Lewis Carroll and The Sergeant Pepper Album

Before Sergeant Pepper 

There is an obvious influence of Lewis Carroll on the album – “Sgt.Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”.  The single, “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” is based on a painting that Julian Lennon brought back from school one day.   John Lennon used this as inspiration to develop a psychedelic anthem that he also admitted also owed something to Lewis Carroll.

Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds starts off.

‘Picture yourself in a boat on a river
with tangerine trees and marmalade skies.
Somebody calls you; you answer quite slowly,
a girl with kaleidoscope eyes’.

Lennon said in an interview with Playboy (1980):

“The images were from 'Alice in Wonderland.' It was Alice in the boat. She is buying an egg and it turns into Humpty Dumpty. The woman serving in the shop turns into a sheep and the next minute they are rowing in a rowing boat somewhere and I was visualizing that.”

There are many reasons why the picture of Lewis Carroll is on the album of ‘Sgt Pepper’ apart from John Lennon’s love of the books.   The “Alice” books have had a constant buzz about them for 150 years and there is no sign of that stopping. Each generation rediscovers the material and reworks it into something extraordinary: plays, films, cartoons, online games and music. Sometimes the buzz becomes a roar when a fresh interpretation of the Alice stories is released. Alice as Joan of Arc in the recent film Wonderland: in a Dreamworld in the Jonathan  Miller TV Production, Alice as a Goth in video games -  even in a quiet year Alice acts like a dog whistle to creative people who find the stories a way of describing a particular situation or point in time. Artists like Salvador Dali, Peter Blake and Ralph Steadman have all illustrated the “Alice” stories to highlight ideas that interested them.

The two stories (Alice in Wonderland; Alice through the Looking Glass) are part of our collective unconscious. You either had them read to you, you have read them yourself or seen them as a film, an animation or an illustration. All of the Beatles were likely exposed to the stories, but it seems that Lennon was the one who responded to them in a creative fashion. In the same Playboy interview, Lennon said,

“Lewis Carroll. I always admit to that because I love 'Alice in Wonderland' and 'Alice through the Looking Glass.' But I didn't even know he'd written anything else. I was that ignorant. I just happened to get those for birthday presents as a child and liked them. And I usually read those two about once a year, because I still like them."

The Alice stories are episodic, imaginative, non-linear and amoral. They are complicated, exciting, unpredictable and a bit dangerous. In 1865 they were ground-breaking and there are few children’s book since that has such appeal with combinations of word play, logic, songs, poetry and surreal imagery. It was an improvised story that was developed over a series of outings as entertainment for children that was developed into a final version. Carroll could not be assured of its’ success and invested his own money into it. He even recalled the first 5000 copies because they were not “up to scratch”.

The Buzz in 1967 - The Beatles vs The Establishment

At the time of the album, the Beatles were gaining control over their own music. They were taking a risk by not doing what the industry expected of them. They pushed against the establishment similarly to the main theme in ‘Alice in Wonderland’ amongst all the tomfoolery.

Another reason for a buzz about ‘Alice’ within the Beatles was that in 1967 some of the people the Beatles had worked with were also involved with a TV Play of “Alice in Wonderland” directed by Jonathan Miller. There was a lot of crossovers and many were in the vanguard of 60s counter-culture.  Jonathan Miller, Peter Cook and Alan Bennett were all members of the show, ‘Beyond the Fringe’ and were driving a fresh style of satirical comedy that mocked the establishment. Again ‘Alice in Wonderland”’ has a strong anti-establishment theme where it shows a person who is thrown into a world where the old ways of doing things are no longer relevant.  In 1865 Great Britain was moving from Victorian to Industrial thinking, in 1967 The Beatles were looking at a post-war Britain where the old certainties were crumbling and new influences were being reflected in their music such as psychedelia and Eastern religion.

There were other friends of the Beatles with parts in the TV Play.  Wilfrid Brambell who was in the film ‘Hard Day’s Night’ played the White Rabbit; Leo McKern who was in the film ‘Help’ did a drag turn as the Ugly Duchess. Ravi Shankar wrote the music for the TV Play and was already a friend of George Harrison. In 1966, George Harrison had met Shankar and began to take lessons from him. This could explain the dreamy feel in the music of the TV Play that is reflected in some of the music on the Sgt Pepper album. These people socialised and gossiped, a creative hub of people that the Beatles knew.

The strongest link between Lewis Carroll and the Beatles is that of John Lennon. There can be a lot of analysis performed of lyrics to determine the Carroll influence but it is best to be cautious. Lennon was not a fan of over intellectualising things. However, Lennon referred to the influence of Carroll in the Playboy interview.

"It's from 'The Walrus and the Carpenter.' 'Alice in Wonderland’ to me, it was a beautiful poem. It never dawned on me that Lewis Carroll was commenting on the capitalist and social system. I never went into that bit about what he really meant, like people are doing with the Beatles' work. Later, I went back and looked at it and realized that the walrus was the bad guy in the story and the carpenter was the good guy. I thought, Oh, shit, I picked the wrong guy. I should have said, 'I am the carpenter.' But that wouldn't have been the same, would it? (singing) 'I am the carpenter....'"

His own books of poetry, “In His Own Write” and “A Spaniard in the Works” that were written before “Sgt Pepper” had some of the whimsy of Lewis Carroll and they were both fond of wordplay, rhymes and puns. They were both interested in language and experimenting with it. Lewis Carroll created many words that we use today such as ‘chortle’ and ‘galumph’. Many of Lennon’s songs later included nonsense sentences including “Come Together” and “I Am The Walrus”.

After Sergeant Pepper

After the Sgt Pepper album, we can still see Carroll’s influence on the cover of “The Ballad of John and Yoko” where the band (plus Yoko) is surrounded by small stone statues of ‘Alice in Wonderland’ characters. The statues were a present to Paul McCartney from his brother Mike.

On “The Magical Mystery Tour” album John referred to Carroll’s “The Walrus and The Carpenter” from “Through The Looking Glass” in the nonsense song, “I Am The Walrus”.

Even as late as the 80’s Ringo Starr played the Mock Turtle in a TV version of Alice Wonderland’.

The Beatles and Lewis Carroll are both influences on many creative people. The words and illustrations from both have become part of the fabric of English culture. The images are reused and the words quoted in places where the authors did not expect them to be seen. It was good that the Beatles gave Carroll the recognition that he deserves for producing two English masterpieces that, like “Sgt Pepper”, have remained and will remain popular for a long time.

Stephen Folan

January, 2017