Part of an irregular series of bite-sized posts about 7″ singles I own – shameless nostalgia from the days of vinyl. (Search ‘Backtracking’ to collect the set!)
THE BEATLES – Hello Goodbye b/w I Am The Walrus (Parlophone Records, 1967)
At the impressionable age of 9, The Beatles filled my musical world. John, Paul, George and Ringo seemed like exotic family members I never got to meet but were ever-present.
Up to the time of Magical Mystery Tour their songs had always been accessible and hummable. When you heard them they made you feel good in a pure, uncomplicated way.
Nothing about them was in any way threatening which is probably why Mom and Dad so easily embraced them as a positive influence. The brisk, easy-going charm of Hello Goodbye typified the freshness and immediacy of their melodies.
All this explains why the b-side to this single came as such a shock. On first listen, it was like the ravings of a favourite uncle showing the first signs of senility. Nothing about it made any sense. Surely pop songs were meant to be inspirational, hopeful messages of love and freedom, not full of nonsensical lines like “Yellow matter custard dripping from a dead dog’s eye” or playground chants like “Oompah oompah stick it up your jumper”.
Although it made me uncomfortable, I kept returning to it with the same instinct that makes you want to pick at a scab even though you know you should leave it alone. Gradually, loathing turned to fascination and finally to admiration.
With hindsight, it is a masterpiece of anti-establishment vitriol disguised as an Alice In Wonderland style romp. Ian MacDonald rightly identifies “a damn-you-England tirade that blasts education, art, culture, law, order, class, religion and even sense itself” and called it “the most idiosyncratic protest song ever written”.
The BBC immediately recognised its subversive potential although probably didn’t fully understand why exactly it was subversive. It was banned from radio broadcasts allegedly due to the sexual implications of the line “Oh, you’ve been a naughty girl, you’ve let your knickers down”.
I always think of I Am The Walrus as a kind of epiphany in that it opened my ears to the possibilities of rock/pop music. John Lennon’s LSD fuelled genius was my introduction to music that could unlock the imagination in a unique way and left me desperate to discover more where it came from.
John looked really good in that song. Normally, I wish that I was Paul, since he’s more handsome, (and more romantic, I think), but John just did a kick-ass sexy job in “I Am The Walrus”. And he looks so totally awesome.
I sorta understand about the songs being different. Like, “Hello Goodbye” is one of Paul’s, and Walrus is one of John’s, and usually the ones that Paul are pretty different from the ones that John wrote. It’s sorta one of the contrasts that makes the Beatles so interesting. Although not the only one. (Like, George wrote some too, but that’s a story all to itself.) But, yeah, usually I like Paul’s better, and I think that they’re more romantic usually. John is…. very John. Obviously.
But in this one, I think, well it’s still very John, obviously. “Hello Goodbye” is somewhat more straight-forward, obviously, although it is a clever song and it is very exciting with lots of bright colors and everything– that is not the outfit that they wore to the Ed Sullivan Show in years past.
But the fun thing about the Walrus song, (and if you’ve seen “50 First Dates”, you’ll know what he means by “walrus”), is that John just kinda embraces his…. sexiness. It’s still very John. It’s actually somewhat…. mystical, to use a word that got hurled at George as an insult. It’s not obvious, in that sense, and it uses symbolism– but the symbolism is all about feeling, and, basically, love. And also about how he feels about stuff that gets in the way of love. But it’s not a bitter song, and it’s not even sad, the way that John got alot sometimes.
I mean– the thing about the police, for example. He’s not saying that the police are stupid because England is bollocks or anything like that, that much seems clear to me, (the clear-thinking American, lol). No, he’s the walrus, full of fertility, and he’s a *real man*, and so….. well, he can’t help but feel bad– he feels bad about these policemen who kinda automatons, and so…. they’re not like, real men. They totally lose sight of that. They’re just…. uniforms.
And, even though it’s not sad somehow, he says alot– “I’m crying”. And he is, somehow. John was a very sensitive man, I think, even though he didn’t *always* seem that way. He felt things.
Anyway, the point of it, the whole song in a nutshell, (and you notice how there’s that little different part before it)–
“Sitting in an English garden, waiting for the sun to come
If the sun don’t come you get a tan from standing in the English rain.”
There’s a lot of good stuff in this song, but as long as you get this part, you’ve basically got it, in my opinion.
It seems like not what you’d expect, because people don’t get tan– sunburn, right– from being in the rain when it’s all cloudy. But, sometimes the sun is good– think of George’s famous song, “Here Comes The Sun”, which, in a subtle way, also can sorta be a fun fertility symbol. (In religions with pornographic priestesses, the Sun is a symbol of the God, and the Moon of the Goddess…. so the Sun is kinda, masculine…. like the walrus.) The point is that John is turning the word around– instead of the damage coming from too much sun, it comes from too little.
Girls wait for their prince to come. Like Cinderella, right, her life is shit at first because of her bitch sisters who make her work like a bastard, and that sucks. Girls don’t want to have to work like a bastard for their bitch sisters who don’t give a damn about them. They want their prince to come and court them and marry them and make things okay for them.
So they are– sitting in an English garden, waiting for the sun to come
But– if the sun don’t come you get a tan from standing in the English rain.
Once it makes sense, it’s actually the best and easiest and simplest way to say it, really.
And he uses the words right– you sit in the garden, you stand in the rain.
And some people spend their whole lives standing in the rain, really, yes, really– and that’s what he’s trying so hard to save them from…. nothing else matters, really, not the British army or the Liverpool police, just the…. life, you know, back home.
And both the good and bad can be English– the English garden, the English rain….
I guess that if were Russian, he’s have said, the Russian ballet, the Russian mafia.
But John Lennon was English, so he talked about English things, actually.
For all it’s John-ness, on some level it’s almost like something that Paul would write– in a way it’s not too different from “Penny Lane” or something.