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4.42am
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17 December 2012
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Musketeer Gripweed (kezron9) said
All good points, only reason why believe there to be intercourse is the musical climax lol. Also for John saying it was about an affair. I take that burning down the house was his way of ending the affair. They also called girls birds, so by the lyric this bird has flown, could mean she literally left or that John was also done with her. Wouldn’t be surprised if Norwegian Wood , sounded similar to a name John knew.Edit: Upon more pondering, I think he didn’t get any, that she got him drunk led him on then went to bed, Also the first verse I once had a girl or should I say she once had me, makes me think he felt tricked by her.
The rumour is, and it can only be a rumour, is that John was disguising an affair with Maureen Cleave – the journalist who wrote the “bigger than Rod” article. Of course, Rod Stewart would not be big for another six years.
"I only said we were bigger than Rod... and now there's all this!" Ron Nasty
To @ Ron Nasty it's @ mja6758
The Beatles Bible 2020 non-Canon Poll Part One: 1958-1963 and Part Two: 1964-August 1966
12.58pm
1 November 2013
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I will put this to rest once and for all! The lady (who I will call Cathie) Has fantastic house insurance but she only has a limited time before the policy runs out so Cathie gets her Boyfriend John and asks him to burn the house while she is away and he agrees. That is why there is no furniture and he has to sit on the floor since she moved all the furniture out. John gets a cut of the insurance money so it will make it s he Burns the house. John burns the house when Cathie is gone so she.has an alliby and they will blame the whole thing on her ex boyfriend Don.
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3.19pm
16 September 2013
Offline Annadog40 said
I will put this to rest once and for all! The lady (who I will call Cathie) Has fantastic house insurance but she only has a limited time before the policy runs out so Cathie gets her Boyfriend John and asks him to burn the house while she is away and he agrees. That is why there is no furniture and he has to sit on the floor since she moved all the furniture out. John gets a cut of the insurance money so it will make it s he Burns the house. John burns the house when Cathie is gone so she.has an alliby and they will blame the whole thing on her ex boyfriend Don.
All the furniture may have been moved out prior to this heinous arson, but John was sitting on a rug. That rug happened to be a very expensive 100% wool Persian carpet with a geometric paisley pattern, that was a gift from Don to Cathie. After John accidentally-on-purpose spilled his wine on the rug, he lit a whole box of wooden matches there on the thick carpet pile. Fire investigators were sure to find the remnants of the matchbox, and would be quick to cast a suspicious eye on a vengeful ex-boyfriend. Don, unlike his ex, did not work in the morning, so his alibi was weak.
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Starr Shine?, vonbontee4.10pm
1 November 2012
Offline Funny Paper said
This came up in another post a while ago.I disagreed with the “Pauline” exegesis:
https://www.beatlesbible.com/f…..-2/#p61323
Another commenter, Ben Ramon, agreed with me:
https://www.beatlesbible.com/f…..-2/#p61372
And I added another afterthought:
https://www.beatlesbible.com/f…..-2/#p61396
Damn. Many moons ago, I wrote a whole set of lyrics imagining Norwegian Wood many years later — now I can’t find it. I did a complete search of all the threads I have posted to (17 pages worth), searching for “wood” in the title (it had to be in a thread with “Norwegian Wood ” in the title). The links I posted above are now dead for some reason.
Faded flowers, wait in a jar, till the evening is complete... complete... complete... complete...
4.25pm
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1 May 2011
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@Funny Paper
Here you go FP, it was in the Over Too Soon thread. I did a google search (site:beatlesbible.com/forum) using the words “wood”, “funny” and “paper”.
Ten Years Later
Ten years have slipped by
since that bird flew
out of my mind…
When minding myself
she came from behind…
She said “It’s been so long, how have you been doing, and wasn’t it ‘John’…?”
I said “Yes it was, in another life, but now I’ve moved on…”
We might have had tea
and talked about
all we had done,
If in the meanwhile
there hadn’t shone
a break in the sun.
[instrumental break]
She looked at the sky and was glad that the weather had turned…
And all of a sudden we realized that bridge had been burned…
So, we parted ways, without a word, like random birds…
I put out a fire, isn’t it good, Norwegian Wood.
The posts you linked to were probably merged with others in different threads during a clean-up of the forum.
"I told you everything I could about me, Told you everything I could" ('Before Believing' - Emmylou Harris)
6.58pm
1 November 2012
Offline Thanks mrmustard! I’ll be damned, the “Over Too Soon” thread! I did try a general Google search, but I should have done a more advanced search.
Faded flowers, wait in a jar, till the evening is complete... complete... complete... complete...
11.15pm
15 May 2014
Offline Most of what I’ll say has been said before, by others, maybe in a different or even better way. My main point and humble contribution to the discussion is that… we are not supposed to know what happened. John once “had” a girl –she was his alright; but, wait, on the other hand he “should say” she had him, and the phrase “…or should I say / she once had me” is ambiguous. Did she have him carnally (and therefore John also had her) or was she just a teaser? Same thing with other phrases; the innuendo of “it’s time for bed” for example…; it may also be “Alright lad, got to get meself some sleep”. We don’t really know if he torched the place. Some forum members have said she didn’t want to engage in carnal congress with him, and so she didn’t, and that’s why he is mad and burns the house –but does the song convey rage? Not at all. “So I lit a fire / isn’t it good / Norwegian Wood ” may mean anything. Did he smoke pot maybe? Did he sit by the fireplace, look at the flames and think? Did he…? The song is fascinating because it is, as it has been pointed out, ambiguous. That’s where the magic is. That’s where John and Paul have had us for half a decade.
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Beatlebug“Forsan et haec olim meminisse juvabit” (“Perhaps one day it will be a pleasure to look back on even this”; Virgil, The Aeneid, Book 1, line 203, where Aeneas says this to his men after the shipwreck that put them on the shores of Africa)
8.34am
15 May 2014
Offline Sorry, my last post was poorly written and perhaps it doesn’t make any sense, I’m sure I couldn’t convey what I meant. My apologies; just pretend I never wrote it.
“Forsan et haec olim meminisse juvabit” (“Perhaps one day it will be a pleasure to look back on even this”; Virgil, The Aeneid, Book 1, line 203, where Aeneas says this to his men after the shipwreck that put them on the shores of Africa)
10.40am
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1 May 2011
Offline @Oudis, made perfect sense to me.
One of the great aspects of ‘Norwegian Wood ‘ is that at so many points in the narrative you can read it in vastly different ways. One person can have a very different set of events unfolding when compared to the person listening alongside.
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12.55pm
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20 August 2013
Offline @Oudis, your concluding line in that post is GENIUS.
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4.16pm
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20 August 2013
Offline I just came across this story. If there is any untruth in it, I’m sure one of our experts will point it out.
The story of the sitar Beatles used in ‘Norwegian Wood’
Snippets from the article
Do you know that during the recording of the Beatles’ iconic song ‘Norwegian Wood ‘, one of the strings of the sitar played by George Harrison broke leaving him with no clue about how to replace it until he was helped by none other than Indian political activist in Britain Ayana Angadi.
The Beatles-India story took an interesting twist during the recording of ‘Norwegian Wood ‘. Whether it was divine intervention or the product of a ‘real crummy’ sitar, one of the strings on the instrument broke,”…
Producer George Martin stepped in and suggested that he contact Ayana Angadi, the co-founder of the Asian Music Circle (AMC). Angadi had provided George Martin with authentic Indian musicians five years earlier on a song, recorded with Peter Sellers and Sophia Loren, called ‘Goodness Gracious Me’,…
The simple act of a sitar string breaking had a profound influence on the direction of Harrison’s life. Indian music had been completely unknown to him but for the next two years, Ayana Angadi and the AMC would mentor Harrison in the study of Indian classical music. The organisation had two sitar teachers, one of whom became Harrison’s first teacher, but according to Shankara, no one seems to remember his name.
The AMC would provide authentic Indian musicians for Harrison’s next two Indian songs ? ‘Love You To ‘, which appeared on ‘Revolver ‘; and ‘Within You Without You ‘, which appeared on ‘Sgt. Pepper ‘s Lonely Heart Club Band’. George wrote ‘Love You To ‘ to draw more attention to the sitar. It was also the first Beatles recording to give credit on the album cover to a musician outside the group, an Indian musician named Anil Bhagwat, who played the table.
Cepican says that it was through the AMC that Harrison was introduced to the man who would be his life-long friend and teacher, Ravi Shankar. Harrison was the first Beatle to visit India. Following the group?s last live concert performance at Candlestick Park, San Francisco in August 1966, he travelled to Mumbai to study the sitar with Ravi Shankar.
“I went to India for about six weeks. Ravi would give me lessons, and he?d also have one of his students sit with me. My hips were killing me from sitting on the floor, and so Ravi brought a yoga teacher to start showing me the physical yoga exercises. It was a fantastic time…,” Harrison once recalled.
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3.08pm
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14 April 2010
Offline Ahhh Girl said
I just came across this story. If there is any untruth in it, I’m sure one of our experts will point it out.
The story of the sitar Beatles used in ‘Norwegian Wood’
Snippets from the article
It was also the first Beatles recording to give credit on the album cover to a musician outside the group, an Indian musician named Anil Bhagwat, who played the table.
Other than Ravi Shankar, I am not aware of any other sitar teachers – that doesn’t mean one did not exist.
I know the bolded text above is just a typo but, even though Anil Bhagwat may have been able to generate lovely sounds from tapping away on a table, he was more well known for playing the tabla.
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10.45pm
6 May 2015
Offline I thought I posted this once before, but maybe not. I hope this doesn’t offend. I’ve read that Paul told John just to burn the place down for the end of the song. I think John did that, but very cleverly. John liked word plays. I’ve read that Norwegian Wood is cheap pine paneling that was popular for a time. I think John sprung a double meaning with the last line. After being frustrated at not being invited to join his host in bed, he retires to the bathtub for the night. In the morning after his host has left for work, he initiates sex with himself (lighting a sexual fire) and then sarcastically laments how unsatisfying it is (isn’t it good, Norwegian Wood ), wood being slang for an erection. He’s equating solo sex with cheap paneling, IMO.
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Ahhh Girl, ewe28.52am
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20 August 2013
Offline Playing off LMW28IF’s idea, if John had had a robot, I wonder if this song would have been written. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/tec…..eport.html
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11.03am
8 January 2015
Offline The messagebox said I would run out of credit quite soon
And I’d get it cheaper if I watched a promo cartoon
But service was down, I was alone, this bird had flown
so I programmed some fun, isn’t it sad, norwegian code
*virtual sitar*
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but I may have to get more specific in the future.
11.44am
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20 August 2013
Offline Puts getting a virus in a new light.
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3.23pm
8 January 2015
Offline Haha damn I should have thought of that! Script kiddy sex robot attacks oh my! I do catch myself wondering how the Beatles would have written on more modern subjects, the perils of spam and phishing, songs about unrequited okcupid love and of course cats on the internet.
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10.03pm
28 June 2017
Offline George’s musicality, mind & soul has had a tremendous impact on shaping who I am today.
In tribute, I recently released a Sitar/Vocal rendition of The Beatles “Norwegian Wood ” —
Any feedback & love form the forum community would be much appreciated. x
3.59pm
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1 May 2011
Offline “In South Korea, “Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)” was censored until 1993 so it was replaced with “Girl””
[Source: Wiki]
The above sentence is in regards to the ‘Beatles Ballads’ album.Anyone know why?
Anyone know why ‘Norwegian Wood ‘ was censored? Due to the “tit” backing vocals on ‘Girl’ I would have thought that was more like likely to be the one censored.
"I told you everything I could about me, Told you everything I could" ('Before Believing' - Emmylou Harris)
8.21pm
9 March 2017
Offline Good question, there’s nothing in the lyrics that aren’t family friendly.
It’s most likely that South Korea didn’t like the song, similar to how they completely altered their Queen’s Greatest Hits album by replacing Killer Queen, You’re My Best Friend, and Bohemian Rhapsody with Love Of My Life, My Melancholy Blues, and Mustapha.
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