The Beatles‘ “Strawberry Fields Forever” is John Lennon’s masterpiece. The Beatle had a hard time remembering the sequence of events that led him to write it. Fascinatingly, Paul McCartney said the tune came out of his rivalry with John — and that it had a special connection to “Penny Lane.”
John Lennon wrote The Beatles’ ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ while working on a film in Spain
The book All We Are Saying: The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono features an interview from 1980. In it, John said he wrote The Beatles’ “Strawberry Fields Forever” while he was filming the comedy film How I Won the War. The film was directed by Richard Lester, who also helmed A Hard Day’s Night and Help!, as well as the first two Superman films starring Christopher Reeve. Despite John and Lester’s involvement, How I Won the War is not one of The Beatles’ films.
“Dick Lester offered me the part in this movie, which gave me time to think without going home,” John recalled. “We were in Almería, and it took me six weeks to write the song. I was writing it all the time I was making the film. And as anybody knows about film work, there’s a lot of hanging around.”
During his downtime, John took inspiration from Strawberry Field, a Salvation Army orphanage in Liverpool, to write “Strawberry Fields Forever.” He said the tune evolved into a psychedelic track over time. John said he had a tape of the original version of the tune somewhere. Listening to demos of “Strawberry Fields Forever,” the song had a bit of a country influence before John made it more avant-garde.
The Beatles dealt with their manager’s death and met their guru around that time
John discussed what that time period felt like. “I came back from Spain and the movie,” he said. “It’s just sort of a blank period because it was the end of the tour and I came back from Spain and Brian died then.” “Brian” was Brian Epstein, The Beatles’ first and most well-known manager.
“The Maharishi appeared, Brian died, Yoko appeared,” he said, referring to The Beatles’ guru, the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. “I mean, so much went on at that period that I can’t get the sequence right, you know? It must all have been around the same period. So if you found out when the film was made … I could tell you what happened … It seems impossible that everything happened in 1966!”
‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ and ‘Penny Lane’ were part of a rivalry
During a 2018 interview with 60 Minutes, Paul put “Strawberry Fields Forever” in a different context. He said the song was born out of competition. Paul was writing “Penny Lane,” which was inspired by an area of Liverpool, so John wrote “Strawberry Fields Forever,” which is also about Liverpool. 60 Minutes reported that Paul was responsible for the flute notes that begin “Strawberry Fields Forever.”
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“Strawberry Fields Forever” is perfect and it wouldn’t be the same without a chaotic ear and a place in Liverpool.
