Beatles: Glass Onion Meaning

Song Released: 1968

Glass Onion Lyrics

I told you about Strawberry Fields
You know the place where nothing is real
Well here's another place you can go
Where everything flows
Looking through the bent-backed tulips
To See how the other half lives
Looking through a glass...

1. anonymous

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   Apr 23rd 2008 !⃝

   I figured it out! listen to the song or read the lyrics. It says
   I told you about the walrus and me, man
   You know that we're as close as can be, man
   Well here's another clue for you all
   The walrus was Paul
   It says that the walrus and him are as close as can be, then it says that the walrus was Paul. Quite obviously John's saying that he and Paul are close no duh!
2. anonymous

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   Apr 23rd 2008 !⃝

   People, people, people. can I tell you one thing please? PAUL IS ALIVE AND WELL, JHON IS THE ONE THAT IS DEAD. JHON WAS NOT SOME MANIAC. oops. make that two.

   This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway
3. anonymous

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   Jan 13th 2008 !⃝

   For people saying it's about Lennon looking at Pauls dead body through a glass onion:
   
   wouldn't it be more of a somber song if that were the case. excluding the last 10 seconds, the entire songs pretty upbeat. I think that, like in "strawberry fields" and all the other songs they mention, they were stoned out of their minds while writing this.
4. seasend

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   Jan 5th 2008 !⃝

   Maybe I'm reading into this too much, but my 10 year old daughter and I have been recently discussing The Beatles lyrics. To me the Glass Onion represents the many layers of John's personality and he has made it glass by his open and revealing lyrics. He sights several examples in the song to offer insight into what he was offering in those particular songs. Does this make sense to anyone else?
   
   Thanks,
   Steve...
5. anonymous

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   Nov 11th 2007 !⃝

   This song is about when John gets writer's block so he listens to some of his old songs and writes about them most of the words in this song are directly from other songs. Glass Onion is just a crazy random thing like walrus.
6. ollie510

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   Aug 22nd 2007 !⃝

   I think John Lennon was an egotistical asshole prick son of a bitch arrogant bitter hypocrite and sometimes so am I but he was much worse. He took too much acid and convinced himself that he was a genius. LSD closes up the mind and in order to compensate you create things out of your imagination. John Lennon was an atheist ("God is a concept by which we measure our pain") Well, he was wrong. Who cares what the song means. The Beatles were fucking with us on many levels and they deserve a share of the responsibility for a fucker like Charles Manson. "Insanity is rare in the individual, but in movements, in epochs, it is the rule" The hippies were airheads.

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7. anonymous

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   Aug 12th 2007 !⃝

   I believe that the glass onion is a bong of sorts.
   
   "Looking through a glass onion" refers to the distorting affects of the drugs in question.
8. chuckslade

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   May 3rd 2007 !⃝

   All I know is a quote from John Lennon that was when he said, that he was giving Paul his props by saying "the walrus was Paul."
9. anonymous

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   Oct 26th 2006 !⃝

   A glass onion is something that you see when you are hallucinating. It is basically a set of hexagonal rings made up of green and purple colours. The smallest hexagon is inside a slightly larger one, which in turn is inside another larger ring and so on. The hexagonal rings look something similar to what a birds eye view of an onion would look like if it was glass and you could see each of it's rings.

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10. anonymous

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    Aug 25th 2006 !⃝

    Glass onion...As we all know an onion is known for its many layers. With glass, we, the listeners, are being shown the many different layers that John had created for many of their songs.
    
    John was a man with a vision unlike any other, and wanted to show the world how genius he was w/ his lyrics. The beatles loved how much the media was attempting to find controversy within their music. Obviously the band did lsd, a drug which is still used for religious ceremonies because of its effect of openning more channels of the mind.
    
    Anyway, there was a rumor that Paul had died and was replaced, by william shears campbell (billy shears, for those familiar with sgt. Peppers lonely hearts club band album). Here was another example of how the beatles enjoyed feeding off controversy. "The walrus was paul" meaning that Paul is actually dead.
    
    But back to this song...Glass onion is a small glimpse into the beatles career, with its many layers of meanings and work done, because they had given up touring in order to concentrate on new sounds in the studio, and their albums were more than just 4 musicians playing music.
    
    So pretty much John is saying through this song, "good luck fuckers trying to understand what I'm saying, because there's more than just the sound, the words, and what's going on between us"
11. anonymous

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    May 4th 2006 !⃝

    This song is actually John messing with all the people who tried to analyze his songs. He wrote a bunch of confusing lyrics that he knew people would take the wrong way!
12. anonymous

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    Apr 2nd 2006 !⃝

    This song also talks about the walrus, referring to the song "I am the Walrus" and hinting that maybe Paul is not in fact dead. "The walrus was Paul"...I don't know, it seems as though they were trying to hint to the public that Paul was dead, but at the same time do the opposite and tell them that he was still alive. Were they just trying to confuse people, or do I have it all wrong here?
    
    Steev

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13. pinkfloyd

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    Mar 15th 2006 !⃝

    I belive, in the song the "glass onion" he is referring to is infact a "bong". Because it is a popular belife that "strawberry fields" is a reference to LSD. And the song goes "I told you about strawberry fields You know the place where nothing is real Well here’s another place you can go Where everything flows"
    Which seems to me to me this "glass onion" is another type of hallucinogenic material and the closest thing to a "glass onion" would be a "bong"
14. anonymous

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    Nov 18th 2005 !⃝

    Another song (from many!) where Lennon tries to put another log in the fire as to suggesting Paul was actually dead as widely spread among The Beatles' fans as from 1967!
    
    Glass Onion refers to a casket with a glass top or sides, that is, Paul's body in a closed casket being seen through a glass onion during his wake, while Lennon would quote many of his songs.

    This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway

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