John Lennon and Paul McCartney demonstrated within the first few years of The Beatles’ existence that they were two of the best songwriters the world had ever seen. Pushing the form to its limits and experimenting with it in nearly every way possible, they redefined what songwriting could and should be for the modern age. This even manifested in the bandmates using songs to toy with each other and their fans.
One notable example of this satire is ‘Glass Onion’ from 1968’s The White Album. Famously, the song was John Lennon’s reaction to fans and critics looking for hidden meanings in his band’s music when, in actuality, there were none at all. He deliberately packed the track with bizarre imagery, red herrings and references to The Beatles’ earlier songs to create a distinctive sonic experience.
Acutely aware of the mythology surrounding the group, combined with a disdain for those who found meanings that weren’t there in his work, in the track, Lennon included references to the classics, ‘Strawberry Fields Forever‘, ‘I Am The Walrus’, ‘Lady Madonna’, ‘Fixing A Hole’ and ‘The Fool On The Hill’.
In The Beatles Anthology, Lennon dismisses any profound meaning behind the eclectic lyrics: “I threw the line in – ‘the Walrus was Paul’ – just to confuse everybody a bit more,” he said. “It could have been ‘the fox terrier is Paul’. I mean, it’s just a bit of poetry. I was having a laugh because there’d been so much gobbledygook about Pepper—play it backwards and you stand on your head and all that.”
Elsewhere, in his last interview before he died in 1980, compiled in David Sheff’s All We Are Saying, Lennon called the song a “throwaway” and explained his intentions to “confuse” everybody.
He said: “That’s me, just doing a throwaway song, à la ‘Walrus’, à la everything I’ve ever written. I threw the line in – ‘the Walrus was Paul’ – just to confuse everybody a bit more. And I thought Walrus has now become me, meaning ‘I am the one.’ Only it didn’t mean that in this song. It could have been ‘the fox terrier is Paul,’ you know. I mean, it’s just a bit of poetry. It was just thrown in like that.”
In that same interview, Lennon explained that the line in question was written because he intended to leave The Beatles, a signal that the end was nigh for the band even in 1968. The frontman even revealed that he left a “crumb” for Paul McCartney, pointing to his intentions. Lennon continued: “Well, that was a joke. The line was put in partly because I was feeling guilty because I was with Yoko and I was leaving Paul. I was trying – I don’t know. It’s a very perverse way of saying to Paul, you know, ‘Here, have this crumb, this illusion – this stroke, because I’m leaving’.”
Listen to ‘Glass Onion’ below.
