Glass Onion

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"Glass Onion"
"Glass Onion" cover
Song by the Beatles
from the album The Beatles
Released 22 November 1968
Recorded 11 September 1968
Genre Rock
Length 2:17
Label Apple Records
Writer(s) Lennon-McCartney
Producer(s) George Martin
The Beatles track listing
Dear Prudence
(2 of disc 1)
"Glass Onion"
(3 of disc 1)
Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da
(4 of disc 1)
Love track listing
"Get Back"
(2)
"Glass Onion"
(3)
"Eleanor Rigby/Julia(transition)"
(4))

"Glass Onion"[1] is a song by the Beatles from The Beatles (also known as The White Album) primarily written by John Lennon (albeit credited to Lennon-McCartney). The song is a response to those people who attempted to find hidden meanings in Beatle songs, and references "I Am the Walrus, "Strawberry Fields Forever", "There's a Place", "I'm Looking Through You", "Within You Without You", "Lady Madonna", "The Fool on the Hill", and "Fixing a Hole".

The song's "The Walrus was Paul" lyric is both a reference to "I Am the Walrus" and John "saying something nice to Paul" in response to changes in their relationship at that time.[2] Later, the line was interpreted as a "clue" in the "Paul is dead" urban legend that alleged Paul McCartney died in 1966 during the recording of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and was replaced by a look-alike and sound-alike.

According to Lennon, "Glass Onion" was a throwaway song, much like "I Am the Walrus". "I threw the line in—'the Walrus was Paul'—just to confuse everybody a bit more. It could have been 'The fox terrier is Paul.' I mean, it's just a bit of poetry. I was having a laugh because there'd been so much gobbledegook about Pepper—play it backwards and you stand on your head and all that."[3]

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ "Glass onion" is British slang for a monocle.
  2. ^ ; Wenner, Jann. Lennon Remembers, Straight Arrow Press, 1971.
  3. ^ The Beatles. Anthology, p. 306, 2000.
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