Post by yerblues1968 on Jul 13, 2008 23:24:52 GMT -5
THE HISTORY OF STRAWBERRY FIELDS FOREVER
Strawberry Fields Forever is a song recorded at the end of 1966 by The Beatles, and released at the beginning of 1967. Written by John Lennon, multiple critics have described it as one of the group's best recordings. It is one of the defining works of the psychedelic rock genre and has been covered numerous times.
The Beatles on the set of filming the Strawberry Fields Forever video.
The song gave its name to the Strawberry Fields memorial in New York City's Central Park, near the site of Lennon's murder at The Dakota apartment building.
Strawberry Field near Central Park, NY now attracts large numbers of tourists.
Strawberry Field was the name of a Salvation Army Children's Home just around the corner from Lennon's boyhood home in Woolton, a suburb of Liverpool. Lennon and his childhood friends Pete Shotton, Nigel Whalley, and Ivan Vaughan used to play in the trees behind the home. One of Lennon's childhood treats was the garden party held each summer on the grounds of Strawberry Field. Lennon's Aunt Mimi recalled: "As soon as we could hear the Salvation Army band starting, John would jump up and down shouting, 'Mimi, come on. We're going to be late.'"
The Beatles while filming the Strawberry Fields Forever video.
Lennon began writing the song in late 1966 in Almería, Spain, filming Richard Lester's How I Won the War. Lennon's Strawberry Fields Forever and McCartney's Penny Lane shared the theme of nostalgia for their childhood in Liverpool. While both referred to actual locations there, they also had strong surrealistic and psychedelic overtones. Producer George Martin said that when he first heard Strawberry Fields Forever he thought it conjured up a hazy, impressionistic dreamworld".
Strawberry Field near John Lennon's boyhood home in Woolton, a suburb of Liverpool.
The period of its composition was one of change and dislocation for Lennon. The Beatles had just retired from touring after one of the most difficult periods of their career, including the infamous more popular than Jesus controversy and their disastrous tour of the Philippines. Lennon's marriage was failing, and he was using increasing quantities of drugs, especially the powerful hallucinogen LSD, as well as Cannabis, which he had smoked during his time in Spain. Lennon said about the song in 1980: "I was different all my life. The second verse goes, 'No one I think is in my tree.' Well, I was too shy and self-doubting. Nobody seems to be as hip as me is what I was saying. Therefore, I must be crazy or a genius-- 'I mean it must be high or low'". Lennon later said that the song was psycho-analysis set to music.
John Lennon at Strawberry Fields. Photo provided by Ono Lennon.
The earliest demo version of the song has a single verse with no refrain: No one is 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". In later demo versions Lennon altered this verse to make it more obscure, and added a second verse; these became the second and third verses respectively on the released version. The first verse on the released version was written close to the time of the song's recording. According to Simon Freeman of Times Online, "The words nothing to get hung about were inspired by Aunt Mimi's strict order not to play in the grounds. The young Lennon replied: 'They can't hang you for it'".
RECORDING
Recording for Strawberry Fields began on 24 November 1966, in Abbey Road's Studio Two. The recording of the song took forty-five hours which was spread over a month. The song was the first recorded for the new Sgt. Pepper album; however, the track never appeared on the album. After Lennon played the song on his acoustic guitar, the band recorded Take 1. Lennon played on his Epiphone Casino, McCartney played a mellotron, Starr played drums, and Harrison played a bass line on electric guitar. In the third verse, McCartney and Harrison sang dreamy backing vocals that were not mixed in the Anthology.
After recording the song with the band, Lennon wanted to do the song differently, and asked Martin to write a score. The song was recorded again with Martin's score of trumpets and cellos. The verses, which include Lennon, trumpets, cellos, and a sucking timbre made by recording percussion instruments and playing the tape backwards, have a texture that is sparse and dry. In the chorus, Harrison, Ringo, and McCartney play with a slide guitar and a dense percussion texture – created by all four of the Beatles and road manager Mal Evans. The song's groundbreaking production and complex arrangement gave clear evidence of the band's near-total mastery of the recording studio and their increasingly avant-garde approach to their music. It featured extensive overdubbing, prominent use of reverse tape effects and tape loops, and extensive audio compression and equalization. In addition to the standard guitar-bass-drums backing, the arrangement also included piano, trumpets, cellos and some unusual instruments including the swarmandel, an Indian stringed instrument which provided the sitar-like sound at the end of each chorus.
The released version of the song is an edit of two different performances. The band recorded multiple takes of two quite distinct versions of the song. The first version featured relatively basic instrumentation of mellotron, guitars, bass and drums. For the second version, recorded some weeks later, Lennon opted for a much more complex arrangement (scored by George Martin) that included trumpets and cellos, along with the prominent sound of cymbals during the verses.
The Beatles "Strawberry Fields Forever." [Take 1-4] (9:56 minutes)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLt5D5gsOhI
The Beatles "Strawberry Fields Forever." [Take 5-7] (8:21 minutes)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssJ-E7mTF98
The Beatles "Strawberry Fields Forever." [Take 11] (3:14 minutes)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAH0g0s5xa8
The Beatles "Strawberry Fields Forever." Remake [Take 25-26] (7:30 minutes)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4O3N5kk0Gs
The Beatles "Strawberry Fields Forever." [Take 27] (3:09 minutes)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZpallCFam8
Lennon decided that he liked the first part of Take 7 (the first version) and the ending of Take 26 (the "orchestral" version). He wanted the finished master to combine these sections from the two versions, and he gave the task of joining them together to producer Martin and recording engineer Geoff Emerick.
The previous year, Mike Pinder of The Moody Blues, who had worked for Streetly Electronics under quality control and a test driver for 18 months, introduced the mellotron to the Beatles, and all four of them purchased one within a week. One was brought in to the Abbey Road studio especially for the song. This innovative British-made electronic keyboard uses eight-second tape segments (or samples) of real instruments such as brass, strings (used on take 1 of the song), and flutes (on takes 2 through 7).
Contrary to belief of the Paul Is Dead urban legend supporters, Lennon says cranberry sauce at the end of the song rather than I buried Paul. In 1974 McCartney said:
"That wasn't I buried Paul at all-- that was John saying Cranberry sauce. It was the end of Strawberry Fields. That's John's humor. John would say something totally out of sync, like cranberry sauce. If you don't realize that John's apt to say cranberry sauce when he feels like it, then you start to hear a funny little word there, and you think, 'Aha!'"
John, George and Ringo on the set of their video for Strawberry Fields Forever.
Lennon himself confirmed this in a 1980 Playboy interview. He said that it was a kind of icing on the cake of the weirdness of the song, where anything he might have imagined saying would have been appropriate. On the sessions released in The Beatles Anthology, the words cranberry sauce are more clearly heard, especially during the edit piece joined onto the end of Take 7.
RELEASE
When manager Brian Epstein pressed producer George Martin for a new Beatles single, Martin told Epstein that the group had recorded what were, in his opinion, their two finest songs to date (Strawberry Fields Forever and Penny Lane). Epstein suggested that Martin issue the songs as a double A-sided single, as they had done with their previous single, Yellow Submarine/Eleanor Rigby. The single was released on 13 February 1967, in Britain, and subsequently on 17 February 1967, in the United States, as one side of a double A-side single, paired with the McCartney composition Penny Lane. Following UK protocol in the 1960s not to include songs released as a single within a new album, both songs were ultimately left off Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. George Martin later admitted that this was a dreadful mistake.
The single reached #2 in the UK charts, behind Engelbert Humperdinck's Release Me, because the BBC counted the two songs as two individual singles, even though the double A-sided single outsold Humperdinck's by almost two to one. In a radio interview at the time, McCartney said he was not upset, because Humperdinck's song was a completely different type of thing. Starr said later that it was a relief, because it took the pressure off. Penny Lane reached #1 in the United States, while Strawberry Fields Forever peaked at #8. In the U.S., both songs were included on the LP Magical Mystery Tour, which was released as a six-track double-EP in the UK. When Magical Mystery Tour was re-released on CD, Parlophone chose the U.S. LP track listing rather than the UK double-EP.
The song appears on the John Lennon Imagine soundtrack. In 2006, a newly mixed version of the song was included in the album Love. This version builds from an acoustic demo and incorporates elements of Hello, Goodbye, Baby You're a Rich Man, In My Life, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Penny Lane, and Piggies.
RECEPTION
Brian Wilson claimed that Strawberry Fields Forever was partially responsible for the shelving of the Beach Boys' legendary unfinished album SMiLE. Wilson first heard the song on his car radio while driving, and was so affected by it that he had to pull over until the song finished. He then remarked to his companion (either wryly or in despair, according to the version of the story) that the Beatles had "got there first" (i.e., to the sound he was trying to achieve with the new album). SMiLE was shelved shortly afterwards. Richie Unterberger of Allmusic hailed it as one of the Beatles' peak achievements and one of the finest Lennon-McCartney songs. In 2004, this song was ranked number 76 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest songs of all time. It was ranked the second best Beatles song by Mojo magazine, after A Day in the Life. According to AcclaimedMusic.net (a site which combines hundreds of musicians' and critics' best-of lists from around the world), Strawberry Fields Forever is the Beatles' most critically acclaimed song of all time, ranking at #16 on the All Time Top 3000 Songs.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strawberry_Fields_Forever
STRAWBERRY FIELDS FOREVER
Let me take you down
'Cause I'm going to Strawberry Fields
Nothing is real and nothing to get hung about
Strawberry Fields forever
Living is easy with eyes closed
Misunderstanding all you see
It's getting hard to be someone
But it all works out
It doesn't matter much to me
Let me take you down
'Cause I'm going to Strawberry Fields
Nothing is real and nothing to get hung about
Strawberry Fields Forever
No one I think is in my tree
I mean it must be high or low
That I you can't you know tune in
But it's all right
That is I think it's not too bad
Let me take you down
'Cause I'm going to Strawberry Fields
Nothing is real and nothing to get hung about
Strawberry Fields Forever
Always, no, sometimes, think it's me
But you know I know when it's a dream
I think, er, no I mean, er, yes
But it's all so wrong
That is I think I disagree
Let me take you down
'Cause I'm going to Strawberry Fields
Nothing is real and nothing to get hung about
Strawberry Fields Forever
Strawberry Fields Forever
Strawberry Fields Forever
The Beatles (History of) "Strawberry Fields Forever." - Part 1 (4.37 minutes)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKNPjhNQXNY
The Beatles (History of) "Strawberry Fields Forever." - Part 2 (7.56 minutes)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDoPq6KxWOE
The Beatles (History of) "Strawberry Fields Forever." - Part 3 (7.25 minutes)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=61SQMQStK-o
The Beatles (History of) "Strawberry Fields Forever." - Part 4 (3.17 minutes)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcCMGkYpSMs
The Beatles "Strawberry Fields Forever" - rare demo. (3.13 minutes)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRhZRIA6rh0
John Lennon "Strawberry Fields Forever" 1966 home demos. (8.52 minutes)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=jD2h0WuQ9kE
The Beatles "Strawberry Fields Forever." Demo Sequence (1:43 minutes)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=fguYVrc1HR0
The Beatles "Strawberry Fields Forever" promotional video, high quality. (4.06 minutes)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7NoOhmVMac
Paul McCartney presenting "Strawberry Fields Forever." (3.31 minutes)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeyiLBk1Ymg
The Beatles "Strawberry Fields Forever." LOVE Version. (4:30 minutes)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHs2q9crDsA
The Beatles "Strawberry Fields Forever" Cartoon (5.02 minutes)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-pdnSR4mbM