Bob Dylan’s influence is so great that it even extends to a song about an “elementary penguin.” John Lennon said The Beatles‘ “I Am the Walrus” was similar to Dylan’s music. He even accused the “Lay Lady Lay” singer of getting “away with murder” among intellectuals. While John’s comments were spot-on in some ways, he also ignored a major aspect of Dylan’s work.
John Lennon said The Beatles’ ‘I Am the Walrus’ had odd lyrics like a Bob Dylan song
The book All We Are Saying: The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono features an interview from 1980. In it, John cited Dylan as an inspiration and also discussed “I Am the Walrus.” “In those days I was writing obscurely, à la Dylan, never saying what you mean, but giving the impression of something,” he explained. “Where more or less can be read into it. It’s a good game. I thought, ‘They get away with this artsy-fartsy crap; there has been more said about Dylan’s wonderful lyrics than was ever in the lyrics at all. Mine, too.’
“But it was the intellectuals who read all this into Dylan or The Beatles,” he added. “Dylan got away with murder. I thought, ‘Well, I can write this crap, too.’” It might shock fans that John referred to classic songs as “crap!”
John Lennon said he worked some lines from William Shakespeare into The Beatles’ song
John revealed how to write “obscurely.” “You know, you just stick a few images together, thread them together, and you call it poetry,” he said. “Well, maybe it is poetry. But I was just using the mind that wrote In His Own Write to write that song.” In His Own Write the book of nonsensical poems that John published in 1964.
John even explained some of the background noise in “I Am the Walrus.” “There was even some live BBC radio on one track, y’know,” he recalled. “They were reciting Shakespeare or something and I just fed whatever lines were on the radio right into the song.”
Why the similarities between Bob Dylan songs and ‘I Am the Walrus’ only go so far
John was onto something. “I Am the Walrus” certainly features a lot of strange lyrics befitting a Dylan song. Dylan was known for incorporating references to history and literature into his music, and “I Am the Walrus” mentions Edgar Allan Poe, Bloody Tuesday, and the Hare Krishna movement — and even includes a long passage from King Lear. Perhaps John should have quoted one of Dylan’s songs in “I Am the Walrus” just to make the similarity more obvious.
However, Dylan is known for many things — but layered psychedelic production is not one of them. Even in his “Electric Dylan” phase, Dylan never got as lush as “I Am the Walrus.” While The Beatles will always be defined by psychedelia, Dylan will always be defined by his simple folk production.
The Beatles’ “I Am the Walrus” has some similarities to Dylan’s signature style but it doesn’t sound like the sort of song he would have written.
