The Beatles - I Am the Walrus
The Beatles, “I Am the Walrus”
OK, well, we all agree it’s a classic, and that The Beatles are the 20th Century Beethoven and all that, but even with all the hype, “I Am the Walrus” rocks the house down.
“Yellow matter custard dripping from a dead dog’s eye.”
I mean, who could make THAT into one of the biggest songs in rock and roll?
This is a great example of the sort of song I adore. The base moves, which is, there’s a groove to it, and over the top, lyrics that don’t pop us right back to where we already were. We’ve been someplace by the end.
Where, though, is a whole other question . . .
posted by John Gallaher @ 11:54 AM
4 comments
4 Comments:
Their best song - and one that will outlast all their other great songs.
"Beethoven of the 20th C" -- maybe not so much the Beatles as much as John Lennon?
Sometimes I'll hear people knock this one, for some reason, and I'm thinking, my God, I'm not sure you could serve up anything so insanely rich, I'm not sure it's possible.
The first time I heard it, long after having a kind of osmotic literacy with them, was off the Blue Album? Remember those? It was a cassette and I was, I dunno, 14, and John's raw voice and strings and all the strangeness. Awesome.
The version on LOVE is quite wonderful as well.
It's funny, the way people tend to split on John and Paul (I was also in the John camp). But there is something that Paul toned down in John, that was good to have toned down a bit. Or maybe there was somethign in Yoko that toned him UP a bit too much.
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