Why does John Lennon say “cranberry sauce” at the end of ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’?
People like cultivating rivalries in the arts sector for an added boost of entertainment. Perhaps we think they make the fires of greatness burn a little bit brighter, or worse, let us enjoy music we would find relatively bland otherwise. But in the case of The Beatles, the latter certainly can’t be said. So it’s somewhat surprising that the John Lennon and Paul McCartney feud is given so much airtime.
But maybe it’s because at the root of their greatness was their conflict. All of the artistic synergy between them was wrapped up in a vastly different approach. Lennon was more twisted, darker and warped, while McCartney showcased something chirpier and delicate. Of course, that’s hugely reductive of the wider story, but it gives you a window into the almost sibling-like pairing they made. Individual and different in their own rights, but drawn together by an innate connection and emotional shorthand that only they were in tune with.
A point Paul McCartney unsurprisingly put better when he said, “John and me, we were kids growing up together, in the same environment with the same influences.”
He added: “He knows the records I know, I know the records he knows. You’re writing your first little innocent songs together. Then you’re writing something that gets recorded. Each year goes by, and you get the cooler clothes. Then you write the cooler song to go with the cooler clothes. We were on the same escalator—on the same step of the escalator, all the way. It’s irreplaceable—that time, friendship and bonding.”
But while that rightly speaks to the artistic legacy they created, his more real-world quip of “whatever bad things John said about me, he would also slip his glasses down to the end of his nose and say, ‘I love you’” is a more truthful depiction of their brotherly underbelly.
Nevertheless, the sad truth is that, come the end of the 1960s, the ill feelings ran a little bit deeper than anything a quick sliding of the glasses could fix. What was once healthy tension in the wider aim of achieving greatness was slowly becoming artistic sabotage and loaded brinksmanship.
Lennon once accused McCartney of subconsiously sabotaging his track, ‘Across The Universe’, in 1970, saying, “Paul would sort of subconsciously try and destroy a great song, usually, we’d spend hours doing little detailed cleaning-ups of Paul’s songs; when it came to mine, somehow this atmosphere of looseness and casualness and experimentation would creep in. Subconscious sabotage.”
A remark perhaps made without the memory of his own attempt at poking a hole in the boundaries of seriousness on McCartney’s track, ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’. At the tail end of the classic, as the flurrying instrumental winds down, Lennon’s distorted voice can be heard singing “cranberry sauce”.
While the methodology of any psychedelic song can never be pinpointed with definitive confidence, there is a somewhat coded reference to a wild conspiracy that unfolded during the rumour-heavy years of The Beatles.
So, what was the rumour?
Back in 1967, an obscure myth gained traction that McCartney had died on Wednesday, November 9th, 1966. Conspiracy theorists had cooked up a rumour that the songwriter was killed in a car crash, following a pedal-to-the-metal journey home from the studio after a rift with Lennon at the studio. To cover up the tragic news, it was believed that the former was then replaced by a lookalike called either William Shears Campbell (apparently referenced as Billy Shears on Sgt Pepper) or William Sheppard (supposedly referenced in ‘The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill’).
After a lengthy saga that eventually gained the attention of reputable newspaper sources, who investigated the truthfulness of the rumour with complete seriousness, McCartney came out to squash any fears, stating, “I am alive and well and concerned about the rumours of my death. But if I were dead, I would be the last to know.”
But the motto of a conspiracy theorist reads relatively similar to that of Donald Trump’s presidential campaigns: truth is but a concept, subjected to the eye of the beholder. And while “the real” McCartney put rumours to bed, fans weren’t convinced. Especially when they perceived Lennon’s outro in ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ to actually be ‘I buried Paul’.
With rumours of the rift between the pair growing and uncertainty surrounding whether McCartney was William Shears Campbell or William Sheppard, Lennon’s supposed admission in the tail end of the song was quite literally the nail in the coffin.
The Beatles were always one step ahead of the fans, and while Lennon brushed off all relation to their jibe at the rumour, claiming it was nothing more than a reference to his hatred of the condiment in a song released during Thanksgiving, the careful annunciation is undoubtedly a veiled quip at the expense of overly obsessed fans.
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