Many fans were confused by The Beatles‘ “I Am the Walrus”. It contained surreal, nonsensical lyrics with instrumentals that sounded otherworldly. John Lennon based many of the lyrics on stories by Lewis Carroll, such as Alice in Wonderland. However, many were trying to discern who the “Eggman” was whom Lennon referred to in the chorus. According to a friend of The Beatles’ manager Brian Epstein, he is the infamous Eggman who Lennon sang about.
Eric Burdon is the “Eggman” John Lennon refers to in The Beatles’ ‘I Am the Walrus’
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“I Am the Walrus” was written by John Lennon and debuted in 1967 on the Magical Mystery Tour soundtrack. It was recorded two weeks after the sudden death of The Beatles’ manager Brian Epstein. Eric Burdon was a friend of Epstein’s who constantly hung around the fab four, embarking on various misadventures with them.
In Burdon’s autobiography, Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood, he shared a rather crude story about an incident with an egg in Jamaica. He later relayed the story to John Lennon, who named him “Eggman.”
“The nickname stuck after a wild experience I’d had at the time with a Jamaican girlfriend called Sylvia,” Burdon wrote. “I was up early one morning cooking breakfast, naked except for my socks, and she slid up beside me and slipped an amyl nitrate capsule under my nose. As the fumes set my brain alight and I slid to the kitchen floor, she reached to the counter and grabbed an egg, which she cracked into the pit of my belly. The white and yellow of the egg ran down my naked front, and Sylvia slipped my egg-bathed c*** into her mouth and began to show me one Jamaican trick after another.”
“I shared the story with John at a party at a Mayfair flat one night with a handful of blondes and a little Asian girl,” he continued. “‘Go on, go get it, Eggman,’ Lennon laughed over the little round glasses perched on the end of his hook-like nose as we tried the all-too-willing girls on for size.”
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Lennon said “Eggman” could have been anything
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John Lennon wrote “I Am the Walrus” after two acid trips, explaining why the lyrics are so surreal. The words have almost no meaning, and fans love overanalyzing every word to determine what it means. In an interview from The Beatles Anthology, Lennon said the words were “tongue-in-cheek” and could have been about anything.
“The words didn’t mean a lot,” Lennon said. “People draw so many conclusions, and it’s ridiculous. I’ve had tongue in cheek all along–all of them had tongue in cheek. Just because other people see depths of whatever in it…What does it really mean, ‘I am the Eggman?’ It could have been ‘The Pudding Basin’ for all I care. It’s not that serious.”
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So, it’s tough to know what Lennon meant when he called himself the “eggman.” He could’ve been alluding to Burdon subconsciously, or perhaps he wasn’t saying anything. It could have been a bunch of gibberish that fans took too seriously.
