Nowhere Man

From BeatlesWiki

Jump to: navigation, search

Nowhere Man is a song off The Beatles' 1965 album Rubber Soul. It was written by John Lennon and credited to Lennon/McCartney.

Contents

Writing

The song was about John's hours spent is his Weybridge home, trying to keep away from Beatlemania. During these hours, he felt isolated. In March 1966, an article by Maureen Cleave was published in the London Evening Standard (See John Lennon's Jesus comments first published - March 4, 1966). While famous for John's Jesus comments, it also hevily detailed John's home life. From this 1966 article, "He can sleep almost indefinitely, is probably the laziest person in England. 'Physically lazy,' he said. 'I don't mind writing or reading or watching or speaking, but sex is the only physical thing I can be bothered with any more.'" Hunter Davies in his 1968 authorized biography on The Beatles, quoted John as saying, "I can get up and start doing nothing straight away. I just sit on the step and look into space and think until it's time to go to bed... If I am on my own for three days, doing nothing, I almost leave myself completely. I'm just not here. Cyn doesn't realise it. I'm up there watching myself, or I'm at the back of my head. I can see my hands and realise they're moving, but it's a robot who's doing it." It was written towards the end of the recording process of Rubber Soul, when they needed more songs to record. John later said in Hunter Davies' biography, "I was just sitting, trying to think of a song, and I thought of myself sitting there, doing nothing and going nowhere. Once I'd thought of that, it was easy. It all came out. No, I remember now, I'd actually stopped trying to think of something. Nothing would come. I was cheesed off and went for a lie down, having given up. Then I thought of myself as Nowhere Man - sitting in his nowhere land." Paul McCartney remembers coming in to write songs wth him the day after, finding John asleep in his conservatory. "When I came out to write with him the next day, he was kipping on the couch, very bleary-eyed. It was really an anti-John song. He told me later, he didn't tell me then, he said he'd written it about himself, feeling like he wasn't going anywhere. I think it was actually about the state of his marriage. It was in a period where he was a bit dissatisfied with what was going on; however, it led to a very good song. He treated it as a third-person song, but he was clever enough to say, 'Isn't he a bit like you and me?' - 'Me' being the final word." John recalled, "I’d spent five hours that morning trying to write a song that was meaningful and good, and I finally gave up and lay down. Then Nowhere Man came, words and music, the whole damn thing, as I lay down."

Recording

The song was first recorded on October 21, 1965, when two takes of the basic track were recorded, after rehearsals. The first was a false start, with the second being a full run-through, with electric guitars and a harmony vocal introduction. On October 22, they recorded three more takes of the rhythm track. On the second of these, they recorded the vocal overdubs. Paul McCartney recalled trying to get a certain sound on the guitars. "We were always forcing [the Abbey Road staff] into things they didn't want to do. Nowhere Man was one. I remember we wanted very treble-y guitars, which they are, they're among the most treble-y guitars I've ever heard on record. The engineer said, 'All right, I'll put full treble on it,' and we said, 'That's not enough', and he said, 'But that's all I've got, I've only got one pot and that's it!' And we replied, 'Well, put that through another lot of faders and put full treble up on that. And if that's not enough we'll go through another lot of faders'... Anyway you'd then find, 'Oh, it worked!' And they were secretly glad because they had been the engineer who'd put three times the allowed value of treble on a song. I think they were quietly proud of all those things."

Live

The song quickly became part of The Beatles' live repitoire, and would stay so until they stopped playing live in 1966. It was played at their final concert at Candlestick Park on August 29, 1966.

In The Film Yellow Submarine

In the film Yellow Submarine, The Beatles and everything around them (including the background), had been sucked into a creature, which then sucks itself up. When The Beatles are seen again, it is only them, the Yellow Submarine, and a creature known as Jeremy with nothing else around. The Beatles sing the song to Jeremy.

Personnel

The Beatles

Production

Available Versions

Available On

Cover Versions

  • The Beatles Tribute Project
  • The Bee Gees (For the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band film soundtrack)
  • Brothers Four
  • The Carpenters
  • Indexi
  • Gershon Kingsley
  • Low
  • Sherbert
  • Three Good Reasons
  • Paul Westerberg
  • Chris While
  • Yanni

Sources

Retrieved from "http://www.beatleswiki.org/wiki/Nowhere_Man"
Personal tools