‘Strawberry Fields Forever’: The Beatles’ deepest song
In their later, more experimental years, The Beatles‘ lyrics descended into nonsense. Gone were the universally understood declarations of love, longing and heartache. Instead, the songs were populated with a case of weird characters, metaphors so deeply imaginative they hardly had a meaning, and worlds built from the depths of their imagination. But when it came to writing ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’, the hazy, spirling lyrics seem to find not only a real-world home but one John Lennon knew in his bones.
It’s hardly a revelation anymore to talk about the fact that Strawberry Fields is a real place. Just down the road from John Lennon’s childhood home, the name is taken from the garden of a Salvation Army children’s home where the young boy used to go and play. By now, the spot has become a pilgrimage that thousands upon thousands of Beatles fans take every year, with its entry posts busy with signatures of those who have been and messages to the late musician.
Merely pointing out that the place is, in fact, real and connects to Lennon’s childhood isn’t enough. The band revisiting their city of Liverpool in music is nothing new. ‘In My Life’ sees them floating back through memories, while ‘Penny Lane’ immortalises another point of the map, with mentions of the various characters to be found there. The city is the band’s home and, in turn, is the home of their music. The Scouse dialect coloured their lyrics, their accents peaked through regularly, and time and time again, the sights of the city were written into their work.
But ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ is different. It’s not the classic, sentimental revisiting of a childhood memory. Instead, the lyrics are strange and trippy, as if the only way to attempt to reconnect to this beloved place was through a psychedelic lens, attempting to recreate the vision of youth.
“I’ve seen Strawberry Field described as a dull, grimy place next door to him that John imagined to be a beautiful place, but in the summer, it wasn’t dull and grimy at all: it was a secret garden,” McCartney once said, considering the way that Lennon remembered the spot. “John’s memory of it wasn’t to do with the fact that it was a Salvation Army home; that was up at the house. There was a wall you could bunk over and it was a rather wild garden, it wasn’t manicured at all, so it was easy to hide in,” he continued.
The idea of a young John Lennon hiding in this park feels key to understanding and appreciating the song. It makes sense of the fact that this isn’t an outright recalling of a place and the veiled meaning as it’s as if the musician still wanted to keep it as his secret spot. There is still a level of protection for the place as he sings, “No one I think is in my tree,” taking on the voice of a young boy keeping his favourite place as only his.
Lennon himself once said of the track, “‘Strawberry Fields’ was psychoanalysis set to music.” So, let’s psychoanalyse for a second.
The song is coloured by a sense of uncertainty. “Always, no sometimes, think it’s me,” he sings, or, “I think I know, I mean a yes / But it’s all wrong / That is, I think I disagree.” Throughout the song, Lennon can’t figure out what’s real, what’s right, what’s up and what’s down.
Perhaps this is Lennon’s attempt at grappling with his own difficult, complex and traumatic childhood. As a young boy, he never knew if he was coming or going, which parent he’d be staying with, who loved him most, where he would be living, and so on. There was so much uncertainty and confusion in his young life that maybe this trippy, unsure track is a reflection of that as Lennon crawled back into his youthful hiding spot and still found that same rocky sense of the world. Who knows, I’m not a therapist.
