Beatles Fact of the Day

The song "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)" from the Rubber Soul album is a song in which the character goes up to a girl's apartment, but when she won't let him into her bed at night, he goes and sleeps in the tub. The next morning, he wakes up and finds her gone, so he sets the place on fire. The character was meant to be John, and this was a song about him having an affair. In an interview, Lennon said this about the song:

"I was trying to write about an affair without letting my wife know I was having one. I was sort of writing from my experiences - girl's flats, things like that. I was very careful and paranoid because I didn't want my wife, Cyn, to know that there really was something going on outside of the household. I'd always had some kind of affairs going on, so I was trying to be sophisticated in writing about an affair, but in such a smoke-screen way that you couldn't tell. But I can't remember any specific woman it had to do with."

Lennon was always known for his lyrics, and this song is no exception, but it was the first song he wrote that told a whole story. He also enjoyed his song titles. "Norwegian wood" is a title that is up to interpretation. First off, Norwegian wood is a fake wood that would be appropriate for this song because it probably burned well. Thus, lines like "isn't it good Norwegian wood" were meant to be sarcastic. This is what Paul released years later as the "official" meaning. Next, it has said to have been a name for marajuana. That's probably as easily made up as it is easily proven true. Finally, my favorite. George Martin, their producer and famed "fifth Beatle", said that John was sitting outside on the deck of one of their hotel rooms, and was playing around with lyrics. John (according to George Martin) thought his wife at the time, Cynthia, had tricked him into marrying her. "Norwegian wood" was a homophone (play on words) from "knowing she would". The "correct" interpretation is, of course, unknown.

This song features the Sitar, an Eastern musical instrument George picked up. This was the first pop song to ever feature the instrument, thus the first Beatles song with it, but certainly not the last. George bought the instrument and taught himself to play it, so he took quite a few takes to get it right in this song. Initially he described it as "crummy", but a few months later he went to India and studied with Ravi Shankar who taught him how to play it, and he loved it. Shankar also turned George on to the whole Eastern lifestyle, religion and all, so that was a major influence on George for the rest of his time with The Beatles. On a total side note, I think that had The Beatles stayed together just a bit longer, George would have overtaken Paul and John in songwriting abilities. His late songs are incredibly written, and he would have written better I'm sure if they hadn't have broken up.

A few more interesting notes: Bob Dylan actually did a parody of this song on his Blonde on Blonde album called "4th Time Around", and "Norwegian wood" features Ringo playing the finger cymbals. Go finger cymbals!