Ten Interesting Facts About The Beatles Strawberry Fields Forever

the beatles strawberry feels forever the impetus for a stark transformative shift in not just the beatles songwriting but pop music cerebral and introspectively woven lyrics colored by visionary and in retrospect anticipatory instrumentation too few pieces of art can elicit such reverence from its audience and half a century later strawberry feels forever hangs like a sign with the words this is where music changed forever today we'll be discussing again the origin the meaning and the challenge that was the beatles strawberry feels forever let me take you down john lennon the main composer of strawberry fields enlisted his childhood memories for these lyrics as it began all those years ago when he was just a boy growing up in liverpool just a five-minute walk from john's house in menlov avenue loomed the large victorian building called strawberry fields it sat upon an expansive wooded piece of land on beckensfield road and was used as the salvation army's community home for children john mimi would often take him there gothic foreboding and wild the unmanicured mysterious garden fascinated john discovering that there was a direct path from his garden to strawberry fields john founded a place where he could be alone where he could escape john's future bandmate and friend paul mccartney recalls how john saw his secluded enchanted getaway paul says i've seen strawberry fields described as a dull grimy place next door to him that jon imagined to be a beautiful place but in the summer it wasn't dull and grimy at all it was a secret garden john's memory of it wasn't to do with the fact that it was a salvation army home that was up at the house there was a wall you could bunk over and it was a rather wild garden it wasn't manicured at all so it was easy to hide in the bit he went into was a secret garden like in the lion the witch and the wardrobe and he thought of it like that it was a little hideaway for him where he could maybe have a smoke live his dreams a little so it was a getaway it was an escape for jon it's difficult to claim when any song really begins for an artist this one arguably had its roots ever since jon entered his secret garden however the first documented whisper of strawberry fields was heard in september 1966. john was in the south of spain filming the movie how i won the war john shared a rental house with his co-star michael crawford in santa isabella it was there michael heard john's faint exploration of the song michael says john was a very enigmatic character there was not a lot revealed freely he was riding strawberry feels he sat himself in his bedroom and worked out melodies on his guitar i heard him playing the same bar over and over again until he got the right sequence it was interesting listening to how a song was written at the time i learned nothing about why these lyrics existed or why he was riding them he used to sit cross-legged on the beach or on the bed the two places where one would see him with a guitar and he would go strawberry feels forever well i'm not sure and i'd say oh it's great john really it's good i wouldn't mess with it it just sounded so great and he's going i'm not sure i'm not sure this repetition of the only verse john had can be heard in his demo recording but it is remarkable how keen john was to get his lyrics perfect where previously many of john and paul's songs were written rather quickly the two lobbing ideas at one another and volleying chords john sought out to ensure these lyrics had all the time they needed john says we were in almeria and it took me six weeks to write the song i was writing it all the time as i was making the film and anybody knows that film work there's a lot of hanging around i have an original tape of it somewhere of how it sounded before it became the psychedelic sounding song it became on the record ruminating on his own history in life as he had done in songs before and after like in my life julia and a day in the life john mentioned strawberry feels to be along with help on the few true songs he has ever written writing from experience and not projecting himself into a situation john says the second line goes no one i think is in my tree well what i was trying to say in that line is nobody seems to be as hip as me therefore i must be crazy or genius it's the same problem as i had when i was five there's something wrong with me because i seem to see things other people don't see am i crazy or am i a genius what i'm saying is in my insecure way is nobody seems to understand where i'm coming from i seem to see things in a different way for most people strawberry fields was a psychoanalysis set to music really i think most analysis is just symptomatic where you just talk about yourself and i don't need to do that because i've done a lot of it with reporters i never had time for psychiatrists and those people because they're all cracked instead of penting up emotion or pain feel it rather than put it away for a rainy day i think everyone's blocked i haven't met anybody that isn't a complete blockage of pain from childhood from birth on why shouldn't we cry they tell us to stop crying about 12 be a man what the hell is that men hurt as the beatles george martin and engineers including jeff emerick reconvened in the studio the band established quite succinctly and unanimously that now that they were no longer touring they could record music that wasn't intended for live performances a new kind of record with new kinds of songs producer george martin at the end of this illuminating meeting responds right then let's get to work what have you got for me jeff emrick recalls paul starting to speak but john beat him to the punch hollering i've got a good one for a starter jeffer calls paul with a half smile shrugged his shoulders and back down jeff also remembers the incredible moment when john lennon showed his world strawberry feels for the first time and this my friends has got to be the most haunting quote i've ever seen in relation to music jeff says down in the studio george martin was perched as usual on his high stool positioned in the midst of the four beetles john was standing directly in front of him playing an acoustic guitar and singing softly because he wasn't close to any of the microphones we had arranged around the room i had to push the faders up quite high to hear him from the very first note it was obvious that this new lennon song was a masterpiece he had created a gentle almost mystical tribute to some mysterious place a place called strawberry fields i had no idea what the lyrics were about but the words were compelling like abstract poetry and there was something magical in the spooky detached timber of john's voice when he finished there was a moment of stunned silence broken by paul who in a quiet respectful tone said simply this is absolutely brilliant most of the times when lenin played one of his songs for us for the first time on acoustic guitar we'd all think wow that's great but this song was clearly something special i brought a tape demo of the song with me too john said offering to play it but everyone agreed there was no need they wanted to get straight into recording the energy in the room was staggering it was almost as if the band's creative energy had been bottled up for too long there is an assumed risk when one decides to push boundaries if you fail you may as well be pushing daisies but this is where the beetles flourished and in no small part to the iconic addition of the melotron played and composed by paul mccartney oh so we think john acquired this beast of an instrument in the summer of 1965 but it had not been brought into the studio onto the days of recording strawberry fields don described it as a machine some guy in britain invented and had tape loops on jazz bands trumpets flutes and rhythm sections on it each key triggered a loop of a real instrument that played the equivalent note much like today with a midi keyboard but way more obnoxious but jeff emrick mentions that the big breakthrough that night was paul coming up with that stunning meletron line that opens a song paul's inspiration really set the stage it was paul as usual who discovered the musical potential instead of just the novelty value within a remarkably short time he worked out an arrangement that beautifully complemented lennon's haunting vocal line [Music] but even though paul brought it in and changed the game it has to be mentioned that in the beatles movie the first u.s visit filmed in 1964 years before strawberry feels jon can be heard playing a melodion with strikingly similar notes to paul's melotron introduction the question is did don actually come up with it and paul simply remembered it unconsciously and put it to use eight o'clock channel two and three do you want to follow this [Music] was one of the most complicated beatles recordings to date with george martin not only creating the arrangements for the orchestra but spending a whopping 55 hours of studio time completing the song not to mention it was also recorded over eight different dates with endless revisions and different hands in the pot the song became a creature of its own some days overdubs others orchestra melotron backing vocals all this leading to jon finally saying he liked both the takes they did on november 29th the more intense take and he told george martin he would like a combination of the two takes here's a problem with that george martin says to john there are two things against it they are in different keys and different tempos apart from that we're fine well john said you can fix it george martin and jeff emerick began studying the tapes at john's outlandish request the takes were a semitone apart but if they sped up the first version and slowed down the other they could make a match george says with the grace of god and a bit of luck you can hear this edit at 60 seconds into the song right before the words going to in the second course where the two takes were merged that is insane considering the limitations of technology at the time honestly now if i had to do something like that i would have a panic attack after deciding that their next single was a double a side featuring strawberry fields and penny lane the beatles created promotional films for both songs directed by swedish director tomi bramwell strawberry fields took place mainly around a dead oak tree in no park in seven oaks kent owned by the national trust they intended for there to be a sequence where paul would drop down from a tree but the lighting was less than optimal on their first day on the final day of filming they were able to nail the drop and reverse it in post making it seem paul had leapt into the tree while filming the promo as luck usually has a way of showing up when you least expected john took a break from filming strawberry fields and strolled into an old antique shop nearby the park only to purchase a circus poster dating back to the mid-1800s the poster advertised a circus in rochdale and would later be the inspiration for being for the benefit of mr kite john really did have a way of letting chance kind of guide his songwriting george martin was a genius an integral to making the beatles grow and develop into the musicians we know today but that doesn't mean mistakes don't happen there's a saying the master has failed more times than the apprentice has tried well the master of george martin regretted his decision to make a double a side album with strawberry fields and penny lane george martin says the idea of a double a side came from me and brian brian was desperate to recover popularity and so we wanted to make sure that we had a marvelous seller he came to me and said i must have a really great single what have you got i said well i've got three tracks and two of them are the best tracks they've ever made we could put the two together and make a smashing single we did and it was a smashing single but it was also a dreadful mistake we would have sold far more and got higher up in the charts if we had issued one of those with say when i'm 64 on the back with its release the single failed to top the singles chart the first time for a beetle single since please please me nothing goads beetles fans into discord then the utterance of the paul is dead conspiracy cranberry sauce being reversed sounds a lot like well we won't get into that but why exactly is john saying cranberry sauce well a little fact i think is just charming is that they were recording the song around the time of the american thanksgiving holiday they had all been chatting about turkey and all the trimmings and how americans traditionally ate such a meal at that time of year jeff emrick recalls saying that's the way john was he'd often work little phrases or snatches of conversation about something he had been recently reading or talking about into the music he was recording i'm sorry to disappoint anyone who ever bought into this rubbish but paul was in fact very much alive and well and there was never any kind of plan to fool the public by scattering clues about his supposed demise strawberry fills for those of you who have been with the channel since the beginning you may remember we've done an episode on it before but i've just been in a lyrical rut i'm currently working on my second album the music is coming it's relentless but i find myself second guessing the lyrics i'm asking a lot more of myself it seems i don't know what i'm looking for just something honest and my mind just started flitting back to that song the way john spoke honestly without hesitation but curated that hesitancy into an unforgettable and moving piece of music these videos not only exist that's my job but another part of my writing process i get insight into songs i love from composers i admire and of course i can't very well sit next to them and ask them anything i have to listen which is hard when all you really want to do is sing well that's all for today everyone i do hope you enjoyed the video speaking of my music you can check it out on spotify apple etc you can support the channel on patreon for like a dollar and i'll see you next time [Music] so you

Channel: The HollyHobs

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Keywords: the beatles, strawberry fields, strawberry fields forever, strawberry fields beatles, strawberry fields forever beatles, ten interesting facts about the beatles, ten interesting facts, facts, beatles facts, the hollyhobs, hollyhobs

Id: NfekeF1iP3I

Length: 14min 6sec (846 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 21 2020

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[u/Snoo13786]

Number 11 john is trapped in strawberry fields forever