The Meaning Behind “Nowhere Man” by The Beatles and How John Lennon Made a ...

What do you do if you are John Lennon at the height of Beatlemania and you want to get away from it all?   You go home.

But peace didn’t last long. The country house gave Lennon refuge, but it also brought boredom. So he did nothing. Until he wrote “Nowhere Man.”

Lennon had escaped to his home in Weybridge, England, in an attempt to hide away from the mass hysteria surrounding The Beatles. But the silence became too much to tolerate. After a while at home, he felt isolated.

He’s a real nowhere man
Sitting in his nowhere land
Making all his nowhere plans for nobody

He told author David Sheff, “I’d spent five hours that morning trying to write a song that was meaningful and good and I finally gave up and lay down. Then ‘Nowhere Man’ came, words and music, the whole damn thing, as I lay down.”

Sheff’s interviews with Lennon (and Yoko Ono) are compiled in his book All We Are Saying (2000). The interviews were first published in Playboy in November 1980. Lennon was murdered a month later.

Doesn’t have a point of view
Knows not where he’s going to
Isn’t he a bit like you and me?
Lazy Days

In 1966, Lennon told the Evening Standard he was “physically lazy.” He said, “I don’t mind writing or reading or watching or speaking, but sex is the only physical thing I can be bothered with anymore.”

However, writing “Nowhere Man” is doing something. The idea of sitting around with nothing to do created a temporary writer’s block. But once Lennon stopped thinking about anything, the song came to him. He quit trying to write. Gave up to sleep.

Source: americansongwriter.com/americansongwriter.com

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