Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)

Today's song is the lovely and enigmatic "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)". George Harrison plays the sitar; he had started becoming strongly influenced by Indian culture and music (later he would be particularly inspired by Indian musician Ravi Shankar). Lennon wrote and sang the song; apparently he wrote it about the extramarital affairs he was having around that time. He stated:

"Norwegian Wood" is my song completely. It 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 of the household. I'd always had some kind of affairs going on, so I was trying to be sophisticated in writing about an affair. But in such a smoke-screen way that you couldn't tell. But I can't remember any specific woman it had to do with.

There are different opinions as to who the particular woman was, if there was one. However, more interestingly, during a 1966 press conference in Los Angeles, a reporter asked the guys some questions regarding the song.

Reporter: I'd like to direct this question to messrs. Lennon and McCartney. In a recent article, Time magazine put down pop music. And they referred to "Day Tripper" as being about a prostitute...
Paul: Oh yeah.
Reporter: ...and "Norwegian Wood" as being about a lesbian.
Paul: Oh yeah.
Reporter: I just wanted to know what your intent was when you wrote it, and what your feeling is about the Time magazine criticism of the music that is being written today.
Paul: We were just trying to write songs about prostitutes and lesbians, that's all.

That made me laugh. :P 

The song tells the story of a girl who leads the singer on and at the last minute makes him sleep in the bathtub. The last lines of "Norwegian Wood" mention that the singer lights a fire; Paul and John said the audience is meant to believe that he has burned the girl's house down in revenge. Paul said of the title of the song:

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.... So she makes him sleep in the bath and then finally in the last verse I had this idea to set the Norwegian wood on fire as revenge, so we did it very tongue in cheek. She led him on, then said, "You'd better sleep in the bath." In our world the guy had to have some sort of revenge ... so it meant I burned the place down.

Rather violent, I think, setting a girl's house on fire just because she's a tease. :P Still, I rather like "Norwegian Wood". The sitar lends the song an indescribable but enchanting quality, pairing an India-infused melody with facetious British lyrics. I honestly cannot remember if I've heard this song before; it sounds incredibly familiar, but since I can't be sure, unfortunately I'll have to hold off adding it to the tally.

That's all for today. The film Help! is winging its way to me as we speak, and I'm looking forward to watching it soon. :) I'll see you tomorrow!

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Heard It Tally: 16
Songs Completed: 86