A Beatles fan from Iran | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

Hi sabet! Welcome to the forum. I don't think we've had a member from Iran before.

There's an article on the song here: https://www.beatlesbible.com/s…..has-flown/

This is also worth a read: http://www.beatlesebooks.com/n…..egian-wood

The subject matter evolved quite quickly after that.  “It’s a story, it’s him trying to pull a bird, it was about an affair,” Paul explained.  John was very open about this fact in interviews as well:  “I was trying to write about an affair without letting my wife know I was writing about an affair,” he stated in 1970, “so it was very gobbledegook.  I was, sort of, writing from my experiences, girl’s flats, things like that.”  In 1980 he elaborated further:  “’Norwegian Wood ’ was about an affair I was having.  I was very careful and paranoid because I didn’t want my wife, Cyn, to know that there really was something going on outside the household.  I’d always had some kind of affairs going, so I was trying to be sophisticated in writing about an affair, but in such a smokescreen way that you couldn’t tell.  I can’t remember any specific woman it had to do with.”

There has been much speculation as to who specifically this affair was with.  Childhood friend Pete Shotton insists that the song was about John’s affair with a “sophisticated female journalist,” which led many to believe it was family friend Maureen Cleave.  Philip Norman’s book “John Lennon – The Life” is equally insistent that the song is about John’s affair with Sonny Freeman, wife of photographer Robert Freeman who lived in the same apartment complex in Emperor’s Gate in the early 60’s.  Norman explains that she frequently described herself as Norwegian and that their apartment was decorated with wood paneling.  Lennon never admitted to either of these women as being the afair in question.

“I don’t know how the hell I got to Norwegian Wood ,” John said in 1980.  “John told ‘Playboy’ that he hadn’t the faintest idea where the title came from but I do,” Paul explains in his autobiography.  “Peter Asher had his room done out in wood, a lot of people were decorating their places in wood.  Norwegian Wood .  It was pine really, cheap pine.  But it’s not as good a title, ‘Cheap Pine,’ baby.  So it was a little parody really on those kind of girls who when you’d go to their flat there would be a lot of Norwegian Wood .  It was completely imaginary from my point of view but in John’s it was based on an affair he had.  This wasn’t the décor of someone’s house, we made that up.”

Ah! As I was typing this, Norwegian Wood came turned up in iTunes. Hi John!