“I Picked the Wrong Guy”: The Mistake John Lennon Realized He Made When Writing “I Am ...
Good poetry often requires multiple readings to reveal its true message—a literary lesson that John Lennon learned the hard way after writing “I Am the Walrus.” The former Beatle wrote the Magical Mystery Tour track over several weeks, pulling inspiration from an appropriately eccentric list of resources, including LSD, Shakespearian BBC broadcasts, and plenty of social commentary. “I was writing obscurely, á la Dylan, those days,” Lennon later said of his distinctly odd composition in a 1980 Playboy interview.
But as it turns out, Lewis Carroll, one of Lennon’s literary inspirations, was also a fan of writing obscurely. Consequently, Lennon ended up basing “I Am the Walrus” on the wrong character in “The Walrus and the Carpenter.”
John Lennon Later Realized His Mistake On “I Am The Walrus”
Years before John Lennon would write one of the Beatles’ most psychedelic tracks, the musician dabbled in prose writing with his 1964 book, In His Own Write. Lennon and critics alike attributed his nonsensical dialect and sense of humor to the English author Lewis Carroll. Carroll, of course, penned iconic works like Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. The latter book contains the poem “The Walrus and the Carpenter.” In the book, the characters Tweedledum and Tweedledee recite to the series’ titular character, Alice.
“The Walrus and the Carpenter” follows a sea creature and laborer walking down a beach when they find a bed of oysters. Both the walrus and the carpenter implore the oysters to walk with them down the shore.
Source: americansongwriter.com/Melanie Davis
