The Beatles spent the 1960s carving out a cultural legacy like no other. As they pioneered new feats in musical engineering, penned some of the most enduring songs in music history, and fostered Beatlemania across the world, the Liverpudlian lads were unknowingly becoming the biggest band of all time. But all great things must come to an end, and the Fab Four are no exception to that rule.
The internal relations in the band had started out strong. In the early years, the collaborative partnership between John Lennon and Paul McCartney was a particularly close and lucrative one, as the duo worked together to pen future all-time greats. But as the years passed, creative tensions began to brew and the pair grew apart, preferring to work alone.
The issues between the Beatles bandmates became particularly evident during the making of their 1968 self-titled album, also known as the White Album. Between the death of their manager Brian Epstein a year earlier, McCartney’s creative dominance, and Lennon’s increasing distance from the band, emotions were running high during recording. Ringo Starr even walked out of the sessions on one occasion.
A Beatles breakup was on the horizon, and the band themselves knew it. As a parting gift to his former partner-in-songwriting, then, Lennon penned a subtle ode to McCartney in the nonsensical third track on the White Album. Opening with the words, “I told you about Strawberry Fields, you know the place where nothing is real,” ‘Glass Onion’ is filled to the brim with easter eggs and references to the band’s earlier output.
One of the most elusive references comes in the song’s second verse. “I told you about the walrus and me, man, you know that we’re as close as can be, man,” Lennon sings, “Well, here’s another clue for you all, the walrus was Paul.” The verse is an obvious callback to Lennon’s earlier song about the tusked animal, ‘I Am the Walrus’ from Magical Mystery Tour, but what exactly did he mean when he equated Paul to the walrus?
The content of the verse seems to contradict the state of Lennon and McCartney’s relationship during this turbulent period. They were nowhere near as close as they once were, but Lennon still hoped to honour his partner’s efforts to save the band in those final years. “I was still in my love cloud with Yoko,” he explained to Rolling Stone, “and I thought, ‘Well, I’ll just say something nice to Paul’.”
According to the Beatles songwriter, he was trying to thank Paul and to tell him, “It’s all right, you did a good job over these few years, holding us together.” Lennon was happy in his relationship with Yoko and suggested that he was willing to give McCartney the credit.
Those seemingly playful lyrics about friendship with a walrus had much more depth to them than on first listen. Lennon’s words seemed to foreshadow the end of his songwriting partnership with McCartney and, eventually, the end of the Beatles altogether. He knew that they were growing apart, and wanted to show his partner one last token of appreciation.
It would be three more years and three more albums before the Fab Four finally did go their separate ways, prompted by Lennon’s decision to leave the band in late 1969.
Listen to ‘Glass Onion’ by The Beatles below.
