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- This article is about the pop music song. For other uses, see Nowhere Man (disambiguation).
"Nowhere Man" is a song by British 1960s rock group The Beatles, on their hit album Rubber Soul (in the US on the Yesterday ... and Today album). Though the songwriting credit is Lennon-McCartney, it was actually penned solely by John Lennon and recorded on October 21 and 22, 1965. Although it appears to be the first song by the group not blatantly about love, earlier recordings by Lennon such as "I'm a Loser", "Help!", and "Day Tripper" were based on other themes. "Nowhere Man" marks the beginning of Lennon's philosophical oriented music.
The song is either about an actual person or a member of a rigid, strait-laced society whose life in reality had no purpose. Julia Phillips, in her exposé You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again, said the song was written about a businessman named Michael Brown. Lennon, however, claimed that he himself was the subject of the song. He wrote it after wracking his brain in desperation for five hours, trying to come up with another song for Rubber Soul. "I'd actually stopped trying to think of something," he said. "Then I thought of myself as Nowhere Man — sitting in his nowhere land."
The song was also performed by the Bee Gees in the disastrous Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band film, with Barry Gibb on lead vocals.
Animated character
In the animated movie Yellow Submarine (1968) The Beatles, on their way to save Pepperland from the Blue Meanies, encounter Jeremy Hillary Boob, Ph. D., a strange little brown-furred man with a blue face, pink ears and tail, who lives in an empty Nowhere, speaks in rhyme and describes himself as an "eminent physicist, polyglot classicist, prize-winning botanist, hard-biting satirist, talented pianist, good dentist too". The band realizes one of their songs sums Jeremy up well and they sing "Nowhere Man" about him as they cavort with his magic in his nowhere land. However as they prepare to leave, Jeremy realizes how literally empty and lonely his life is and becomes inconsolable. Concerned at seeing the friendly person so upset, the compassionate Ringo offers to take him Somewhere and he gratefully accepts. Jeremy eventually helps The Beatles to defeat the Blue Meanies and presumably stays in Pepperland afterward.
The character is widely believed to be a parody of Dr. Jonathan Miller.
References
- Turner, Steve. A Hard Day's Write: The Stories Behind Every Beatles' Song, Harper, New York: 1994, ISBN 006095065X
External links
The Beatles singles | The Beatles songs | 1965 songs | 1965 singles | Parlophone singles
"Nowhere Man"