My Favourite Beatles Song
My Favourite Beatles Song
Glass Onion – Nick Coates
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Nick Coates writes Alice and the Eggmen, a Substack that digs into the tangled links between The Beatles and Lewis Carroll. Here he takes on Glass Onion, from the White Album, and makes the case that its refrain – 'looking through a glass onion' – is really a nod to Through the Looking-Glass. They get into the song's queasy, unresolved chords and its sly nods to other songs, including John's lifelong obsession with the Walrus.
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Welcome to my favourite Beatles Song, the podcast where we celebrate the music of the Beatles with a distinguished guest. I'm Tim Tucker, and with me today is writer Nick Coates. Welcome, Nick.
SPEAKER_00Hi, Tim. It's an absolute pleasure to be here.
SPEAKER_06I know you from having met you at Evolver 62 and being introduced to your wonderful substack, Alice and the Eggmen. Yes, which uh basically plays with the interaction between the Beatles and Lewis Carroll, correct?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's right. And I'm stealing a line, I think, from Ian Leslie here, but um uh I think, or my my provocation is you can't really understand um Lewis Carroll without the Beatles, and you can't really understand the Beatles without Lewis Carroll. He's so much more present, actually, than people have given credit for. And I've spent the last couple of years kind of delving into all the details. In fact, the song we're going to talk about today is one of those ones. I think I've counted about 36, where there are, you know, um pretty obvious kind of illusions or imagery or lines that we can take. But yeah, it's it's been um it's been fascinating. The more I've dug, the more I've discovered there is to um to say about it, actually.
SPEAKER_06It is a fascinating substack, and I have to say, it was more than more references than I would have guessed to Lewis Carroll, which is what's fascinating. And I love your extended essays on all sorts of aspects of where the where Lewis Carroll crops up in the Beatles work and how how they ri reflect on that, whether consciously or not, it's amazing. I mean, he he's quoted as saying he lived Lewis Carroll, didn't he, or the Alice books specifically, um as a child. He was very uh engrossed in them. So they were part of his D his creative and cultural DNA, weren't they?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and I I don't know, I don't want to simplify, but I don't know if you're growing up, you know, in that sort of around the war, and you know, let's be honest, there's a lot of that kind of the world of you know, mid-century Britain's gonna be quite grey. And if you wanted to escape, you know, if you wanted to get out, imagine stuff, which you know it's kind of what Strawberry Fields was all about, really. It's like a you know, another place you can go. We'll talk about that in the song, won't we? But it's an escape, it's a uh it's it's it's a space where you can go and be someone different and imagine that. And I think that kind of you know, colourful world of like children's literature is so powerful for just for that that reason, really. In fact, I don't know whether we'll come to it, but I I did have an exchange with Julia Baird, uh, you know, his his half-sister, and and I asked her about it, and she she was quite resistant to the idea that it was only John who kind of was a Lewis Carroll nut. And she said, no, it was it was all of our book, and it was post-war fantasy. So I think that idea that after the war people needed some kind of colour, they needed some escape, they needed hope, they needed optimism, imagination, creativity, it was kind of a generational thing, and I think that's why I'm so interested in this. It's not just the Beatles, Lewis Carroll random connections, it was a whole zeitgeist uh moment, if you like.
SPEAKER_06So let me let me ask you how you first discovered the Beatles. Do you have an early memory the earliest memory of the Beatles?
SPEAKER_00I have this memory of my the green carpet in my parents' house, and you have to understand that my my dad was like this slightly intellectual character who was um music for him was like Wagner and Beethoven. For a bit of light relief, you might get Gilbert and Sullivan, and then he had some kind of comedy records. He had some, I don't know what it was, but he also had a like a record of steam engine sounds or something that he was really into. It wasn't very, it wasn't exactly like pop culture, let's put it that way. But I discovered my my mum had been like a 60s girl, she was a lot younger than him, born just at the end of the war. But she had like the seekers. Um, and then I discovered, because we only had vinyl when I was young, I didn't have my own system or anything to play it on. And I remember discovering they had some Beatles albums. Like this was the only music he would have bought. I think he used to sort of say, you know, oh well, it's a bit like Schubert. He would he would grant the Beatles being like some kind of classical music, you know, kind of equivalence or or level of quality. Well, I mean, he's not the only person to say that, but but yeah, and I I discovered Sergeant Pepper, and I remember lying on the on the carpet and listening to it and you know, opening the gatefold, seeing the lyrics, the moustache cut out, like, what the hell is all this? And how colourful it was. And I just couldn't get my head around. I kind of assumed, I think, that there would have been a singer and then some musicians, and the you know, didn't wasn't quite sure who the singer was. And then I could hear that there were all these different voices, and I just couldn't get my head around this, how this one person who I assumed was the singer was was all these different voices. And I mean, even you know, a John on on Pepper is like four or five different voices because of all of the the very speed. So yeah, I remember being totally bamboozled and kind of entranced, and on some kind of warm summer afternoon, just lying there by myself, putting on the vinyl and and and and perusing the cover and just diving into this um very odd-sounding world. And no doubt within you, without you was sort of more like confusing than anything at that age. But um, yeah, that's that's my memory. That is my memory.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, that's a great one. And so do you have a favorite period from either the early mop tops to the middle folky psychedelia to the late hairy scary Beatles?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, uh, I mean, it has to has to be the middle, it has to be the middle, I think, anyway. Um, and but also because this Alice thing, the the Lewis Carroll Association, I mean, that's peak Alice, the the the you know 66 to 68. Um, and again, not just in in the Beatles world, but the way they connected out this explosion of San Francisco, and you've got Ken Casey and the um the Merry Pranksters that inspires um magical mystery tour and just the colourfulness of it, I think the optimism. I mean, uh who wouldn't have wanted to have been in London in in that period, you know, Sergeant Pepper coming out of someone's window on that sunny afternoon that people describe. It must have been amazing. And I just think the the the the experimentation, the the just the rapidity of it, how it changed. I mean, I I love the later albums, Abbey Road probably the side B is the thing that um you know is is most ingrained in my memory because we used to listen to it on car journeys end to end. But um, but yeah, if I had to pick one, it's the it's the it's it's the colourful bit.
SPEAKER_06Well, how about um having met the Beatles or their entourage or seen any of them live? Have you ever had that experience?
SPEAKER_00Well, well, I wish with meeting any of them, uh, I mean, for obvious reasons, it would be it would actually be really helpful to to talk to Paul about some of the um the things in the substack, not least the statues in his garden, but that's maybe for another day. Um uh I've you know I've got a friend who's friends with one of the guitarists in his band. We've got another friend who's a musician who's Ringo's stage manager. Um, there's lots of I I've I've interviewed one of the remix engineers um who's worked on all the the recent projects, but never never got never got to the inner sanctum. But I have seen Paul six times. Um the first time was Glastonbury in 2004, and that was that was kind of mind-blowing. I just wasn't expecting it to be any good. I thought it would just be like a heritage experience. But there we were in the field, Live and Let Die, boom, the the fireworks went up, and 100,000 people singing na na na's until three in the morning. I mean, that was pretty special. Um, yeah, and I I think that the lyrics launch at the festival hall I went to, and that was great. We were right above the stage, the sort of the door out to the green room, so he came right underneath us, and that's as close as I've got.
SPEAKER_03I told you about strawberry peak.
SPEAKER_05Well, here's another place to go.
SPEAKER_02Wherever it's doing.
SPEAKER_06So the song we're going to talk about today is Glass Onion. It was written by John Lennon, credited to Lennon McCartney, but written by John Lennon. It started in Richikesh in the spring of 1968, and then recorded in September and October 1968 for the White album, so-called. Actually the Beatles, but known as the Y album. This was released in November 1968 in the US and UK, um, which obviously was a huge hit worldwide. It entered at number one uh in December in the UK, um, and entered at number 11 in the US and climbed to number one shortly afterwards. So those are the facts, but tell us what led you to this choice?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, it's it's it's probably not an obvious one. And I think if you asked any of my friends, you know, what's Nick's favourite song, they would have heard me, you know, on the piano late at night, maybe sort of knocking out, you know, Lady Madonna or something. You know, I I'm often more of a Paul person when it comes to kind of playing and who I identify with and even like what my voice sounds like. So, but actually a lot of my favorite songs are the Lennon ones deep down, and they're the ones that I think are the most experimental. And and Glass Onion doesn't get much of a look in, but it is a big connection back to my substacks, and there's lots of reasons for that we can talk about. Maybe I'll just start with the obvious one, like the name of the song, um, Glass Onion, and particularly the refrain, which I think everyone will remember, looking through a glass onion. It was only when I started looking at it and sort of thinking about it and thinking, well, hang on a second, looking through glass, through the looking glass, like can that really be a coincidence that John's favourite book and of the Alice books, it's the one that's the more important, I would suggest. Um, you've got basically encoded a very clear, you know, illusion. Now, I I could also believe someone John's saying, Well, he never said that, and it was coincidence, but I I don't believe that because those those are words that have been deeply ingrained in his psyche. And I suppose what's important about looking glass is that um looking glass, a bit like the song, is kind of a book that's all about throwing people off the scent. It's a book about um look, I study literature at university, so I'm gonna use some fancy terms like metafiction, you know, uh, or postmodern. But, you know, I I'm I was really into that kind of literature and culture that's sort of not talking about things in the real world, it's talking about itself and it's subverting itself and it's saying, look, don't take this too seriously, or you know, if looking glass a bit is about playing with language and ambiguity and not taking things seriously and undermining what's going on. Um, I think Glass Onion does the same for the whole of the Beatles work. So, in a way, the through the looking glass is kind of a source code for Lennon's imagination, his creative writing process. Jabberwocky in particular, if everyone knows that, was Brilligan the Slythy Toaves, that idea that you could use me words to mean anything you want.
SPEAKER_06And he did a lot of that in his his writing at school, didn't he? Um, there's a lot of evidence of his using words like that in um The Daily Howl.
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah. I mean, he wanted to be Lewis Carroll mixed in with some of those other kind of, you know, the goons, and that that was his thing, Edward Lear. So yeah.
SPEAKER_06It's interesting what you say about source code, because I've always thought that Lewis Carroll represents dreamlike reality. Um uh it probably predates surrealism, doesn't it? But it has um the idea that there's another kind of reality that isn't the one we face, however you want to position that. And that seems to be something that's very attractive to John, particularly, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_00Well, I think especially, John, I but I agree with you, I think that's what drew him to it. Um, and and in our songs, I mean, what's the first line and what's the what's clearly the origin of it? Because uh, if you listen to the Isha demo, we've only got the first verse. I told you about Strawberry Fields, um, that the place where nothing was real. Strawberry Fields is is a physical place, but it's not, it's a subjective place of the imagination. So, but for John and many of the surrealists, and for many of the psychedelic kind of creatives in the 60s, physical reality wasn't real, it was the internal reality that was real. So, absolutely you're right. And just FYI, the surrealists saw Lewis Carroll as their prophet or their herald, um, explicitly. Uh, you know, so that that's that's why it's also not just Beatles Alice, it's actually Alice goes through um surrealism, surrealism then blends into the 60s, McCartney's obsession with McGreet, for example. So, yeah, you're you're on you're on the right track, Tim. I agree.
SPEAKER_06I was doing a lot of reading about critical response to this song, and a lot of people, including Ian MacDonald and David Quantick and others, see it as quite a biting satire, an almost cruel take on fandom. And there is that in there, but there is also a wallowing in and uh a joy, I think an almost joyful um wallowing creative vision, isn't there? The Lewis Carillion element is is playful and joyful, I think.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think so. Um, I mean, I think a couple of things to say, you know, also all those critics, they they really take the mid-70s John interviews really seriously because they're canonical, those Playboy interviews. Um and John's quite dismissive of his own work there. I mean, he really is, he minimizes it so much. I mean, about this song, oh, that was just another throwaway song. And you know, maybe it was, maybe it was half an hour in Rishakesh. He only had that verse, you know, but but again, that's him post-rationalizing the origin of it. The the work that we're engaging with, that it actually has a lot more meaning. Um, and and what I like is to sort of not want to take seriously the idea that Walrus or Glassanian are just fuck off to the critics and like this is nothing, you're idiots. And actually, it's something slightly richer, which is like, let's embrace all the meaning. So, not it means nothing, but it to say yes, it doesn't just mean one thing. A bit like life of Brian, it's like use your brain, like what you take from this is as important, just don't ascribe one meaning, don't be those people who think there's a hidden meaning that there's only one hidden meaning. So I think the way I see it is it's like it's much more of a positive opening up of perspectives rather than a rejection of of interpretation. I mean, this year, um, apology if I'm going back to like the the the fancy words and the and the the literature literature degree, but like 1967 and eight are kind of important in literature and culture because uh if you know Roland Barthes, the the French writer, he he wrote this thing called the death of the author. And I'm not saying John read it, he didn't, but the death of the author is 1968, and the death of the author, Barth basically he lambassed all these critics who were trying to only interpret books through the the author, and he was saying, in order to have the birth of the reader, we need to kill the author. He's not saying there is no author, he's saying it's we need to forget the author if we want to embrace the reader, and all culture basically is what you make of it, and that's the value of it. It doesn't matter. They don't and and this song still means so much to so many people, that's why it's magic. So let's forget what Lennon said basically, and let's embrace the spirit of what he was saying, which was like, here's a gift, and you make of it what you will, and I'm not necessarily even the person to explain it. Don't ask me to explain it.
SPEAKER_06It's it's not the first self-referential Beatles song because I am the walrus and Lady Madonna had already done that briefly, but it's probably the most significant one, isn't it? Because as you say, it starts with Strawberry Fields, it references at least five. Strawberry Fields, I'm the Walrus, Lady Madonna, Fall on the Hill, and Fixing Holes. Some people claim that there's a place you can go might be there's a place reference, which is an old big song. And um and some even think that the the flow is referencing within you, without you. I don't know. Some of these could be coincidental, couldn't they? But yeah, it's definitely deliberately referencing the Beatles there, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00It is. He's definitely setting out to throw the cat among the pigeons. That was first uh explicit in Walrus because you know, there's this story, I think, from Peter Shoton, Pete Shotten, the at Quarry Bank school where they went, people were teaching the Beatles. So there's this idea that come on, this is ridiculous. Like we're not like we're not history yet, we're not like some kind of Greek Greek myths that you have to pick apart. Uh, I think he just felt that was a little bit ludicrous and wanted to have some fun with it and throw people off the scent. But I think what I was also gonna say was that John can be very throwaway, and if you just trust that, that's one piece. But then there's also the deeply sincere, and so we need to talk about Walrus, and the Walrus was Paul, don't we?
SPEAKER_04I told you about the walrus can be man. You know that wearers clothes is be mad. Well, here's another two feet ball.
SPEAKER_03The walrus Paul.
SPEAKER_00And so there's two bits to that, I think. Some and both of which he talks about, by the way. So I'm not I'm not overreaching here, but let's start there. There's the walrus was Paul, which clearly Paul wasn't the walrus, and I'm the walrus, it was John. Um, and so yeah, if you only read that line, then you're like, okay, it's just uh another clue for you all, or throwing you off the scent. But what does he say before that? He says the walrus, um, we were we were close as can be, man. And so the other way of looking at it is the walrus and Paul are him, him and Paul. And the other bit he says in in later interviews is look, I was feeling guilty at the time. I'd met um I'd met Yoko. He was like, This is a gift to Paul because I was feeling guilty. And I wanted to give Paul some uh uh what's the word? Crumb, he calls it, I think. Yeah, crumb. But he also says, I think that I am the walrus was him sort of in a mock way saying, I am the one, like I'm the guru, I am the new prophet. Um, and by giving it back to Paul, he's almost saying, No, no, Paul, it was you. You're the one who held this band together. And so that doesn't sit very well, that deep psychology, that kind of very doesn't sit very well with uh an analysis of the song that says, Oh, it's just uh screw you critics, this is meaningless. It's it's deeply meaningful in another sense at the same time. So I, you know, I think I think that's interesting too. Definitely. I have written a post on this, so like if if anyone's interested, do you do have a look? But there are a lot of walruses in John's personal artistic, musical, what should we call it, trajectory. And they start earlier and they finish later than we think. The the Walrus and the Carpenter was his uh his favourite poem from from Looking Glass. Um, he he says explicitly, I'm the Walrus, it's the Walrus and the Carpenter. Yeah, of course it is, because we've got this drawing he did, you know, when he was a schoolboy in one of those books, it's come up for auction. So anyone can go and look that up. So yeah, right early on, he was copying Walrus and the Carpenter um obsessively. It does really show up in I'm the Warrus. It gets name-checked here again, but in a sort of slightly dismissive way. So, whereas in Walrus, he's inhabiting the Walrus or sort of it it's identified with him, however, you know, jokingly. Um, in this song, he's kind of starting to deny it. It wasn't me, the Warrus was actually Paul. Go go figure that one out. Um, there's Walrus Gumbo in um in Come Together again coincidence. I don't think so. For someone who said it was my favourite, but I mean, sure, he's using it potentially in a the way he does, grabbing bits and pieces here and there, newspaper head, whatever. He was but it it's there, and then the the critical things are it doesn't stop with the Beatles, though I think people think it does. So obviously, we then have we have God, and I think I've described God as his Prospero moment.
SPEAKER_06This is the song on the um plastic ano band album.
SPEAKER_00Exactly, it's where he sort of like throws off his former identity and says, I'm gonna be personal now. And so I was the dream weaver, Lewis Carroll, the dream child, you know, um, but now I'm reborn. I was the walrus, but now I'm John, and so dear friends, you'll just have to carry on. The dream is over. So he's like, like Prospero, I'm gonna break all my magic books, and I'm you know, Prospero is also Shakespeare. That's why I love this like this meta fictional thing, like the the in a in many ways it's Shakespeare saying goodbye. So, you know, it's like I'm gonna move on to another thing now, and um, I I, the magician, am now, you know, relinquishing my powers. That's that's what John does in God, but the walrus doesn't go away. And so um he does a book of drawings for for um for Sean uh of illustrations, and uh the name of it's going to um escape me now, but um but he does a walrus, so there's a walrus there. The walrus doesn't go away when he's in the despite him saying, you know, um I was the walrus, now I'm John. Yeah, but the walrus is still part of John. Um and then my little discovery, which really tickled me, just like starting over again when he's groping for the lyrics, uh, he basically maps out one of the verses using some lines from the The Walrus and the Carpenter. So, you know, it's not a Walrus song, but where did he go when he was groping for a structure for? For a rhythm, for some imagery that he later then replaced. What was his like model? Here was Worrus and the Carpenter.
SPEAKER_06We've talked about lyrics largely so far, but part of the um the mystery of this song is the way it moves uh musically, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00Well, I was just practicing the chords beforehand because uh I was trying to understand them, but yeah.
SPEAKER_06Alan Pollock says that there's no clear key centre here. It starts in A minor, and the first part is A minor to F7, which already introduces a dissonance because the melody goes from an E flat to an A, which is the diminished fifth.
SPEAKER_00Uh yeah, yeah. It's like the tritone, yeah. Very common with John, like these sort of sour, sour notes, you know. So yeah, this idea that you've got a fairly conventional structure, but then you've got something sour like this drop from the so in in a minor you've got e, and then in the in the um uh the f seven chord it goes down to e flat, and most of the song oscillates around this like semitonal is it is it e flat or dunk? So you don't know where you are really, and the looking through a glass onion bit where it gets to the D is a kind of it's like a false peak, it's like a false resolution because it doesn't resolve.
SPEAKER_04I told you about Strawberry Fields. You know the place where nothing is real.
SPEAKER_06What I love is the place where it goes, here's another place you can go, it seems to change key to G minor and C7, which which is lovely, I think. Beautiful move. Yeah, I really feel the shift to from Strawberry Fields to this other place in that music.
SPEAKER_05Well, here's another place you can go.
SPEAKER_00Where everything flows, but then the song, as we know, doesn't resolve in any way because we get the weird string coda at the end with its, you know, sort of like drunken meandering and getting slower, and and and again it's very chromatic, which is is very much in the spirit of Walrus. I think the the sort of the up and down chromatic, not clear which key we're in, keeps sort of pushing this way and that, but but never really resolving.
SPEAKER_06The strings are amazing, I think. I mean, I love the the sort of swooping again. Another um thing that unsettles you is the swooping glissando of the strings up and down.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we just talked about textual references, so name checking other songs, and and as you say, there's at least five, possibly more. Um, but there's also musical quotation. So, you know, uh, we have we have when it gets to fool on the hill, Paul gets out his his recorder, did, dee, di, dee, you know, to reference that. So that's another bit of a kind of like ludicrous, you know, throwback.
SPEAKER_05I told you about the fool on the hill. I tell you, man, he's living there still. Well, here's another bake can be.
SPEAKER_00But on a deeper level, you've got other musical quotes, and so actually, Strawberry Fields, the string arrangement for that, or Walrus, they do they do the glissando slithering thing. It's it's there. I just listened, re-listened back to it before before this because I wanted to be sure. But yeah, the sliding thing, which is a shift that occurs in Martin's scoring, I think, beginning in beginning in that the the pepper era. And I I I like to think maybe influenced a bit by kind of George's interest in kind of you know, within you, without you, and the way the sort of the Indian uh string instruments tend to be very, you know, not fixed on the diatonic scales, but interested in all those in-between slithery sounds. So I I don't know that you can see that evolution, but it's in the same in the same tradition. But I think it's definitely it's quoting what he did on Strawberry Fields 100%. And then you've got the James Bond quote as well.
SPEAKER_06If I don't think he picked up on that, yeah, it's the um it's going from uh a major chord to an augmented to a sixth and back again. Yeah, it's the classic James Bond um chord sequence.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, recorded in Abbey Rhodes, I'm pretty confident in saying. I certainly know Goldfinger was. Um, and of course, we've got there is a whole, there's that whole book, isn't there, Love and Let Die. Great, great book about the relationship between Bond and Death and Love, and and um they're they're they're all, you know, John Barry, and I think they're all um they're they're all part of a piece, and I I would be very surprised if um George Martin hadn't sort of been aware of that when he when he scored it. So I'm gonna add to our pile of like references and like um jokes and kind of uh what the literary people call intertextual allusions. I'm gonna add in 007.
SPEAKER_06Just a word on the the the rest of the Beatles performance. I love Paul's bass, it sounds so uh sort of clunky, almost clanking away. Great sound.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so that opening snare thing, dugat, duga, it's there in John's um the the the the origin of it is there in John's demo. So people should go and listen to the Isha demos to sort of go back to where did this song start? You can see it in its little um kind of embryonic form with only one set of one verse of lyrics. Um, and yeah, he does as he's strumming it, you get this like da-ga-da.
SPEAKER_01I told you about strawberry field. Well, here's a patient no just as real.
SPEAKER_00And Ringo turns that into two da-ga-da-ga. It's like uh, what is it? Like a gunshots or something. It's like wake up, yeah. After that, dear prudence kind of like quietness, wake up.
SPEAKER_03I told you about strawberry peel.
SPEAKER_00And and I saw Ken Scott talking about it, how he'd double-tracked the snare. So I hadn't realized that, but that's why it's so big and aggressive sounding. And Ken Scott also says, Oh, but I wiped one of the doublings later on, and I thought I was gonna get fired. And then the Beatles are like, Oh no, that's actually really good, because they they've never wanted anything to be copy-paste, they always wanted it to evolve.
SPEAKER_06So the happy accidents, they always embrace them, don't they?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, I think that's one of their creative rules. Embrace the accent, absolutely. Um yeah, but without the strings, back to the conversation. Without the strings, it would be really sour, wouldn't it? You've got this aggressive, punchy snare drum, Paul's bass with the fender bass that he'd he'd got acquired recently through the the red desk, if it's the red desk, over, you know, really pushed to the limit. It's really spiky and aggressive um and big at the same time. And then, yeah, Harrison's Harrison's little, yeah, um, whatever they are, but they're sour, they're vinegar, and it's all quite jumpy.
SPEAKER_06I mean, there are a lot more references in there which probably are beyond the scope of this podcast, Steven, even though we've spent a long time. But things like bent back tulips were an actual thing. They they were found in a restaurant he went to with Derek Taylor.
SPEAKER_00No, but it is important because we haven't really talked about what is this glass onion and what are the bentback tulips. So you're right, the bentback tulips, I think the restaurant was called Parks, and um the the bentback tulips were I think I think like a decoration, you know, a bit like Heston Blumentel today, you'll you'll go and see have the sound of the sea, and you know, you're not just eating the dish, but there's a shell and you put on headphones. I think it's a bit like an early version of that. They had these tulips where they they peeled, they'd peeled the the the leaves of the tulips backwards, but then it's to see how the other half lived. So it's that feels like social commentary, doesn't it? These people going to these fancy restaurants, it's like John's like I don't think that's John's vibe, is it? Like pretty slightly, I mean, although he was kind of you could argue a bit pretentious with some of his artistic outputs. Uh there's a bit of disdain, working class hero kind of disdain for the um people going paying a lot of money to sit in a restaurant and and look at these these tulips. Yeah, and I I haven't got to the bottom of the glass onion, because when I started looking it up, maybe you went down the same rabbit hole. I have, yeah.
SPEAKER_06I mean, people have different takes on it, don't they? I mean, I I've always thought of um when I picture a glass onion, I see the um the layers in the glass. So to me, it looks quite opaque, oddly.
SPEAKER_00I I don't know. I mean, I I I want to being a, you know, if I'm gonna analyse it and write a sub stack on it, I'm probably going to argue that what's in keeping with the rest of the song is something that purports to be clear but actually has layers that are hard to see through. It's like a distorting, when I visualize the onion, the yeah, you can see through it, but the the layers of the onion are gonna somehow make I don't know, they're gonna distort or or um make it not 100% transparent. So that that's the this all makes sense. But when I was reading up on it, a glass onion is also a name for like a nautical flask. There is a thing, isn't there? Yeah. And they're not clear, they're made of glass, but they're actually coloured. So I I don't know. Um, and you must have also looked up the fact that he he had the glass onion name before the song because he wanted to rename the ivy's glass onion, and then they became uh Badfinger. So it's one of those images he had in his. I think John had you know a library of images in his brain. Cast Iron Shaw, that's another one, looking for a home in a song, um which is a real place, by the way, cast iron shore, isn't it?
SPEAKER_06In uh Liverpool.
SPEAKER_00But it's um it's another image though that is when you put it together, makes sense because glass is also hard, so it's transparent, but it's hard. Cast iron is also hard. The the sound of the song is brittle, I think you could argue, as well as sour. So I think again, it's when we're saying, well, there's no coherence to this song. One of the things I wanted to say, and really back to your what's real, what's not, objective reality is not real, subjective reality is all that's real. Well, actually, um songs can have meaning, emotional meaning, subjective meaning, without having to be 100% logical. So I think the fact that these fragments of images kind of do make sense in a way that it's very hard to pin down is is in a way the meaning of the song, and it's why people still listen to it. It me it it does move you, it does have an emotional resonance. You don't quite know rationally what it means, but it has so much emotional meaning.
SPEAKER_06Any other songs you'd like to give a nod to as amongst your favourite Beatles songs?
SPEAKER_00So, I mean, I I I do always come back to I'm the Warus. I I I do. I mean, I I often do the thing of what are your desert island discs ones, and I I usually try and come up with a a bit of a cocktail of, you know, if I were on the desert island, what it what would it be? And I mean, I'm the walrus is definitely up there. Um Tomorrow Never Knows for the same reasons, like the the most revolutionary sound and uh just how how daring it is, and but also how it links through to you know Stockhausen and Berio, and like bringing the cla the the sort of the serious side, the art world, I think that's something that's really interesting about the Beatles, how serious they were in lots of ways, as well as how how playful. But then, you know, there are there are there are the other ones that are just beautiful songs. I mean, you know, whether that's a blackbird or a for no one, um, I always oscillate on which one of those ones it is. Um, Julia, it's uh and again, I don't think you can have the Beatles as a one version. I don't I don't want to say it's a I'm a John Beatles person or a Paul Beatles person. I I'd want that blend. I'd want that blend. I just gave you some and as everyone says, ask me tomorrow, and it would be a different answer. Day in the life would have to be there. But you know, you get tired of them, and then I go back to I want to listen to She's Leaving Home. I've been listening to a lot recently, and I that's amazing. It's really amazing as a piece of art.
SPEAKER_06So your Substack is still ongoing. Alice and the Eggman, which is available at the AliceCode.substack.com.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Well, I've written I've written 50 posts. I've slightly I've slightly exhausted it. I actually haven't done a whole one on Glass Onion, so maybe after you've done the podcast, I might. I mean, you say in your about section that you were thinking of doing a book.
SPEAKER_06Is that still a possibility?
SPEAKER_00I've got I've got a chapter coming out in a book, which is going to be an intro, but it's a it's a like a scholarly book. It's a Lewis Carroll Scholars kind of book. The it's going to be the um companion to Through the Looking Earth to Alice in Wonderland. Um I would love to write a book. The challenge is that this is a visual story, and copyright in images and stuff is really hard. So I'm if anyone out there listening to this has a way of getting Apple to talk to me and give me permission, then getting a book, writing this up as a book will be much easier. Um the other thing I've done, um, I've done a I've started up a parallel uh sub stack. It's only got two posts now, but it's called Alice Songs, and it's all about the same theme, Lewis Carroll, but influence in the wider kind of musical sphere. And there's a lot, right? There's a lot to say there as well. And two, the two posts that I love people to go and listen to. The first one I wrote was about Little Sims. I think her second album, I think, is called Stillness in Wonderland. The whole thing's an Alice in Wonderland concept. Alice is a metaphor for what the industry's like, how mad it is. Um, but also um we talked about a place, another place you can go for her. Wonderland's also a place you can go in your imagination, so that's interesting. And then the the the the last one I've just done is all about Tori Amos uh and Alice in Wonderland. So little earthquakes, but also she's got a song on a later album called Um Ruby Through the Looking Glass, which is about a miscarriage. So I'm starting another whole stream of of reflections on other songs and other artists who've been influenced. So um, yeah, check it out.
SPEAKER_06Well, listen, it's been amazing talking to you this morning about the Beatles and specifically Glass Onion. Thanks so much.
SPEAKER_00It was great. Thank you so much, Tim. Privilege to be here.
unknownOne, two, three, four.
SPEAKER_06Thanks for listening to my favourite Beatles song. If you like the podcast, please consider giving it a rating or review on your favourite podcast platform. This helps me to reach new listeners. You can follow the podcast on x.com, Instagram, and Facebook. Look for the links in the show notes. Thanks to Joe Kane for the fantastic music and Mark Cunningham for the logo design. I'll see you next time.