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About

Genius Annotation

John Lennon’s answer to those who looked for hidden meanings in The Beatles' music was “Glass Onion”, a song deliberately filled with red herrings, obscure imagery and allusions to past works.

Fully aware of the power of The Beatles' own mythology, and with a general dislike of those who over-interpreted his work, Lennon deliberately inserted references to “I Am The Walrus”, “Strawberry Fields Forever”, “Lady Madonna”, “The Fool On The Hill” and “Fixing A Hole”.

The effect is a kaleidoscopic look through the group’s back pages. “Lady Madonna”, whose protagonist reappears in “Glass Onion”, contained a reference to “I Am The Walrus” (“See how they run”).

That song, in turn, featured the line “See how they fly like Lucy in the sky”, a clear reference to Sgt. Pepper’s psychedelic masterpiece. The effect is of a continual strand running through The Beatles' works, even if such a strand was never intended in the first place.

Lennon: That’s me, just doing a throwaway song, à la ‘Walrus,’ à la everything I’ve ever written. I threw the line in – ‘the Walrus was Paul’ – just to confuse everybody a bit more. And I thought Walrus has now become me, meaning ‘I am the one.’ Only it didn’t mean that in this song.
Playboy: Why a walrus?
Lennon: It could have been ‘the fox terrier is Paul,’ you know. I mean, it’s just a bit of poetry. It was just thrown in like that.“
All We Are Saying: The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, by David Sheff

Q&A

Find answers to frequently asked questions about the song and explore its deeper meaning

What did The Beatles say about "Glass Onion"?
Genius Answer

I was having a laugh because there had been so much gobbledegook about ‘Pepper,’ play it backwards and you stand on your head and all that.

(Rolling Stone – February 4, 1971)

Well, that was a joke, that was a bit of a song, you know. I mean, it was actually me in the Walrus suit. I thought I’d confuse people who read great depths into lyrics. It could have been ‘The fox terrier was Paul,’ you know. It’s just a bit of poetry. It was just thrown in like that. The line was put in partly because I was feeling guilty because I was with Yoko, and I was leaving Paul. It’s, you know, a perverse way of saying to Paul, you know, ‘Here, have a crumb, this illusion, this stroke, because I’m leaving.’

-John Lennon

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