Does anyone recall the segment in Geoff Emerick‘s fantastic book, Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles, in which he describes his feelings over the recording of “I Am the Walrus”? Emerick details from the time he heard John’s unimpressive (in the engineer’s opinion) demo through the bizarre instructions that seemed to be covering for a less-than-stellar song through the final overdubs and mix. At the final mix, it all home for Emerick and, in his opinion, justified the entire recording process. Well, I can’t imagine a 7-year-old boy hearing “I Am the Walrus” and not having his mind blown, but Emerick’s story could apply to much of this album.
The Beatles, “I Am the Walrus” (German true stereo mix)
Because I came to this song loving it without reservation, the richly textured true stereo mix of “I Am the Walrus” is very easy to love but the degree to which my experience is heightened is nowhere near that of some of the previous cuts. I do love those sawing strings. Who hasn’t dug this period of Beatles recordings and not wanted to jam a mic as close to a bowed instrument as possible?
mod, yesterday, i didn’t know what you were on about with your occasional raves about close mic’ing the strings (“that’s how george martin always mic’d the strings?” i thought to myself). but i can see why it would get you so excited on this tune. you can hear the bow against the strings. that said, what you’re hearing is also a choice in the playing technique. the “sawing” effect is deliberate in the playing of the instrument.
after 6 tunes ringo’s drums are mostly in the right speaker the whole time.
somehow, in the true german stereo mastering, “walrus” sounds somehow less aggressive. john’s vocals don’t spit as much.
it’s still among the most twisted songs rock had ever produced up to this point.
so we reach the end of ‘mmt proper’.
alex, thanks for following up my points about “what psychedelia could be”. i’d love to hear your thoughts on the ‘psyche’ thread i wrote, as we seem to be of like mind on alot of beatles points (about a quarter of the way down at https://www.rocktownhall.com/blogs/index.php?m=200704).
the question can be rephrased around
IMAGINE IF THE BEATLES HAD TEASED MMT BY RELEASING THIS AND ‘BLUE JAY WAY’ as a single, and then followed it up with a real album filled with a greater variety of dark meanderngs along these lines.
WOW.
THEN we could really have a conversation about mmt being “superior” to Pepper.
it reminds me that when i was in 8th grade, and i had a more simplistic view of how the beatles had developed, i wanted mmt to be the EVEN BIGGER, EVEN MORE AMAZING thing they did AFTER pepper (riddled as it is with Paul’isms like the ones we were discussing yesterday).
songs like “walrus” and “blue jay” were what made me think that’s what it was, until i actually heard the whole thing.
Again, it’s not a conventional string ensemble, but 8 violins and 4 cellos.
This has never been one of my favorite Beatles songs. It’s an amazing track for sure, but I find the dark, aggressive fuck you attitude off-putting, because I feel like I’m part of the world that Lennon is thumbing his nose at. The basic viewpoint of the song seems to be — “I’ve taken acid and you haven’t, loser.”
Here’s another interesting technical tidbit: only the first half of the song is in “German true stereo.”
From the Wikipedia article: “The original 1967 stereo mix of the record has an interesting twist: At almost exactly two minutes into the song, the mix changes from regular stereo to “fake stereo”, with most of the bass on one channel, and most of the treble on the other. The mix appears to ‘wander’ sonically in the fadeout, from left to right. The reason for the change in mixes was that the radio broadcast was inserted during the mono mixdown.”
If you listen on headphones, the change at the 2:00 mark is very apparent.
BigSteve, i’m not familiar with what’s conventional and what’s not in terms of string ensembles and instrumentation in general. a conventional string ensemble would consist of…? i’m not sure what these features suggest to to you. what do you think it reveals? i’m curious. isn’t it possible that given the sound that george martin had in mind, he didn’t want a conventional number of instruments?
i know what you mean about lennon’s attitude. it’s certainly antagonistic, and anti-establishment, but it goes beyond that to be anti sense-making, too. i never felt like he was arrogant because he had taken acid, however. and there’s no point at which he thumbs his nose at his audience in this song, as you suggest.
regarding the lyrics, i heard that this song was in response to the news that british school boys were being made to analyze beatles songs.
also, what “radio broadcast” is wikipedia talking about?
one more thing…
has anybody out there ever heard Joe Pop-O-Pie’s version of this, ca. 1985?
the song makes the transition to 80s drug punk (in a flipper vein) pretty well, with the key change to the lyrics: “man you shoulda see the pistols in ’78”.
The radio broadcast is the King Lear that fades in and out in the background after the English Garden section. Supposedly, that performance was what happened to be playing on the radio when they were recording and looking for things to add to it.
Re: German True Stereo and this one, the bass really pops out in the first half of this, but now that I’ve read it, it does sound like some of the sting’s been removed from Lennon’s delivery, especially on the “expert texpert” part, arguably the only line in the song actually intended to mean anything.
In any mix, for a song that was pointedly put together to trick people into looking for a meaning that wasn’t there, it sure does have a lot of decaying imagery in the lyrics and sound. Everything from the seasick orchestration to the dead dog, sex fiends and lunatic background singers give it that “center can not hold” Yeats feel. And I’d gladly take more of this kind of tongue-in-cheek, batshit crazy band self-mythologizing over another half-hearted hurricane/bad sign/crossroads retelling.
I love pretty much everything about Walrus, but I guess my favorite parts are: the way the intro makes you wait a few seconds for those strings to arrive; how John saves just a little bit more for that second “I’m cryyyyyyyyyyyyy”; the way other otherwise completely obscured guitar finally shows up under the expert texpert choking smokers line and most of all, the strings that go with “semolina pilchard, climbing up the Eiffel Tower” – if there’s a better way to musically represent the image of a giant mutant wheat field growing wild over a post-apocalyptic France, I’ve yet to hear it. People should write more songs about that.
By conventional I meant something like a string quartet or quintet, or a chamber orchestra, you know, something with at least one of each of the four string instruments. And I certainly agree that Martin went for the sound he wanted.
As I think I said when I first brought this up, it’s presumably easier to mix a more select range of instruments into a rock band arrangement. I mean, the whole point of a string quartet or orchestra is that it covers the full range of frequencies. So for example Eleanor Rigby uses an octet of four violins, two cellos, and two violas (no bass but anyway…) for a fuller range of sound, and it works because there are no other instruments.
Mixing a rock band with orchestral instruments is obviously not an easy thing to perfect. The cellos really stand out in Walrus, and in the 40 years since it was recorded, it seems like the cello has emerged as the best fit with the sound of a rock band.
How about “Don’t you think the joker laughs at you?” followed by a chorus of derisive laughter.
I think I’m still hearing it from my perspective at the time — a 14 year old Catholic school kid with khakis and short hair. I wanted to be, but definitely did not feel like I was, part of the hip world that Lennon was singing from the throne of.
i understand where you’re coming from steve.
my perspective is only slightly different. i came from a pretty bland, suburban background. and since it wasn’t 1967 anymore when i first heard the song, i had no worries about which side i was on in lennon’s anti-square campaign. but i could see feeling the way you do if i was in catholic school at the time.
as far as that line is concerned, i never thought much of it, because at the beginning of the song, lennon says “i am he and you are he and you are me and we are all together”. so if the joker laughs at “you”, he laughs at “me” and john, too.
and besides, the joker laughs at everyone. that’s his role. he reminds us that noone is above being mocked. in this case, lennon’s asking “choking smokers” if they don’t think the joker laughs at them (not short haired cathholic boys in khaki pants, unless they, too, are choking smokers). even without reminding ourselves that lennon was a smoker (of tobacco and weed), it always sounded to me like he was saying “the joker [who laughs at everyone, including me] is laughing at you, chokiing smokers, even though you don’t seem to think he is”.