Beatles: Strawberry Fields Forever Meaning

Song Released: 1967

Strawberry Fields Forever Lyrics

Let me take you down, ’cause I’m going to (too.)
Strawberry fields
Nothing is real, and
Nothing to get hung about.
Strawberry fields forever.

Living is easy with eyes closed
Misunderstanding all you see.
It’s getting hard to be someone...

1. 1TOP RATED

   #1 top rated interpretation:
   drencrom68

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   Sep 27th 2008 !⃝

   PLAYBOY: How about "Strawberry Fields Forever?"
   
   LENNON: Strawberry Fields is a real place. After I stopped living at Penny Lane, I moved in with my auntie who lived in the suburbs in a nice semidetached place with a small garden and doctors and lawyers and that ilk living around -- not the poor slummy kind of image that was projected in all the Beatles stories. In the class system, it was about half a class higher than Paul, George and Ringo, who lived in government-subsidized housing. We owned our house and had a garden. They didn't have anything like that. Near that home was Strawberry Fields, a house near a boys' reformatory where I used to go to garden parties as a kid with my friends Nigel and Pete. We would go there and hang out and sell lemonade bottles for a penny. We always had fun at Strawberry Fields. So that's where I got the name. But I used it as an image. Strawberry Fields forever.
   
   PLAYBOY: And the lyrics, for instance: "Living is easy---- "
   
   LENNON: [Singing] "With eyes closed. Misunderstanding all you see." It still goes, doesn't it? Aren't I saying exactly the same thing now? The awareness apparently trying to be expressed is -- let's say in one way I was always hip. I was hip in kindergarten. I was different from the others. I was different all my life. The second verse goes, "No one I think is in my tree." Well, I was too shy and self-doubting. Nobody seems to be as hip as me is what I was saying. Therefore, I must be crazy or a genius -- "I mean it must be high or low," the next line. There was something wrong with me, I thought, because I seemed to see things other people didn't see. I thought I was crazy or an egomaniac for claiming to see things other people didn't see. As a child, I would say, "But this is going on!" and everybody would look at me as if I was crazy. I always was so psychic or intuitive or poetic or whatever you want to call it, that I was always seeing things in a hallucinatory way. It was scary as a child, because there was nobody to relate to. Neither my auntie nor my friends nor anybody could ever see what I did. It was very, very scary and the only contact I had was reading about an Oscar Wilde or a Dylan Thomas or a Vincent van Gogh -- all those books that my auntie had that talked about their suffering because of their visions. Because of what they saw, they were tortured by society for trying to express what they were. I saw loneliness.

2. 2TOP RATED

   #2 top rated interpretation:
   anonymous

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   Apr 8th 2006 !⃝

   Strawberry Fields IS an orphanage. John's Auntie's house was right next door and John used to go over there as a child and play there. It was NOT a park, it was NOT a retirement community! The song is NOT about drugs! It was written while John was filming in Spain and realizing he missed the boys. Later Ringo came to keep him company.
   
   "Nothing is real and nothing to get hung about" - nothing really matters because everything dealing with their fame was/is fake; the people, the places, the sentiment.
   "Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see" - When you don't pay attenion to the world around you you tend to misunderstand situations though that tends to make things easy because you only see what you want to see.
   "It's getting hard to be someone but it all works out, it doesn't matter much to me" - He doesn't know who he is anymore but when the others are there it seems okay so the fakeness doesn't matter.
   "No one I think is in my tree, I mean it must high or low" - John thought no one ever undersood him because he was on either a higher or lower level than they they were.
   "That is you can't, you know, tune in, but it's all right, that is I think it's not too bad" - He used to hate that people couldn't be like him or understand him but now he was realizing that even if they couldn't 'tune in' to what he was thinking it was cool because he liked them anyroad.
   "Always, no sometimes, think it's me, but you know I know when it's a dream" - he sometimes (said always but then realized that it wasn't always) blames himself for everything that goes wrong but then realized that it's the fakness (dream) of stardom.
   "I think I know, I mean a 'yes' but it's all wrong, that is I think I disagree." - he's saying he thought he knew the answers but then he realized he was wrong so now he disagrees with the crap he was pulling.

3. 3TOP RATED

   #3 top rated interpretation:
   anonymous

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   Jun 28th 2012 !⃝

   Lennon in this period started to write a few songs about his childhood and life on the advice of a journalist. In My Life was the first. Strawberry Field IS an orphange next to Lennon's aunt's house.
   
   Lennon's childhood was quite traumatic and my interpretation of the song is that he used to visit Strawberry Field when he needed an escape. "Let me take you down" meaning getting down to earth, off a high horse.
   
   "Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see" He shut his eyes to the harsh reality of his life and created his own imaginary world. "It’s getting hard to be someone but it all works out. It doesn’t matter much to me." Sometimes its hard to escape, but it doesn't matter who he is, just as long as he isn't the unwanted weird child.
   
   "No one I think is in my tree.I mean it must be high or low. That is you can’t, you know, tune in but it’s all right. That is I think it’s not too bad." No one is in his world, his world is for him and him alone. It is unique and a special place. He doesn't mind that no one is with him. He doesn't want anyone with him.
   
   "Always, no sometimes, think it’s me,
   But you know I know when it’s a dream." Sometimes he really wants it all to be true, or gets so caught up in his imagination that he forgets reality.
   
   The title "Strawberry Fields Forever" means never let go of your imagination, your escape. Keep it forever.
   
   For me the music is wonderful. The kind of weird, wonderful, haunting, beautiful music that you expect in a weird wonderful place that Lennon went to when he went down to Strawberry Fields.
4. anonymous

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   Sep 2nd 2021 !⃝

   On the Sirius Beatles channel they said that it was really Strawberry Field not Strawberry Fields and that the plural was poetic license.
5. anonymous

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   Jan 7th 2020 !⃝

   John Lennon grew up at strawberry fields. It was just outside his house.(^o^)
6. anonymous

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   Dec 10th 2019 !⃝

   He is trying to wake people up, living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see, Nothing is real. It wasnt Lennon in this video, it was different band altogether,it was also a different line up for "Help" and MMT, and Hard Days Night, and Sgt Pepper,
   "So let me introduce to you
   The one and only Billy Shears ....(JPM`s replacement = Billy Shepherd.
   And Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band"
   Watch videos and compare the bands, they are all different "actors" = All miming, except the originals i suspect,
   Good luck, your gonna need it! ;) Hahahaha!
7. anonymous

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   Jul 19th 2017 !⃝

   I think this song is about the vietnam War. Strawberries are the spilled blood.

   This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway
8. anonymous

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   Mar 27th 2017 !⃝

   I look at the song as being about those people who always have their heads in the sand "living is easy with eyes closed" always just agreeing with popular opinion and never really taking a stand for themselves
9. anonymous

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   May 14th 2016 !⃝

   "This song means different things to everyone. Obviously when John wrote it he was talking about his own childhood, and that's the one true indisputable meaning of the song but before knowing this and even after knowing this I still prefer my own personal interpretation."
   
   That was the most "real" statement of all our interpretations. Art is only meaningful to us when we connect with it. I'm very interested in what Lennon was actually telling us, but when I listen I will, ultimately, be experiencing it through the lens of personal meaning. (I think that maybe the best artists invite us to do that.)
   
   I love this song for two main reasons: one of the interpretations called it "haunting, beautiful music" which leads to my second reason for loving it - awareness of our hauntingly beautiful world that I have seldom been able to fully tune into without the help of hallucinogens. Seeking experiences of profundity and beauty is "nothing to get hung about". The song makes my heart sing with yearning for these beautiful memories.
10. anonymous

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    Mar 9th 2014 !⃝

    Strawberry fields forever is one of my favorite songs from the beatles, all of John lennon's lyrics are thought provoking, this song in particular, describes how he feels about the fame, and how he see's himself as a person when he reflects upon his stardom.....it's a true masterpiece
11. anonymous

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    Jun 27th 2011 !⃝

    Ok to start of Strawberry Fields is in fact a real place.
    
    John Lennon had lived there and in the song it say (living is easy with eyes closed misunderstanding all you see it's getting hard to be someone but it all works out it doesn't matter much to me.
    
    He was trying to say that living is easy with eyes closed because that ment you are asleep and when your sleeping you have nothing to worry about.
    
    He also says misunderstanding all you see it's getting hard to be someone but it all works out it doesn't matter much to me.He was trying to say that he wasn't getting used to the changes that were happening and that he did not much care about the changes.

    This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway
12. anonymous

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    Jun 22nd 2011 !⃝

    Chronicles the death of Paul McCartney.

    This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway
13. anonymous

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    Jun 8th 2011 !⃝

    i can't determine if this has to do with John's childhood or adoloscence. But the verse 'No one I think is in my tree.
    I mean it must be high or low.' relates to how he had nobody to relate to and he was either a fool or a mastermind, never himself. In a tree you overlook a place see everthing from a different perspective than everyone else. Because no one is in his tree, they all have different views.
14. anonymous

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    Jun 7th 2011 !⃝

    I believe this song was a reply in kind to Paul's Penny Lane. As a teenager in Liverpool
    when released both these songs stunned me with the pure joy and accuracy of detail to a well known place with familiar faces and the wierd world of self awareness and childhood's happy days. Even today these songs put a smile on my face at their simplicity and power to express the everyday.
    Don t try to understand them too much. When the fireman rushes in it's all very strange but nothing to get hung up about!
15. enlightened

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    Apr 15th 2011 !⃝

    this is all once again about having you back up againt a wall dreaming of the past and not wanting to see the marks you made on your arm.

    This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway
16. anonymous

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    Feb 17th 2011 !⃝

    I think it means that if you live without paying attention, you can miss out on all the things that are going on around you.
    
    "living is easy with eyes closed"
    Things are easy if you dont take a look at whats happening. Something can walk right past you and you wouldnt even know it.
    
    "nothing is real and nothing gets hung about"
    Everything is fake, its like its a dream, an illusion.
17. anonymous

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    Feb 17th 2011 !⃝

    I think it means that if you live without paying attention, you can miss out on all the things that are going on around you.
    
    "living is easy with eyes closed"
    Things are easy if you dont take a look at whats happening. Something can walk right past you and you wouldnt even know it.
    
    "nothing is real and nothing gets hung about"
    Everything is fake, its like its a dream, an illusion.
18. anonymous

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    Jan 31st 2011 !⃝

    This song means different things to everyone. Obviously when John wrote it he was talking about his own childhood, and that's the one true indisputable meaning of the song but before knowing this and even after knowing this I still prefer my own personal interpretation.
    
    I think Strawberry Fields Forever is about escaping from reality, isolating yourself from the world and existing in your own personal bubble. For me, Strawberry Fields is that place I drift off to when life is really bumming me out and the only thing that makes me feel better is plugging in my ipod and being comforted by music, and my favorite genius musicians.

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