Strawberry Fields Forever

Lennon wrote it from childhood memories of Strawberry Field, a Salvation Army children's home near his house in Liverpool. He said he had felt different all his life and called it psychoanalysis set to music. Recording began on 24 November 1966 in Studio 2 at EMI and took 45 hours over five weeks. There were three distinct versions, and the released recording joins the last two.

Lennon sang, played rhythm guitar and bongos and Mellotron. McCartney played Mellotron, bass, piano, lead guitar, timpani and bongos, Harrison lead guitar, swarmandal, maracas and timpani, and Starr drums. Martin arranged the cello and trumpet parts, with Joy Hall on cello. Mal Evans, Neil Aspinall and Terry Doran added percussion.

Release

It came out as a double single with "Penny Lane", on 13 February 1967 in the United States and 17 February in Britain. It reached number two in Britain, behind Engelbert Humperdinck's "Release Me", the first Beatles single since "Please Please Me" to miss the top. In the United States it peaked at eight. A film was shot at Knole Park in Sevenoaks on 30 and 31 January 1967, directed by Peter Goldmann, and it later appeared in a 1985 Museum of Modern Art exhibition of influential music videos. It was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999.