Composition and Lyrics
Lennon started composing the song on his acoustic guitar in January 1965, while on holiday with his wife, Cynthia, in the Swiss Alps. Lennon later explained that the lyric was about an affair he had been 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. | ” |
Lennon indicated that Paul McCartney helped him finish off the lyric. McCartney explained the title and lyric as follows:
| “ | 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 decor of someone's house, we made that up. 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 .... | ” |
There has been various speculation as to the subject of Lennon's affair: his friend Pete Shotton suggested a journalist of their acquaintance, possibly Maureen Cleave (though Cleave has said that in all her encounters with Lennon there was "no pass"), while writer Philip Norman claimed that the woman was model Sonny Drane, the first wife of Beatles photographer Robert Freeman.
Read more about this topic: Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)
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