{"id":441862,"date":"2026-02-23T21:46:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-23T21:46:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/441862\/"},"modified":"2026-02-23T21:46:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-23T21:46:09","slug":"how-a-weybridge-golf-course-inspired-a-strange-beatles-cut","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/441862\/","title":{"rendered":"How a Weybridge golf course inspired a strange Beatles cut"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ Apple Corps Ltd)<\/p>\n

Mon 23 February 2026 16:00, UK <\/p>\n

It turns out that the small Weybridge town in the UK\u2019s Surrey area possibly lent an indirect hand in shaping one of The Beatles<\/a>\u2019 most creative cuts on more than one occasion.<\/p>\n

By 1967, The Beatles were well into their psychedelic phase, eagerly trying to capture the mind-expanding experiences had on LSD to record as well as charge full-throttle into the new artistic hinterland made fully possible by abandoning their live commitments once Beatlemania grew stale the previous year.<\/p>\n

Such lysergic terrain had been bottled for Revolver\u2019s acid-fried \u2018Tomorrow Never Knows<\/a>\u2019, followed by \u2018Strawberry Fields Forever\u2019s surrealist wander and the kaleidoscopic Sgt Pepper\u2019s Lonely Hearts Club Band scoring the Summer of Love.<\/p>\n

In the preparation for their Magical Mystery Tour TV project and accompanying soundtrack EP \u2013 released as an LP over in the States, padded out with various surrounding singles and B-sides \u2013 John Lennon penned an absurdist slice of lyrical intrigue inspired by his childhood love of Lewis Carroll\u2019s in a wry piss-take of the earnest Beatles fans pouring over their work for supposedly hidden meanings and clues in their recent output.<\/p>\n

\u2018Peppering\u2019 the piece with all kinds of comic references and backed by a myriad of collaged experimentation and sonic wizardry, \u2018I Am the Walrus\u2019 proved to stand as one of the most ambitious Beatles cuts yet.<\/p>\n

In typical Beatles fashion, Lennon was toying with several song sketches at once, unable to flesh them out individually, and so sought to combine them into one number. Amid cartoon lyrical snapshots of \u201cSitting on a cornflake\u201d and \u201cSitting in an English garden waiting for the sun,\u201d a passing police car across his Kenwood residence in Weybridge\u2019s St George\u2019s Hill estate sowed the seeds for \u2018I Am the Walrus\u2019 \u201cMister City policeman\u201d refrain sung in the tempo and melody of the car\u2019s blaring siren.<\/p>\n

One of the estate\u2019s on-site luxuries was its private 27-hole heathland course. Wandering the St George\u2019s Hill Golf Club with BBC Radio 1 presenter Kenny Everett, the pair\u2019s acid trip across the grounds \u2013 whether they brought their clubs and attempted a swing on LSD we don\u2019t know \u2013 reportedly helped shape \u2018I Am the Walrus\u2019 lyrical weirdness.<\/p>\n

\u201cA couple of months after my psychedelic round of golf with John, I was in the Abbey Road recording studios where The Beatles were recording \u2018I Am The Walrus\u2019,\u201d Everett recalled in 1982\u2019s The Custard Stops at Hatfield: My Second Helping autobiography. \u201cWhen he got to the line about getting a tan from standing in the English rain, he stopped and said to me: \u2018Reminds me of that day on the Weybridge golf course, eh Ken?\u2019 to which I replied: \u2018What?\u2019, I\u2019m sure he thought I was a complete lemon\u2026 or was it a bird?\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s unclear just how much Weybridge\u2019s premier golf club has sought to capitalise on such a slice of Beatles lore, but those little locales across the UK landscape serving as backdrops to the Lennon-McCartney songbook<\/a> all add to the rich mythos that surrounds the Fab Four\u2019s mark on the UK\u2019s musical map and beyond.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The Far Out Beatles Newsletter<\/p>\n

All the latest stories about The Beatles from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ Apple Corps Ltd) Mon 23 February 2026 16:00, UK It turns out that the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":319654,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[5904,25396,49293,101,10447,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-441862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-golf","tag-john-lennon","tag-magical-mystery-tour","tag-sports","tag-the-beatles","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=441862"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441862\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/319654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=441862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=441862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=441862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}