I AM THE WALRUS - THE BEATLES - A reader's response

My name is Eboni Walker, I am 15 years old, and a Beatles fanatic.

First, John wrote this to say a big "F#*& YOU" to all the people trying to analyze his work. His songs are just for fun.

Second, the " I am he as you are.." clearly parodies the opening line of the song Marching to Pretoria, by The Weavers: "I'm with you and you're with me and we are all together." It is also rumored that the "We are all together" was his way of trying to keep together the falling apart Beatles.

the lines "Mis-ter c-ity police-man sit-ting.." are to the rhythm of the siren.

Thirdly, "Yellow matter custard dripping from a dead dog's eye" is pieces borrowed from a childhood rhyme that they used to sing in the schoolyard:

So it's not really meant to be interpreted as "existential harshness," although i understand that's how you interpreted it because of your childhood discovery.

Finally, the song was not meant to make sense. It was actually written on 2 separate acid trips.

Despite these errors, i do agree with your thoughts on Ringo and his fantastic playing.

Eboni, thank you for taking the time to respond to my Beatles essay. You've got a couple of attributions of inspiration for the song that I haven't heard specifically. I hadn't thought of "Marching to Pretoria." I probably should have. I'm not sure that your connections contradict anything that I wrote though, so I wouldn't call those "errors."

John was certainly known to write several bits of cryptic lyrical nonsense in this time period to screw with overzealous Beatle fans trying to read way too much into their words. "Glass Onion" comes to mind in particular, explaining that "the Walrus was Paul." He apparently didn't particularly mean anything by that, other than to give silly people something to chew on.

Specifically, connecting the yellow matter custard lyric to a children's rhyme only re-inforces me connecting it to a childhood memory. The newness of this experience of death and decay to a child makes it that much more existentially harsh, whereas adults have more seen it all before and become somewhat de-sensitized. The sight of a dead dog is generally a much more raw experience for a child than an adult.

Lennon would likely say something from time to time denying any intent to profundity, affecting an admirable bit of humility. That's good. However, Lennon was clearly way beyond merely trying to make a spot of fun entertainment when he's writing, say, "Strawberry Fields" or "Across the Universe." There's some significant intentions of serious artistic statement there, even if some of the words don't entirely make a linear logical sense, or tell a discernable story.

Then again, some of the lack of cohesion would also be just being too high on heroin and lsd and every other damned thing he could lay his fool hands on to be bothered with working out the logic of the lyric.