Friday 21 September 2012

I am the Walrus decoded




I am the Walrus

The lyrics of this song were never a mystery to me when I thought about it, at the time of the original debate going on back in the 60’s. However back then, I never gave it much thought, as I was sure I would not be alone in my thinking.

Only now, with the advent of the internet and powerful search engines, is it possible to get an idea about how widespread specific knowledge is, and having done much searching I can’t find any reference to anyone else have the same basic interpretation as mine.

Which can be both disturbing and rewarding. Am I so out of touch that no one my shares view? Or is my view correct and I am the only one who has it?

The only way to put the nagging thoughts to bed is to share my conclusions, which to me are so self- evidently true!

Maybe there is another person or two out there that is still searching for the true meaning, and will,   courtesy of Google, stumble across this little write up. If so, and my conclusions make sense, please feel free to reference it in any public comment you make about it.

The very first line says it all really. 

What is an eggman? It is the male component of a fertilised egg. i.e. a spermatozoon. Biology tells us that there are some several 100 million spermatozoa in a typical human male ejaculation. It also tells us that usually only one actually fertilises the egg, as the egg immediately puts up a chemical barrier to any further interaction.

“I am the eggman”.  The eggman must be the one sperm that actually succeeded in fertilising the egg. The one among many. 

So how can an eggman be a Walrus? Well it has to be the eggman, not any eggman, the one that actually went on, in combination with an egg to start a new life as a human. I believe the Walrus is what some liken the image of an old man to, i.e. bald head and whiskers. (And vice versa, actually).  So the eggman at the end of its life becomes and old man i.e. Walrus. The eggman is destined to become a Walrus. Well in a male centric world it is.

It is known that the lyrics were written while under the influence of hypnotic or hallucinogenic drugs. The distortions of perception would apply to senses other than sound and colour, for instance size and shape.

I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together” therefore is written from the perspective of a very small sperm amongst a swarm of them.

“See how they run like pigs from a gun, see how they fly” is probably a description of  ejaculation.

The only other line that can be clearly decoded in this theme, is “Semolina pilchard, climbing up the Eiffel tower”.
Forget about drug busting policemen, and other such weird theories.

Knowing what semolina is doesn’t help. You had to be served it, as you might have been, some time before the sixties. In your dish you would have seen a white runny creamy substance. It had quite a bland taste so as a treat it was enhanced by a small dollop of jam. It was a good quick  and cheap way of filling up hungry young mouths. In the substance you could see small grains of a uniform size.  I believe this to be allegorically related to semen. Both in appearance and name.

Pilchards, otherwise known as sardines are small fish and found in huge shoals, and can only be interpreted as spermatozoa in the ejaculate.

So why would ejaculate be climbing up the Eiffel tower? This is just more imagery on a different scale. Just look at the Eiffel tower - it actually isn’t that much of a stretch of the imagination, to see it morph into a female figure, legs wide apart, wearing fishnet stockings, attracting an eggman like a magnet.

That’s it really. Other lines are just padding, red herrings, or other sexual references.

Oh, and did I mention goo is a term for semen?  "goo goo g'joob g'goo goo g'joob".
Obvious really!

© 2012 Stef Bishop

Some relevant images:
http://goo.gl/sFQVTe




Eiffel Tower Fishnet Stockings by Sprass Mayer

19 comments:

  1. It's good. Very good actually. It's a pity that lines are being dismissed as padding though. Having said that, I am at a loss to explain them!

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  2. Paul, perhaps 'padding' is unkind and sounds negative. I meant more in the sense that poetic licence, and verbal sounds are more necessary in a song to maintain the overall consistency of the piece rather than convey any specific direct relevance to the main thread.
    "You've been a naughty girl and let your knickers down", I think is more of a sound bite. Maybe it was a line from one of those 60's kitchen sink films. It has obvious meaning in its own right, but to me adds to the overall flavour rather than the actual narrative.

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  3. Wow, maybe I'm a little fuzzy-headed at the moment, but this feels like a revelation to me and is sparking an epiphany guaranteed to at least make this hour feel like a summer sunrise. Surprisingly -- although I was born just after the release of Sgt. Pepper with Beatle-crazy parents and this is one of the very first songs in my memory -- I actually NEVER thought about what these lyrics meant until ten minutes ago when I was suddenly moved to do the Google search and found your essay. It sounds right on and you explained it perfectly. THANKS!!

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  4. Excellent interpretation. I like the view point expressed by another writer, however, that egg man could be viewed as a reference to the fragility of the human condition (think of Humpty Dumpty.) There is also the notion that Lennon mistakingly thought that the Walrus was a good or heroic character in the Alice through the Looking Glass fable at the time of writing the song and apparently lamented his mistake when this fact was brought to his attention.

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  5. Eric Burdon, lead singer of the Animals, claims to be the 'Eggman' mentioned in the song's lyric. Burdon was known as 'Eggs' to his friends, the nickname originating from his fondness for breaking eggs over naked women's bodies. Burdon's biography mentions such an affair taking place in the presence of John Lennon, who shouted "Go on, go get it, Eggman..."

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_the_Walrus#Interpretation

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  6. I believe the first line to mean that as human beings we are all fundamentally the same. We share the same human characteristics ie. emotions, consciousness, same human needs etc. So when looking at another human being your in a sense looking at another self with just some different variations.

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  7. Great Analysis. One might be able to sum it up to what came first the chicken or the egg? or do we create rules because we are unruly or do we create them to keep order from the start? I get a sense he is saddened by the outcome that man is created to destroy himself. In which the question should be posed as to why the song wasn't called "I Am The Eggman"? as fragile as our minds are.

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    1. As I see it, it's "I am the Walrus" because he was the one 'eggman' that succeeded in becoming one and therefore able to reflect on it. i.e. sing about it!

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  8. Stef, I'm 64 and grew up with this song. But I never thought of this interpretation. But having read it I am astonished how perceptive you are. I both admire and envy people who are capable of doing this. I'd like to read your interpretation of other songs. How about Dylan's Sad Eyed Lady? Kudos!

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    1. Hi, thanks for your comments.
      However it is a bit of a one off really. I did check out Dylan's lyrics but can't really penetrate them. It could be because they are inspired by something personal or of a local culture. This -http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=4020 - would fit that.

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  9. Heh. This is the first interpretation I've found to actually make sense. I think I can add something too; the other lines are actually a veiled allegory to particular real-world situations within the social context of sex.

    Man you've been a naughty boy, you let your face grow long. If a face grows long, the head has grown long too; the head, giving head, this is a reference to some kid who had sex. Yellow matter custard dripping from a dead dog's eye... a dead dog's eye, a dog's closed eye, looks somewhat like a vagina. A vagina dripping yellow crud like a dog's eye would be one that has some kind of STD.

    Crabalocker sounds like "Crablogger", a forest-clearance vehicle from the episode Path of Destruction of the supermarionation TV series Thunderbirds; it had a "mouth" and two robotic arms that would stick whole trees into it. Fishwife, if we take your pilchard meaning, would be a veiled way of referring to a girl having sex; crabalocker might even specify fellatio, though I've never watched that show to know how fellatio-like the Crablogger acted. And with that established, pornographic priestess and the last two lines of that stanza basically write themselves.

    So if we assume that it's true that those lines are telling the story of a girl who caught some STD during premarital sex (perhaps an act that took place on that stupid bloody Tuesday), then suddenly the sitting on a cornflake, waiting for the van to come makes more sense; the kid is waiting to be taken to court on charges for their having had sex (statutory rape). The policemen sitting in a row represent bureaucracy at its finest; because of the STD, they (perhaps via the parents) found out that the girl must've been statutorily raped, and investigated.

    For the last two stanzas before the final chorus, I'd interpret these as references to literature / the history of literature. Edgar Allen Poe was once part of a large scandal regarding flirtations and purported sexual improprieties between himself and Frances Sargent Osgood, a married 34-year-old poet. Another poet, Elizabeth F. Ellet, liked Poe too and was jealous of Osgood, and there were a variety of disputes, including talkings-to and purchased pistols for self-defense and at least one fistfight. If the entire song is lamenting society's preoccupation with sex, the Osgood/Ellet/Poe scandal is an excellent example.

    Then, "see how they smile like pigs in a sty" is akin to the way Animal Farm by Orwell allegorically portrays rich fat capitalists as pigs, and the sty comparable to dirty money. "See how they snide" would become a characterization that lawyers and the sex-regulating legal complex (the pigs and p'licemen) mock loving consensual intercourse by treating it as counterfeit or inferior (a British usage of snide) if it doesn't take place under accepted auspices.

    I don't know how much sense this makes, but these are just the thoughts that ran through my head after reading yours; figured I might as well share 'em, in case you find 'em as true-seeming as I found yours.

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  10. Thanks for your comments.
    I don't think you can make a detailed contruct and rationale for meaning of the song. But they are not random words. Quite often we repeat words without understanding the meaning or origin, and attach our own understanding derived from the context. We will all have heard the 'yellow matter custard' rhyme as young children and not cared about what it meant, only the disgust in produced in repeating it. This analysis https://goo.gl/wOFaV5 may be interesting but I don't think it adds anything to understanding the song.
    I like the idea that Lennon deliberately set out to create a puzzle.
    It works as a song and so you cant criticise the words. But you know they come from a person who had related experiences that he may or may not have understood.
    I wonder if a song writing robot could ever emulate it! Presumably in the future AI will run detailed simulations of human experiences. Scary

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    1. You have to look at the context and the pressure that John was under. Everything he sang/wrote or did was interrupted as meaning something.Imagine that you go buy 12 eggs, bread and sausage/bacon a 1/2 milk. Breakfast right!! Not for John everything represented something!! The man could not live a normal life. The analysis,explanation and especially the interpretation of his writings/songs/etc. bothered him. I believe He wanted the listener to make their own occlusions, His Jesus comment made this impossible, They were more popular.

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  11. So John was ahead of his time? According to him this song is nonsense. Why is it that people disregard Beatles plain as day message's and add the OMG to nothing. I would love to see your intellectual break done of Yellow Submarine or better yet How about "Beat It"

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  12. YUK you ruined the song for me! Of course Stef is probably a man who would make it all about sex.

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    1. If I've ruined it for you then I presume you agree with my analysis, but you'd rather not know of it. Of course every being that has gone before you in all of history has come about because of sex, but maybe you're different?!

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    2. I believe John's lyrics were abstract and are designed to make one think and struggle a bit to find a resolution to the puzzle of life and the human social condition. It seem to me to yes, represent sex but more importantly to examine what it all means personally, to answer and explain the inexplicable; how to and accept the cruel and mundane aspects of life, the common experience of ego and identity struggling to define one's self as a member of the human race. It's not about sex, it's relfecting upon life and why the hell did the dog have to die and become something gross and ugly having perhaps been a fellow creature capable of love and joy.

      What a massive muck we must struggle through to define our own happiness in spite of so much negativity. Here's Goo Goo Ga Joob in your face! love and peace, tommy

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  13. Yes, I agree with the sexual interpretations and never thought of IATW that way. Very good insight indeed! I meant to add that it left the interpretation to the listener upon each listening and interacting with their own experiences. The lyrics challenge us all to reflect on "what the hell, what shall I do upon discovering the infinate layers of cynicism, danger, loneliness and the sad and meaningless drudgery we must defeat in some way in order to live a life worth living. Sex is good if you aren't too messed up in the head!

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  14. With John gone 38 years, we'll never know for sure how wrong this interpretation is. As John himself said, he wrote it to confuse those who tried to interpret his songs, and Mr. Bishop, you fell knee-deep into his trap. Maybe somehow, out his LSD-befuddled brain, John unknowingly drudged up some of the symbolism you are identifying. But it is more likely he just liked the way the words sounded with the music. And that is enough for me: with or without symbolism it's still one of my favorites.

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