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The one line John Lennon would use to cheer up The Beatles

Tue 7 March 2023 9:00, UK

The Beatles released countless incredible tracks during their decade-long career, influencing popular culture with their pioneering recording techniques and experimental approach to using new sounds rarely explored in mainstream music. One of the band’s best-known and beloved songs is ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’, a nostalgic, psychedelic-infused piece written and sung by John Lennon.

The musician penned the song in 1966 while filming Richard Lester’s How I Won the War in Almería, Spain. The director, who had filmed A Hard Day’s Night only a few years prior, had recruited Lennon to play Private Gripweed. The Beatles were going through a rough patch during this time, following multiple controversies, such as Lennon declaring the band “more popular than Jesus.” The band had also stopped touring for various reasons, such as exhaustion and personal fears for their safety.

Lennon was feeling rather low, so he wrote ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’, which recalls childhood memories of happier times in Liverpool, such as playing in the garden of a Salvation Army children’s home called Strawberry Field. The musician once described the track as one of his most personal pieces, reflected in his contemplative lyrics about his place in life. Explaining the lines “No one I think is in my tree / I mean, it must be high or low,” Lennon said, “I was different all my life. […] 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.”

In All We Are Saying: The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, the musician revealed the meaning behind the song’s line “Somehow it all works out.” He said, “I mean, it’s like a little gag that The Beatles used.” Lennon continued, “When The Beatles were depressed, we had this thing that I would chant, and they would answer. It was from a cheap movie they made about Liverpool years ago. And in it, they say, ‘Where are we going, Johnny?’ or something, and the leader of the gang would say, ‘We’re going to burn this’ or ‘We’re going to stomp on that.'”

Using this quotation, Lennon would “say to the others when we were all depressed, thinking that the group was going nowhere, this is a shitty deal, we’re in a shitty dressing room — I would say, ‘Where are we going, fellows?'” The band would reply,”‘To the top, Johnny’, in pseudo-American voices.” Lennon elucidated, “And I would say, ‘Where is that, fellows?’ And they would say, ‘To the toppermost of the poppermost.’ I would say, ‘Right!’ And we would all cheer up.”

Although he never clarified the movie he was referring to, the “toppermost of the poppermost” seems to reference Top of the Pops. Ringo Starr later used this line in an interview with Rolling Stone in 1992, telling them that he wanted his album, Time Takes Time, to reach “the poppermost of the toppermost.”

Revisit the beautiful ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ below.