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Other Mixes By Dead Man

Artist	Song	Buy
The Beatles (buzz)	I Am the Walrus Magical Mystery Tour, 1967
The Weavers (buzz)	Marching To Pretoria The Weavers at Carnegie Hall, Vol. 2, 1960
Bob Dylan (buzz)	Desolation Row Highway 61 Revisited, 1965
J. Pat O'Malley (buzz)	The Walrus and the Carpenter Alice in Wonderland Soundtrack, 1951
The Yardbirds (buzz)	Happenings Ten Years Time Ago Roger the Engineer, 1966
The Michael Sammes Chorus (buzz)	I Will Never Pass This Way Again Greatest Inspirational Songs
Lord Sitar (buzz)	I Am the Walrus Electric Psychedelic Sitar Headswirlers Vol. 1, originally released in 1968
Rick Nelson (buzz)	Garden Party Garden Party, 1972
Simon & Garfunkel (buzz)	Mrs. Robinson Bookends, 1968
The Rutles (buzz)	Piggy in the Middle The Rutles, 1978
Dukes of Stratosphear (buzz)	The Mole from the Ministry 25 O’Clock, 1985
Utopia (buzz)	Everybody Else Is Wrong Deface the Music, 1980
Shonen Knife (buzz)	Lazybone The Birds and the B-Sides, 1996, originally released in 198?
The Dead Milkmen (buzz)	I Am the Walrus Bucky Fellini, 1987
Beastie Boys (buzz)	Egg Man Paul's Boutique, 1989
3rd Bass (buzz)	3 Strikes 5000 Cactus Revisited, 1990
Arcwelder (buzz)	I Am the Walrus single, 1992
The Beatles (buzz)	Glass Onion The White Album, 1968
John Lennon (buzz)	God John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, 1970

Comment:

A mix devoted to “I Am the Walrus” by the Beatles. Full of strange imagery and possessing a dense sound, “I Am the Walrus” is John Lennon at his most idiosyncratic. Pete Shotton was in the Beatles’ inner circle and he tells the story that John was getting frustrated with people reading so much significance into their songs that he set out to write the most deliberately obscure lyrics he could. They recalled a grotesque children’s verse from their school days and Lennon combined that with other song fragments he had written. Even though Lennon pieced together ideas from different sources, “I Am the Walrus” contains a sharp social critique and is pointed in its sarcasm. Lennon followed Bob Dylan’s lead in stringing together imagery that may not be immediately accessible but leaves the listener with a strong impression, starting with the Zen-like opening line “I am he as you are he and we are all together”.
1. “I Am the Walrus” from Magical Mystery Tour
2. Whether he knew it or not, with the opening line Lennon was echoing the Weavers’ version of “Marching to Pretoria”, which contains lines such as “sing with me, I’ll sing with you, and sing we all together” and ”I’m with you and you’re with me and we are all together”.
3. Lennon thought that Dylan “got away with murder” by never saying exactly what he meant but by giving the impression of a deeper meaning with a stream of images. A Bob Dylan song that Lennon appears to be emulating is “Desolation Row”.
4. Some of Lennon’s imagery in “I Am the Walrus” comes from Lewis Carroll, with the walrus coming from the poem “The Walrus and the Carpenter” from Through the Looking Glass.
5. Perhaps the song that had the strongest influence on “I Am the Walrus”, at least in terms of its sound, was the Yardbirds’ “Happenings Ten Years Time Ago”. This song has a dense psychedelic sound and includes an instrumental break with sound effects, particularly the two-tone police siren that Lennon used in “I Am the Walrus”.
6. The production of “I Am the Walrus” is elaborate, with strings and a variety of sound effects. George Martin brought in the easy listening vocal group the Michael Sammes Singers to do the backing vocals.
7. Lord Sitar’s instrumental cover version of “I Am the Walrus” with the melody played on a sitar.
8. Rick Nelson mentions the Walrus and Yoko in “Garden Party”.
9. Simon and Garfunkel incorporate Lennon’s chant “Goo goo g’joob” from “I Am the Walrus” in “Mrs. Robinson”. This line was supposedly taken from James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake but more likely is that Lennon simply invented it. The closest Joyce comes to the line is "googoo goosth".
10. You can always rely on the Rutles for a good Beatles parody.
11. Dukes of Stratosphear, which was essentially an XTC side project, also parody-—or pay homage to--“I Am the Walrus” in “The Mole from the Ministry”.
12. Todd Rundgren also pays homage “I Am the Walrus” with “Everybody Else Is Wrong”.
13. Shonen Knife mention the Walrus and the Eggman in “Lazybone”.
14. The Dead Milkmen’s “I Am the Walrus” is not a cover version. Apparently they just liked the title.
15. The Beastie Boys take on the role of the Egg Man.
16. “3 Strikes 5000” by 3rd Bass opens with a sample from “I Am the Walrus”.
17. A number of bands have attempted the difficult task of covering “I Am the Walrus”. My favorite is Arcwelder’s version, which rocks harder than any other cover of the song I’ve heard.
18. So who was the walrus? During the performance of “I Am the Walrus” in Magical Mystery Tour, the walrus appears to be John, but in “Glass Onion” John says, “Here’s another clue for you all, the walrus was Paul”.
19. In “God”, recorded after the breakup of the Beatles, John sings “I was the walrus, but now I’m John”.

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