“Strawberry Fields Forever” by The Beatles is amongst their numerous memorable and classic songs. Many have debated over the meaning behind the lyrics of this song. From first hearing the lyrics myself as a child I immediately thought of a field of strawberries. But as I grew older and really listened to the song it all sounded like some hallucinogenic state that John Lennon was in while writing the lyrics. The lines do in fact give off a sense of a higher state of being with the chorus, “Wont you take me down cause Im going to Strawberry Fields / nothing is real”. But it isn’t till you do some actual research into the song that you start to see the subject matter that influenced this song.
“Strawberry Fields Forever” was written by John Lennon in 1966 and it was the first single off of the Beatles “Sgt. Pepper Lp”. During this time in their career the members of the band started feeling the pressure of all the fame they were getting. Paul McCartney told biographer Barry Miles, “We were fed up with being Beatles. It was all gone, all that boy shit, all that screaming—we didn’t want any more” (www.performingsongwriter.com). They began to experiment much more with their music and this particular song is a perfect example of that. This was the beginning of their more psychedelic stage in their music.
Now as I dug deeper into this classic song’s meaning I learned that this is very personal to John Lennon himself. There are little subtle lines throughout the song that relate to his childhood. To start off Strawberry Fields was the name of a foster home that was around the corner from John’s home when he was a child. Lennon’s aunt would take him there where he would play in the garden behind the home with his friends, so in a way “Strawberry Fields Forever” deals with a sense of nostalgia. Throughout John Lennon’s life he always felt like an alien and an outsider, and we see this in a stanza of the song, “No one I think is in my tree / I mean it must be high or low”. A clear reference to how he feels many people aren’t the same as himself. While growing up he was always feeling out of place, something that many of us go through. We also see a call back to his childhood in a line that most people probably overlooked, “Cause I’m going to Strawberry Fields / Nothing is real / And there’s nothing to get hung about”. That last line is a childhood reference as well. When he sings” there’s nothing to get hung about” it refers to a time when he was young and his aunt would tell him not to play on the grounds of Strawberry Fields. He would always reply with “They can’t hang you for it” which is how this line became incorporated into the song.
Originally the song was a bit more forward with what it was trying to say. That one stanza of the song that I previously mentioned was a bit different, “There's no one on my wavelength / I mean, it's either too high or too low / That is you can't you know tune in but it's all right / I mean it's not too bad”. According to George Martin a record producer sometimes referred to as the Fifth Beatle, “He'd wanted it as a gentle dreaming song, but he said it had come out too raucous” (www.columbia.edu). This is clear throughout much of the song, it’s a very light and nostalgic song and complemented with John’s voice you get a sense of the softness he was going for. You get the sense of a dreamlike state from the words he sings, and Strawberry Fields can be looked at as a place Lennon goes with his one mind (something that has often been felt about this song).