Saturday, June 30, 2018

Speaking of "When We Was Fab" . . .

George's 1987 song, "When We Was Fab" that I mentioned in the last post has several interesting Paul references.

George starts the song alluding to marijuana-- (". . . Grass was green, woke up in a daze . . . ".)

He progresses to 1966 with a reference to his song, "Taxman"-- (Back when income tax was all we had . . ." .)

The next verses are:  "Caressers fleeced you in the morning light/ Casualties at dawn."  According to my forays into definitions at British dictionary websites, the word casualty means a person who is injured or killed in a war or in an accident.

The song goes on to use two U.S. slang words:  fuzz (police) and buzz (an altered state of mind from using a drug.)

All this suggesting the two B/Featle songs, "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds"--("Climb in the back with your head in the clouds and you're gone..." and "A Day In The Life"--(He blew his mind out in a car . . .") because George says the police would have got to Paul but apparently he died in an accident--deliberate on his or somebody else's part or otherwise.

Later on in the song, George references Bob Dylan's 1965 song, "It's All Over Now Baby Blue" that has the lyric line--"The vagabond who's rapping at the door is standing in the clothes that you once wore":  Paul's replacement.

So Paul's memory haunted George all his life and the continued theme in Beatle songs of death and replacement ran unabated from 1967-on.

It's The Little Things . . . A Connecting Clue From "I Am The Walrus"

There's been speculation on the web that Paul may have been buried in or near the Strawberry Fields orphanage in Liverpool that was run by The Salvation Army from 1936-2005.  When I was trying to track down a reference to "Strawberry Fields cemetery" that I found on a Liverpool website I came across a detailed photograph of the front gate to the Strawberry Fields orphanage.  Something about it looked familiar and then I remembered the video the new, new Beatles did of the song "I Am The Walrus."  Take a look:
        
 
And then take a look at the drumskin on the video:
 
From "John's" song, "Glass Onion" and from George's video of his song, "When We Was Fab" where he had a left-handed bass player wearing a walrus mask, we know that the walrus was Paul, and I think this detail in the "I Am The Walrus" video is hinting at some kind of Strawberry Fields connection.
 
From the sketchy information I have been able to find about the orphanage, it doesn't appear as though our Paul was a resident of the orphanage but it is possible he could be buried on or near the site.