23 Alice's Beatles Playlist
Refresh your mind with this cocktail of Carroll-inspired Beatles songs
Before we start it would feel wrong not to acknowledge the passing of Brian Wilson, author of Paul’s favourite song of all-time, ‘God Only Knows’. I was lucky to see Brian live at the Glastonbury Festival; the voice was gone, but his songwriting voice still shone out on one of those golden festival afternoons. The back-and-forth between the Beatles and the Beach Boys is a massive part of their respective stories - some extra grit in the oyster. Bye bye Brian, we’ll miss you.
So onto this week’s post. 23 weeks in and 23 posts later, it felt like time for a quick cuppa, and a recap of some of the songs we’ve been talking about — and some yet to come.
So I’ve made you a Spotify playlist, showcasing 33 of the songs with (inter)textual connections to Lewis Carroll. I’m impressed it’s so many, frankly. See what you think.
Put on the kettle, have a listen, have a read.
Let’s talk a walk in sonic and lyrical Wonderland…
01 [Looking Glass] (1959)
Unrecorded we think, this is nevertheless the first Alice song in the pantheon.
02 Love me do (1963)
“Oh, Kitty, do help to settle it!” says Alice, sparking McCartney’s use of “do” as emphasis in this early Beatles hit.
03 I’ll get you (1963)
“Imagine I’m in love with you” - imagination as Carrollian trope and invitation to visualisation that will become a feature, including the use of “picture yourself” and Lennon’s later ‘Imagine’.
»»»Read more here about these Early Songs
04 Nowhere Man (1965)
‘Nowhere Man’ is a song of alienation, about someone who’s “making all his nowhere plans for nobody”. It evokes the character called ‘Nobody’ in the ‘Lion and the Unicorn’ episode of Through the Looking-Glass, who returns in Yellow Submarine.
05 I’m only sleeping (1966)
An early dream song from John: “when I'm in the middle of a dream / Stay in bed, float up stream” - linking dream narrative and aquatic metaphor that’s straight out of Carroll’s boat ride and later invitation to “picture yourself on a boat on a river”.
06 Yellow Submarine (1966)
The plaintiff childhood abandonment dirge turned children’s singalong that includes Donovan additions like “sky of blue and sea of green” that come straight from Victorian nursery stories.
07 Tomorrow Never Knows (1966)
Mainly included in this list because of the sound-bending experiments with Lowrie cabinets, tape loops, varispeed and backwards effects that really push the sonic envelope in the beginnings of the Beatles’ Studio Wonderland era.
»»» Read more on studio experimentation here
08 Strawberry Fields Forever (1967)
A place where “nothing is real” that’s also “anywhere you want to go”. Will you let John “take you down” the rabbit hole?
09 Penny Lane (1967)
An exuberantly optimistic song that’s also “very strange”, with its simultaneous “blue suburban skies” and “pouring rain”, and a nurse who (meta-textually) “thinks she’s in a play” and “is anyway”.
»»» Read about the double A-side here
10 Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds (1967)
Inspired by Julian’s school drawing, this is explicitly the Beatles’ attempt to “do an Alice in Wonderland” song, with the invitation to “picture yourself on a boat on a river” beneath “marmalade skies” (Alice grabs a marmelade jar as she tumbles down the rabbit hole) and “cellophane flowers that grow so incredibly high”.
»»» Read more about Lucy in my post Kaleidoscope Eyes
11 A Day In The Life (1967)
“And looking up, I noticed I was late” (like our friend the White Rabbit) and then morphs into dreamland: “found my way upstairs and had a smoke / And somebody spoke and I went into a dream”.
»»» More on Sgt Pepper songs here
12 The Fool On The Hill (1967)
A reference to the Maharishi that’s also inspired by Tarot, the art collective The Fool, who became The Beatles’ fashion staples and Apple designers in the mid ‘60s.
13 I Am The Walrus (1967)
Pinched from ‘The Walrus and The Carpenter’, a suitably trippy poem for a fairly deranged song, which also evokes English gardens, a melody inspired by a police siren, and Alice-like identity games (I/you/he/me/we) and Humpty Dumpty as eggman.
»»» Read more about ‘Walrus & The Songwriter’ here:
14 Lady Madonna (1968)
“See how they run” quotes “Three Blind Mice”! McCartney says that “Carroll was a big inspiration as I got more into wordplay, where the lyrics are evolving into something more unexpected, as in ‘Lady Madonna’”.
15 Dear Prudence (1968)
Over a cycling D plus descending bassline, John intones “the clouds will be a daisy-chain, so let me see you smile again” echoing the “daisy-chain” Alice considers making when the White Rabbit runs past in Chapter 1 of Alice in Wonderland.
16 Glass Onion (1968)
In addition to referencing previous Carrollian songs, from ‘Lady Madonna’ to ‘Lucy in the Sky’, the line “looking through a glass onion” uses most of the title of Through the Looking-Glass’.
17 Julia (1968)
“Seashell eyes” are another Donovan offering that fold into another Julia / Yoko / Alice archetype with attributes that recall Lucy’s “kaleidoscope eyes”.
18 Helter Skelter (1968)
The verses - as Paul has acknowledged - are based on the Lobster Quadrille’s “will you won’t you” refrain, transformed into “do you don’t you want me to love you”. Equally the “I’m coming down fast” line could echo Alice’s fall down the rabbit hole, as well as the literal image of shooting down the Helter Skelter’s metal tube.
19 Cry Baby Cry (1968)
References ‘Sing a Song of Sixpence’, but is clearly influenced by the ‘Pig & Pepper’ chapter in AIW with its Duchess and crying baby. Also reference Alice-like tea parties: “The Duchess of Kirkcaldy, always smiling and arriving late for tea”. Album image plans include the note “Alice fancy dress part on lawn”.
»»» I deep dive into all these White Album songs in A Doll’s House
20 Hey Jude (1968)
One of the more speculative connections. Some have suggested that the rising “better, better, better…aaaaaaaagh” climax of the song echoes this passage in Through the Looking-Glass: “her voice went higher with each ‘better’, till it got quite to a squeak at last. […] Much be-tter! Be-e-e-etter! Be-e-ehh!”
21 It’s All Too Much (1968)
“Show me that I’m everywhere and get me home in time for tea” references Alice’s nervousness that Dinah might miss out on her tea.
22 The Ballad of John and Yoko (1969)
Paul’s Alice statues in Cavendish Avenue are loud and proud in a photo, at the culmination of the Beatles’ Mad Day Out, that end up on the US single cover.
»»» The Alice statues are the subject of my first post, Paul’s Garden
23 Dig a Pony (1969)
With a working title “Con a Lowry”, John said of the song that "I just make it up as I go along", clues to an improvisatory working process validated by Carrollian linguistic freedom in Jabberwocky and other poems.
24 Come Together (1969)
Not content with “Walrus gumboot”, I think that “Joo-Joo eyeballs” and “goo goo g’joob” in Walrus spring from a common Jabberwocky source.
25 Maxwell’s Silver Hammer (1969)
McCartney has linked the fairy-tale tone of this murder ballad with the images from Wonderland of the Red Queen shouting “off with their heads”.
26 The Long & Winding Road (1970)
Verse 2 of the song, with its line “the wild and windy night, has left a pool of tears” directly quotes the title of Chapter 2 of AIW, ‘The Pool of Tears’.
27 Across the Universe (1970)
“Pools of sorrow, waves of joy” is surely a reference to the ‘pool of tears’, while the rest of the verse is quite Carrollesque, including “slither” (“slithy”), which it’s hard to imagine would not have been in John’s mind given his obsession with ‘Jabberwocky’.
28 Imagine (1971)
It’s Paul that’s made the connection between 1963’s “imagine I’m in love with you”, Lucy and “picture yourself” as Carrollian gambits, and ‘Imagine’ continues the invitation to dream.
29 Monkberry Moon Delight (1971)
McCartney talks about the language in ‘Monkberry Moon Delight’ and how he arrived at some of the neologisms, in a way that we can see in line with the breakthrough invitation of ‘Jabberwocky’ to ‘do whatever you want’.
30 Uncle Albert / Admiral Halsey (1971)
This one’s all about the “butter pie”, another solo McCartney piece of surreal wordplay in Jabberwocky style.
31 #9 Dream (1974)
“Through the mirror go round”! A dream song (like ‘Yesterday’). It’s a favourite of Lennon's, despite his later claim that the song was a "throwaway".
32 Did We Meet Somewhere Before (1978)
“All the King’s horses…”. While Humpty Dumpty was a nursery-rhyme character before Carroll, it’s Alice that for many is the most memorable staging of the poem.
33 Any Road (2003)
“If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there” a line often misattributed to Lewis Carroll on a million t-shirt and quote sites, but actually an adaptation of a passage from Alice In Wonderland.
34 English Tea (2005)
“Do you know the game croquet? […] miles and miles of English garden, hollyhocks and roses…” this twisted picture of English traditions and floral exuberance is “very Alice” according to Paul.
»»» More in last week’s post, English Tea