"I Am the Walrus" is a 1967 song by The Beatles, written by John Lennon and credited to Lennon–McCartney.^[1] Lennon claimed he wrote the first two lines on separate acid trips.^[2] The song was in the Beatles' 1967 television film and album Magical Mystery Tour, and was the B-side to the #1 hit "Hello, Goodbye".

Lennon composed the song by combining three songs he had been working on. When he learned that a teacher at his old primary school was having his students analyse Beatles' lyrics, he added a verse of nonsense words.^[3]

The walrus is a reference to the walrus in Lewis Carroll's poem "The Walrus and the Carpenter" (from the book Through the Looking-Glass). Lennon expressed dismay upon belatedly realising that the walrus was a villain in the poem.^[4]

Composition[link]

The genesis of the lyrics is found in three song ideas that Lennon was working on, the first of which was inspired by hearing a police siren at his home in Weybridge; Lennon wrote the lines "Mis-ter cit-y police-man" to the rhythm and melody of the siren. The second idea was a short rhyme about Lennon sitting in his garden, while the third was a nonsense lyric about sitting on a corn flake. Unable to finish the ideas as three different songs, he combined them into one.

Lennon received a letter from a pupil at Quarry Bank High School, which he had attended. The writer mentioned that the English master was making his class analyse Beatles' lyrics. (Lennon wrote an answer, dated 1 September 1967, which was auctioned by Christie's of London in 1992). Lennon, amused that a teacher was putting so much effort into understanding the Beatles' lyrics, wrote the most confusing lyrics he could. Lennon's friend and former fellow member of The Quarrymen, Peter Shotton, was visiting, and Lennon asked Shotton about a playground nursery rhyme they sang as children.

Shotton remembered:

"Yellow matter custard, green slop pie,

All mixed together with a dead dog's eye,

Slap it on a butty, ten foot thick,

Then wash it all down with a cup of cold sick".^[5]

Lennon borrowed a couple of words, added the three unfinished ideas and the result was "I Am the Walrus". The Beatles' official biographer Hunter Davies was present while the song was being written and wrote an account in his 1968 biography of the Beatles. Lennon remarked to Shotton, "Let the fuckers work that one out."^[6] Shotton was also responsible for suggesting to Lennon to change the lyric "waiting for the man to come" to "waiting for the van to come".

Lennon explained much of the song to Playboy in 1980:^[2]

• "The first line was written on one acid trip one weekend. The second line was written on the next acid trip the next weekend, and it was filled in after I met Yoko... I'd seen Allen Ginsberg and some other people who liked Dylan and Jesus going on about Hare Krishna. It was Ginsberg, in particular, I was referring to. The words "Element'ry penguin" meant that it's naïve to just go around chanting Hare Krishna or putting all your faith in one idol. In those days I was writing obscurely, a la Dylan."
• "It never dawned on me that Lewis Carroll was commenting on the capitalist system. I never went into that bit about what he really meant, like people are doing with the Beatles' work. Later, I went back and looked at it and realized that the walrus was the bad guy in the story and the carpenter was the good guy. I thought, Oh, shit, I picked the wrong guy. I should have said, 'I am the carpenter.' But that wouldn't have been the same, would it? [Sings, laughing] 'I am the carpenter....'"

Musical structure[link]

All the chords are major chords or seventh chords, and all the musical letters of the alphabet (A, B, C, D, E, F and G) are used. The song ends with a chord progression built on ascending and descending lines in the bass and strings, repeated over and over as the song fades. Musicologist Alan W. Pollack analyses: "The chord progression of the outro itself is a harmonic Moebius strip with scales in bassline and top voice that move in contrary motion."^[7] The bassline descends stepwise A, G, F, E, D, C, and B, while the strings' part rises A, B, C, D, E, F#, G: this sequence repeats as the song fades, with the strings rising higher on each iteration. Pollack also notes that the repeated cell is seven bars long, which means that a different chord begins each four-bar phrase.

The song is in the key of A and the instrumental introduction starts in the Lydian mode of B major.^[8] Verse 1 begins with a I-♭III-IV-I rock pattern: "I am he" (A chord)..."you are me" (C chord) "and we are all toge..." (D chord) "...ther" (A chord). Verse 2, however, involves a ♭VI-♭VII-I Aeolian ascent: "waiting" (F chord) "for the van" (G chord) "to come" (A chord). The chorus uses a ♭III-IV-I pattern: "I am the egg-man (C chord) "they are the egg-men (D chord). "I am the walrus (E chord), "goo goo g'joob" hanging as an imperfect cadence until resolved with the I (A chord) on "Mr City Policeman."^[9] At the line "Sitting in an English garden" the D# melody note (as in the instrumental introduction) establishes a Lydian mode (sharp 4th note in the scale) and this mode is emphasised more strongly with the addition of a D# note to the B chord on "If the sun don't come."^[10]

Recording[link]

"I Am the Walrus" was the first studio recording made after the death of the Beatles' manager Brian Epstein in August 1967. The basic backing track featuring the Beatles was released in 1996 on Anthology 2. George Martin arranged and added orchestral accompaniment that included violins, cellos, horns, clarinet and a 16-piece choir. Paul McCartney said that Lennon gave instructions to Martin as to how he wished the orchestration to be scored, including singing most of the parts as a guide. A large group of professional studio vocalists named The Mike Sammes Singers, took part in the recording as well, variously singing "Ho-ho-ho, hee-hee-hee, ha-ha-ha", "oompah, oompah, stick it up your jumper!", "everybody's got one" and making a series of shrill whooping noises.^[11] The recording is another Beatles song with an unrelated coda, in the shape of new parts of strings, new choruses and the sampling of a radio in its fade-out.^[12]

The dramatic reading in the mix towards the end of the song is a few lines of Shakespeare's King Lear (Act IV, Scene VI), which were added to the song direct from an AM radio Lennon was fiddling with that happened to be receiving the broadcast of the play on the BBC Third Programme.^[13] The excerpt begins at Act IV, Sc vi,II lines 224-25, most pointedly (given Lennon's problematic history with his own father) where the disguised Edgar talks to his estranged and maliciously blinded father the Earl of Gloucester: Glo: "Now good sir, what are you? Edg: A most poor man, made tame to fortune's blows." Edgar then kills Oswald the steward of Goneril (who cries out "Slave, thou has't slain me"). Edgar describes the dead Oswald in words heard in the song's coda as a "serviceable villain." Gloucester asks "What, is he dead?" and Edgar replies "Sit ye down father rest you."^[14]

Different versions[link]

In the original (1967) stereo release, at around two minutes through the song, the mix changes from true stereo to "fake stereo". This came about because the radio broadcast had been added 'live', off-air, into the mono mix-down and so was unavailable for inclusion in the stereo mix; hence, fake stereo from the mono mix was created for this portion of the song.^[15]

The mono version opens with a four-beat chord while the stereo mix features six beats on the initial chord. The four-beat-only-intro is also included on a different stereo mix (overseen by George Martin) for the most recent home video version of Magical Mystery Tour, especially the US Magical Mystery Tour album. The US mono single mix includes an extra bar of music before the words "yellow matter custard"; an early, overdub-free mix of the song released on Anthology 2 reveals John singing the lyrics "Yellow mat -" too early—this was edited out. A hybrid version prepared for the 1980 US Rarities LP combines the six-beat opening with the extra bar of music that precedes the words "yellow matter custard" (from the aforementioned US mono single mix).^[16]

The Jean Beaudin psychedelic 1969 short subject Vertige^[17] uses as the entirety of its soundtrack the song slowed down 800 times.^[18]

A full stereo digital remix was done for the Cirque du Soleil show Love and album of the same name, released in 2006. Producers George and Giles Martin were allowed access to early generations of the original master tapes. Musical parts that had previously been mixed together were now available as separate elements. These tracks were transferred digitally and lined up to create new multi-track sources from which a new mix would be made.

On the 1998 album In My Life, a compilation album produced by George Martin, Jim Carrey performs the song.

A version of the song performed by Bono (of the band U2) can be seen in the 2007 Beatles-inspired musical movie, Across the Universe, directed by Julie Taymor.

Personnel[link]

• John Lennon – lead vocal, electric piano, mellotron
• Paul McCartney – bass, tambourine, backing vocal
• George Harrison – electric guitar, backing vocal
• Ringo Starr – drums

• Orchestrated, directed and produced by George Martin.
• Session musicians: strings, brass and woodwinds.
• Mike Sammes singers – background vocals.
• Engineered by Geoff Emerick and Ken Scott.
• Mixed by Geoff Emerick and John Lennon.

Reception[link]

Critical reception at the time of the track's release was largely positive:

• "John growls the nonsense (and sometimes suggestive) lyric, backed by a complex scoring incorporating violins and cellos. You need to hear it a few times before you can absorb it." – Derek Johnson^[19]

• "Into the world of Alice in Wonderland now and you can almost visualise John crouching on a deserted shore singing "I am the Walrus" to some beautiful strings from far away on the horizon and a whole bagful of Beatle sounds, like a ringing doorbell and someone sawing a plank of wood. A fantastic track which you will need to live with for a while to fully appreciate." – Nick Logan^[20]

Interpretation[link]

Although it has been reported that Lennon wrote "I am the Walrus" to confuse those who tried to interpret his songs, there have been many attempts to analyse the meaning of the lyrics.^[21][22]

Seen in the Magical Mystery Tour film singing the song, Lennon, apparently, is the walrus; on the track-list of the accompanying soundtrack EP/LP however, underneath "I Am the Walrus" are printed the words ' "No you're not!" said Little Nicola' (in the film, Nicola is a little girl who keeps contradicting everything the other characters say). Lennon returned to the subject in the lyrics of three of his subsequent songs: in the 1968 Beatles song "Glass Onion" he sings "now here's another clue for you all — the walrus was Paul", ^[23]; in the third verse of "Come Together" he sings the line "he bag production, he got walrus gumboot", and in his 1970 solo song "God", admits "I was the walrus, but now I'm John."

Eric Burdon, lead singer of The Animals, claims to be the 'Eggman' mentioned in the song's lyric. Burdon was known as 'Eggs' to his friends, the nickname originating from his fondness for breaking eggs over naked women's bodies. Burdon's biography mentions such an affair taking place in the presence of John Lennon, who shouted "Go on, go get it, Eggman..."^[24]

Other recordings[link]

In 2004, Styx performed the song at Eric Clapton's Crossroads Guitar Festival and released the live version a single. It reached #10 on the Mediabase Classic Rock charts.^[25]

Oasis recorded a version of the song in 1994, first released as a B-side of their single "Cigarettes & Alcohol" in the same year. It was also included on their B-sides compilation album The Masterplan in 1998. According to the liner notes of this album, Oasis also played the song live in Manchester before they were well known.

Oingo Boingo also recorded a version in 1994, released on their album Boingo.

Men Without Hats covered it on their 1991 album Sideways, listing the track as "I Am The Walrus ("No you're not", Said Little Nicola)".

Genesis sampled this song in their track "Looking for Someone". ^[26]

Notes[link]

References[link]

The Walrus is a Canadian general interest magazine which publishes long form journalism on Canadian and international affairs, along with fiction and poetry by Canadian writers. It launched in September 2003, as an attempt to create a Canadian equivalent to American magazines such as Harper's, The Atlantic Monthly or The New Yorker. The magazine's mandate is "to be a national general interest magazine about Canada and its place in the world. We are committed to publishing the best work by the best writers from Canada and elsewhere on a wide range of topics for readers who are curious about the world."^[2] The magazine is published by the charitable, not-for-profit Walrus Foundation, and won the 2006 National Magazine Award for Magazine of the Year in Canada.

History[link]

In 2002, David Berlin, a former editor and owner of the Literary Review of Canada, began promoting his vision of a world-class Canadian magazine. This led him to meet with then-Harper's editor Lewis H. Lapham to discuss creating a "Harper's North," which would combine the American magazine with 40 pages of Canadian content.^[3] As Berlin searched for funding to create that content, a mutual friend put him in touch with Ken Alexander, a former high school English and history teacher and then senior producer of CBC Newsworld's CounterSpin. Like Berlin, Alexander was hoping to found an intelligent Canadian magazine that dealt with world affairs. Before long, the Chawkers Foundation, run by Alexander's family, had agreed to provide the prospective magazine with $5 million over five years, and the George Cedric Metcalf Charitable Foundation promised $150,000 for an internship program. This provided enough money to get by without the partnership with Harper's.^[3]

The "walrus" name was at first a working title, but quickly grew on the staff of the magazine.^[4] According to their website, the rationale behind it was "to dissociate this country with the 'log chomping' and 'earnestness' of our national animal (and cliché), the beaver"; the walrus, just as much a Canadian native, is "curmudgeonly but clever, bulky but agile (if only in water)."^[2] Most importantly, in the words of David Berlin, "No one ignores a walrus."^[5]

Berlin resigned as editor in 2004, and Ken Alexander ended his tumultuous reign as publisher, then editor, in June 2008.^[6] John Macfarlane, former editor-in-chief of Toronto Life and publisher of Saturday Night, joined The Walrus in July 2008 as editor and co-publisher. With newly returned art director Brian Morgan, Macfarlane oversaw a revamping of the editorial and art direction of the magazine. The new Walrus was to be more consistent and current, with a "far more internally driven" process for story selection, and the reworked cover featuring illustrations that correspond to each issue's content.^[7]

The Walrus has received critical acclaim since its launch: its two 2003 issues alone garnered eleven National Magazine Award nominations and three wins,^[8] and the Utne Reader awarded it the prize for best new publication in 2004.^[9] As of April 2011, it has consistently led in the National Magazine Awards,^[10][11] earning a total of 70 wins and 231 nominations to date.^[8]

In January 2012, High Fidelity HDTV and The Walrus announced plans to air fourteen "original high-definition documentaries" derived from content from The Walrus that had been produced since April 2011.^[12] The two companies plan on creating more documentaries in the future.^[12]

Finances[link]

Though The Walrus was initially pledged $1 million annually by the Chawkers Foundation for its first five years, it was unable to access this money without first being recognized as a charitable organization by the Canada Revenue Agency. Ken Alexander was forced to support the magazine out of his own pocket until it finally received charitable status in 2005, creating the charitable non-profit Walrus Foundation.^[13] In addition to publishing the magazine, the Foundation runs events across Canada, including talks and debates on public policy.^[14]

In the relatively small and geographically dispersed Canadian market, magazines producing long-form journalism have often struggled to stay afloat. Saturday Night, which The Walrus editor John Macfarlane formerly published, lost money continuously despite being a celebrated publication^[15]. But as Macfarlane reports, The Walrus's charitable model, similar to that of Harper's, is so far sustaining it: donations covered about half of the costs of producing the magazine in 2010, with the traditional revenue streams of circulation and advertising providing the rest.^[15] This is all the more important for the magazine because its educational mandate requires that it keep a ratio of no less than 70 percent editorial content to 30 percent advertising.^[16]

Selected contributors[link]

References[link]

1. ^ Legault, Tim (March 3 2010), "Being the Walrus", The Varsity, http://thevarsity.ca/articles/27705, retrieved April 4 2011 
2. ^ ^{a b} "About The Walrus"
3. ^ ^{a b} Brown, Liz (2004), "The Walrus Loses Its Carpenter", Ryerson Review of Journalism, http://www.rrj.ca/m3826/, retrieved April 21 2011 
4. ^ "Letters October 2003", The Walrus, October 2003, http://www.walrusmagazine.com/articles/2003.10-letters-october-2003/, retrieved April 21 2011 
5. ^ Ambrose, Shelley; Macfarlane, John (October/November 2008), "You are The Walrus. Happy 5th Anniversary!", The Walrus, http://www.walrusmagazine.com/articles/2008.10-walrus-magazine-fifth-anniversary-john-macfarlane-shelley-ambrose/, retrieved April 21 2011 
6. ^ Scott, D. B. (June 10 2008), Ken Alexander resigns as editor of The Walrus, http://canadianmags.blogspot.com/2008/06/ken-alexander-resigns-as-editor-of.html, retrieved April 21 2011 
7. ^ Adams, James (February 27 2009), "A new ethos for the still-endangered Walrus", The Globe and Mail, http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/a-new-ethos-for-the-still-endangered-walrus/article974514/singlepage/, retrieved April 21 2011 
8. ^ ^{a b} "Past Awards"
9. ^ Utne Reader Staff (January-February 2005), "The 2004 Utne Independent Press Awards", Utne Reader, http://www.utne.com/2005-01-01/2004UtneIndependentPressAwards.aspx, retrieved April 21 2011 
10. ^ Adams, James (June 7 2008), "The Walrus dominates National Magazine Awards", The Globe and Mail, http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/the-walrus-dominates-national-magazine-awards/article40144/, retrieved April 21 2011 
11. ^ "Up Here top magazine but Walrus snags prizes", CBC News, June 5 2010, http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/media/story/2010/06/05/magazine-award-winners.html, retrieved April 21 2011 
12. ^ ^{a b} Adams, James (10 January 2012). "Walrus magazine branches out into television". The Globe and Mail. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/television/walrus-magazine-branches-out-into-television/article2296327/. Retrieved 2012-01-10. 
13. ^ Khimani, Shireen (Feb 6 2006), "The Fruits of Victory", Ryerson Review of Journalism, http://www.rrj.ca/m3544/, retrieved Apr 26 2011 
14. ^ Meyer, Theo (Apr 5 2011), "Cultural critics face off at Walrus debate", The McGill Tribune, http://www.mcgilltribune.com/news/cultural-critics-face-off-at-walrus-debate-1.2141860, retrieved Apr 26 2011 
15. ^ ^{a b} Macfarlane, John (May 2011), "Editor's Note", The Walrus, http://walrusmagazine.com/articles/2011.05-editors-note/, retrieved April 26 2011 
16. ^ McKeon, Lauren (Summer 2007), "Into the Wild", Ryerson Review of Journalism, http://www.rrj.ca/m4089/, retrieved April 26 2011 

External links[link]

• The Walrus
• WalrusTV