"And almost none will know that Pablo Fanque–the man who owned the circus—was more than simply an exceptional showman and perhaps the finest horsemen of his day. He was also a black man making his way in an almost uniformly white society, and doing it so successfully that he played to mostly capacity houses for the best part of 30 years."
John writing Strawberry Fields Sept 1966, Almeria, Spain while filming “How I Won The War”.
One of The Beatles’s undisputed masterpieces, the groundbreaking and influential “Strawberry Fields Forever” (1967) was based on John Lennon’s childhood memories in Liverpool. Lennon described it as one of his most personal songs, “psychoanalysis set to music”. His apparent vulnerability brings an ethereal quality to his singing. The song was one of The Beatles’s most complicated recordings to date, and made use of an arrangement of trumpets and cellos written by their classically trained producer, George Martin.
The orchestral textures were enhanced by the use of a relatively new instrument, the Mellotron, a precursor to the modern digital sampler. The Mellotron uses a keyboard to play samples of acoustic instruments and other real-world sounds that are recorded on magnetic tape. It is first heard in this song in the flute-like introduction, as played by Paul McCartney.
“Strawberry Fields Forever” was originally intended to appear on the band’s seminal Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album, but was instead released the same year (1967) as a double-A side with Paul McCartney’s “Penny Lane.” George Martin has publicly stated that taking both “Penny Lane” and “Strawberry Fields Forever” off of Sgt. Pepper’s was the biggest mistake of his career. Both songs are named after sites in Liverpool and are steeped in childhood and English nostalgia.
The song’s infamous “Cranberry sauce” outro, misheard by some fans as “I buried Paul,” became the locus of widespread rumors and conspiracy theories, making “Strawberry Fields Forever” one of the most obsessively analyzed songs in music history.