Strawberry Fields Forever

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"Strawberry Fields Forever" is a song composed by John Lennon, recorded by his band The Beatles in 1966 at Abbey Road Studios, and issued by Parlophone Records and Capitol Records in February 1967, as the B-side to "Penny Lane".

Writing[change | change source]

Lennon began work on "Strawberry Fields Forever" while he was in Almería, Spain, during the time he was appearing in a Dick Lester comedy movie, How I Won the War, which starred Michael Crawford. The lyrics drew on Lennon's memories of Strawberry Field, a Salvation Army home in Liverpool, England, where Lennon went as a boy to garden parties with neighborhood friends. "We always had fun at Strawberry Fields", he later told Playboy Magazine. They also drew on his feelings of alienation and being different. "No one I think is in my tree, I mean it must be high or low" he explained as not being able to find other people who looked at life the way he did.

Recording[change | change source]

Lennon's first demo of "Strawberry Fields Forever" was made with a simple tape recorder, by Lennon himself. He explored different arrangements of instruments, with the Beatles and George Martin in the recording studio, as they began sessions for Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.




Music video[change | change source]

To go with the recording, the Beatles filmed a "promo"; an early kind of music video, in January 1967. The band had begun to grow mustaches, and Lennon began to wear eyeglasses in public, which he rarely did before. The changes made the Beatles look very different from how the public saw them earlier. The kind of glasses Lennon wore (sometimes called "granny glasses"), were issued in England by the National Health Service and the military, and he wore them making How I Won the War. Lennon disliked the style as a boy, but now made it a fad by embracing it.

Release and public reactions[change | change source]


It is sometimes believed that "Strawberry Fields Forever" describes or suggests the use of drugs, like LSD or even heroin. Lennon admitted that using LSD and other drugs influenced his songwriting, but made no references to any drug, or drug use, in the song.
