicates the meter of the verses, as well as the fact that the vocals begin in the middle of the first measure. The first verse comes after the refrain, and is eight measures long. The verse starts with an F major chord (V), which "deceptively" turns into a G minor (vi). According to Alan Pollack, the "approach-avoidance tactic" is encountered in the verse, as the V chord never resolves into an I chord directly as expected. Instead, at the end of the verse, the V chord turns into an I chord after passing through the E-flat major (IV) chord. In the middle of the second chorus, the "funereal brass" is introduced, stressing the ominous lyrics. After three verses and four refrains, the line "Strawberry Fields Forever" is repeated three times, and the song fades out with a guitar, cello, and swarmandal. After a few seconds, the song fades back in to the "nightmarish" mellotron playing dissonant notes, scattered drumming, and Lennon saying, "cranberry sauce".
Recording
The working title was "It's Not Too Bad", and
Geoff Emerick, the sound engineer, remembered it being "just a great, great song, that was apparent from the first time John sang it for all of us, playing an acoustic guitar." Using Abbey Road's 4-track machine, recording for "Strawberry Fields Forever" began on 24 November 1966, in Abbey Road's Studio Two. It took 45 hours to record, which were spread over five weeks. The song was meant to be on the band's 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, but was released as a single instead.
The band recorded three distinct versions of the song. After Lennon played the song for the other Beatles on his acoustic guitar, the band recorded the first take. Lennon played an Epiphone Casino; McCartney played a mellotron, a new instrument introduced to The Beatles by Mike Pinder of The Moody Blues; Starr played drums; and Harrison played electric guitar. The first recorded take began with the verse, "Living is easy...", instead of the chorus, "Let me take you down", which starts the released version. The chorus functioned as a bridge instead, with Lennon being double-tracked. The last verse, "Always, no sometimes...", has three-part harmonies, with McCartney and Harrison singing "dreamy background vocals". This version was soon abandoned and went unreleased until the Anthology series in 1996.
Four days later the band reassembled to try a different arrangement. The second version of the song featured McCartney's mellotron introduction followed by the refrain. They recorded five takes of the basic tracks for this arrangement (two of which were false starts) with the last being chosen as best and subjected to further overdubs. Lennon's final vocal was recorded with the tape running fast so that when played back at normal speed the tonality would be altered, giving his voice a slurred sound. This version was used for the first minute of the released recording.
After recording the second version of the song, Lennon wanted to do something different with it, as Martin remembered: "He'd wanted it as a gentle dreaming song, but he said it had come out too raucous. He said could I write him a new line-up with the strings. So I wrote a new score [with four trumpets and three cellos] and we recorded that, but he didn't like it". Meanwhile, on 8 and 9 December, another basic track was recorded, using a mellotron, electric guitar, piano, backwards-recorded cymbals, and the swarmandel (or swordmandel), an Indian version of the zither. After reviewing the tapes of Martin's version and the original, Lennon told Martin that he liked both versions, although Martin had to tell Lennon that the orchestral score was at a higher tempo and in a different key (B major) than the first version (A major). Lennon said, "You can fix it, George", giving Martin and Emerick the difficult task of joining the two takes together. With only a pair of editing scissors, two tape machines, and a vari-speed control, Emerick compensated for the differences in key and speed by increasing the speed of the first version and decreasing the speed of the second. He then spliced the versions together, starting the orchestral score in the middle of the second chorus. (Since the first version did not include a chorus after the first verse, he also spliced in the first seven words of the chorus from elsewhere in the first version.) The pitch-shifting in joining the versions gave Lennon's lead vocal a slightly other-worldly "swimming" quality.
Lennon says something during the outro of the song. These words are difficult to understand as they were not a part of the vocal track but were picked up as leakage onto one of the drum overdubs (close listening shows Lennon making other comments to Ringo). It's believed to be Lennon saying "I buried Paul" causing a stir in the Paul is Dead hoax. In 1974, McCartney said, "That wasn't 'I buried Paul' at all—that was John saying 'cranberry sauce'. It was the end of Strawberry Fields. That's John's humour. John would say something totally out of sync, like cranberry sauce. If you don't realize that John's apt to say cranberry sauce when he feels like it, then you start to hear a funny little word there, and you think, 'Aha!'".
Release
When manager Brian Epstein pressed Martin for a new Beatles' single, Martin told Epstein that the group had recorded "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "Penny Lane", which were their two finest songs to date, in Martin's opinion. Epstein said they would issue the songs as a double A-side single, as they had done with their previous single, "Yellow Submarine"/"Eleanor Rigby". The single was released in the UK on 13 February 1967, and on 17 February 1967, in the US. Following The Beatles' philosophy that songs released on a single should not appear on new albums, both songs were ultimately left off Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, but Martin later admitted that this was a "dreadful mistake".
For the first time since "Love Me Do" in 1962, a single by The Beatles failed to reach number one in the UK charts. It was held at number two by Engelbert Humperdinck's "Release Me", because the BBC counted the two songs as two individual singles; discounting the fact that The Beatles’ single outsold Humperdinck's by almost two to one. In a radio interview at the time, McCartney said he was not upset because Humperdinck's song was a "completely different type of thing". Starr said later that it was "a relief" because "it took the pressure off". "Penny Lane" reached number one in the US, while "Strawberry Fields Forever" peaked at number eight. In the US, both songs were included on the Magical Mystery Tour LP, which was released as a six-track double-EP in the UK. When Magical Mystery Tour was re-released on CD, Parlophone chose the US LP track listing rather than the UK double-EP.
The song was the opening track of the compilation album 1967–1970, released in 1973, and also appears on the Imagine soundtrack issued in 1988. In 1996, three previously unreleased versions of the song were included on the Anthology 2 album: Lennon's original home demo, the first studio take, and the complete take seven, of which only the first minute was heard in the master version. In 2006, a newly mixed version of the song was included on the album Love. This version builds from an acoustic demo and incorporates elements of "Hello, Goodbye", "Baby You're a Rich Man", "In My Life", "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band", "Penny Lane", and "Piggies".
Promotion and reception
The promotional film for "Strawberry Fields Forever" was filmed on 30 and 31 January 1967, in Knole Park in Sevenoaks. It was directed by Swedish television director Peter Goldman. Goldman was a friend of Klaus Voormann, who had recommended Peter to the group. The film featured reverse film effects, stop motion animation, jump-cuts from daytime to night-time, and The Beatles playing and later pouring paint over an upright piano. The video for "Strawberry Fields Forever", along with that of "Penny Lane", was selected by New York's MoMA as two of the most influential music videos in the late 1960s. Both were originally broadcast in the US on 25 February 1967, on the variety show The Hollywood Palace, with actor Van Johnson as host. A cartoon based on the song was the final episode produced for The Beatles animated television series.
"Strawberry Fields Forever" was well-received by critics, and is still considered a classic today. Three weeks after its release, Time magazine hailed that the song as "the latest sample of The Beatles' astonishing inventiveness". Richie Unterberger of Allmusic hailed the song as "one of The Beatles' peak achievements and one of the finest Lennon-McCartney songs". Ian MacDonald wrote in Revolution In The Head that it "shows expression of a high order... few if any [contemporary composers] are capable of displaying feeling and fantasy so direct, spontaneous, and original." The song was ranked as the second-best Beatles’ song by Mojo, after "A Day in the Life".
Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys said that "Strawberry Fields Forever" was partially responsible for the shelving of his group's legendary unfinished album, SMiLE. Wilson first heard the song on his car radio whilst driving, and was so affected that he had to stop and listen to it all the way through. He then remarked to his passenger that The Beatles had already reached the sound The Beach Boys had wanted to achieve. Paul Revere & The Raiders were among the most successful US groups during 1966 and 1967, having their own Dick Clark-produced television show, Where the Action Is. Mark Lindsay (singer/saxophonist) heard the song on the radio, bought it, and then listened to it at home with his producer at the time, Terry Melcher. When the song ended Lindsay said, "Now what the ... are we gonna do?" later saying, "With that single, The Beatles raised the ante as to what a pop record should be".
The song returned to popularity 23 years later when British dance group Candy Flip released an electronic version of the song. The song was generally well-received, Allmusic describing it as "funkier and more club-happy than the Beatles' original" and was a commercial success on both sides of the Atlantic, reaching number three in the UK pop charts and number eleven on the U.S. Modern Rock Tracks chart.
Strawberry Fields was the name given to the "Bond girl" played by Gemma Arterton in the 2008 film Quantum of Solace.
Personnel
Other contributions:
- Mal Evans: tambourine
- Neil Aspinall: guiro
- Terry Doran: maracas
- Tony Fisher: trumpet
- Greg Bowen: trumpet
- Derek Watkins: trumpet
- Stanley Roderick: trumpet
- John Hall: cello
- Derek Simpson: cello
- Norman Jones: cello
- Backward tapes (cymbals and mellotron tracks played backwards and superimposed)
Sources
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