Let Me Take You Down, Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields Forever, by Jonathan Cott
Jonathan Cott has a long history with The Beatles, having interviewed them over the years for Rolling Stone. Jonathan interviewed Lennon for nine hours just a few days before he was murdered. This was John Lennon’s last interview.
In this book, Jonathan follows the format which he used in his book about Maurice Sendak. He interviews individuals who will have a particular way of looking at the work in question. In the Sendak book we were looking at Outside Over There. In this book, we are looking at two songs that came out in 1967 and were the two sides of one record. Apparently, there was pressure on the Beatles to get something out before Sergeant Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band was ready to be released. In Spain. John wrote Strawberry Fields Forever, with its dreamy stream of consciousness lyric, based on a real place from his childhood called Strawberry Field. Paul McCartney wrote Penny Lane about the same time and it too was about his childhood and the real people-- the barber, the fireman, the children-- that inhabited this street that’s “ in my ears and in my eyes,”. Both songs are so full of nostalgia and mystery that Jonathan decided to explore them in conversation from five different perspectives.
The five conversations are with Bill Frizell a noted guitarist, Jonathan FP Rose an urban planner and developer who considers environmental issues in his planning, Margaret Klenk a former actress and now a Jungian analyst, Richard Gere, the actor and Buddhist practitioner, and Laurie Anderson avant guard, artist and musician. These conversations are fun to read. Jonathan is a pro at throwing in a reference that gets his guest talking. The Interview with Richard Gere is like a riff session. The amount of thought and resonance these people feel from these songs will send you straight to YouTube. McCartney and Lennon infused these lyrics with enough ambiguity to stimulate conversation for another half century.
