Why was Paul the Walrus? No real reason…just to keep fans guessing at things about the band, I WAG? Was this around the time of the whole “Paul Is Dead” scam? - Jinx
I thoght John was the walrus!
I think he’s referring to the line in Glass Onion that says “the walrus was Paul.”
Yes, John was the walrus. At least, he was in the song I am the Walrus.
Honestly, I think it is part of the whole “Paul is Dead” thing. I don’t really understand how all those “clues” led people to believe that Paul was dead, though.
In National Lampoon’s “Magical Misery Tour,” purportedly cobbled together from actual Lennon quotes from various interviews:
“I am the walrus! Paul was never the walrus! I was just saying that to be nice, but I was actually the walrus!”
In a later interview–with PLAYBOY, IIRC–he said something to the effect that the walrus (from Lewis Carroll’s “The Walrus and the Carpenter”) was actually a pretty bad guy, so maybe he wasn’t the walrus after all…
I never saw anything that suggested the “Paul is dead” thing was a deliberate marketing stunt (or, if you prefer, “scam”). Rather, it was ridiculous harebrained rumour spread by credulous Beatles fanatics.
WARNING - the following is pure wild speculation.
I think they were in on it - or at least content to throw things at the fans to keep the rumor mill churning. Look at all the crap they did with their album covers - they knew what was going on.
Sorry, but all the album covers except “Let it Be” appeared before the rumor, which was coined by a DJ in Toronto after “Abbey Road” was released. After that, people went back to “prove” things on their earlier albums.
It probably started as something of a joke, but people got caught up in the search. I’d say that most people at the time never really believed it was true, but rather that it was all a clever put-on and a lot of fun to discover new “evidence.” (e.g., a friend tried to add the fact that in the a photo of Paul enclosed with The White Album, he wore a black beard – color of death.)
As for pumping their sales – they were the most popular group of their time, and Abbey Road was and is considered one of their best albums. Why did they need to hype sales?
I always thought Glass Onion was a not so subtle jab at the way Paul was taking over the group after Epstein died. After Brian overdosed, they were all kinda confused. And John said, “We’'ve fucking had it now.” Paul, being Paul, naturally decided he would take over the responsibilities. Actually, it made sense, because nobody else was! But by then, things were starting to get tense, and the others, especially John, did not appreciate it. This just gets worse, and by Let It Be, things were ugly.
Anyway, Glass Onion references Fool On the Hill, The Walrus was Paul, Lady Madonna, Fixing a Hole, and a few others. What do they all have in common? They were all Paul’s. The only song he mentions that didn’t really have anything to do with Paul was Strawberry Fields Forever.
I thought it had something to do with the Lewis Carroll poem “The Walrus and The Carpenter”. In fact I seem to recall a published interview with John in which he says he just seized on the image in the poem and ran with it, more or less the same way “For the Benefit of Mr. Kite” was drawn from an old circus poster; and that he only found out later that poetry critics tend to associate the walrus in W&C with the nobility and the carpenter with the working class (implying that Carroll had intended it that way) and he (John) went on to do a disclaimer about identifying with the nobility side of any class struggle issue that Carroll might have intended.