While I'm scrounging around the Internet looking for things to steal from Michael Jackson, who owns publishing to the whole Lennon-McCartney catalog, thanks to a gaffe by Paul in the 1980s -- he thought he could trust Jacko with the little fact that the portfolio was up for bid, and Michael promptly reached into his deep pockets and purchased it -- the day would not be complete without Strawberry Fields Forever.

(In case you're wondering why Beatles songs are ending up on TV commercials, now you know. And hey, the money pays...lawyers!)

Here's a little story, really an observation. I was watching a video documentary about the Beatles first visit to the United States, in 1964. There is a great scene in the hotel, with Brian Epstein working the phone, his buxom, womanly secretaries gorgeous in that particularly Sixties way running around the suite taking care of this and that and handing him things to sign, and the boys, in their suits, are hanging around doing their thing.

In John's case it was sitting on the couch playing the Melodian, a little keyboard of about two octaves that you blow into. I recognized the music...he was playing the opening chords to Strawberry Fields Forever! The discographies seem to agree was recorded more than two-and-a-half years later, in late November and early December 1966. That doesn't seem so long now, but remember that when the boys played Shea Stadium on that New York visit, they were doing Twist and Shout and She Loves You, and the little girls were fainting in the aisles in the sweltering haze of their own estrogen.

Strawberry Fields -- I learn -- was conceived from a Salvation Army orphanage in Woolton named Strawberry Field, a short distance from where Lennon grew up. This song is one of John's most complex and personal pieces of songwriting, the very most ultimate example of psychedelic music, and a listening experience that can be so transcendent it's really not possible to describe. Particularly on one toke of grass. Good gods.

Strawberry Fields is now a memorial to John on the western edge of Central Park at 72nd Street, across from the Dakota Building. If you have it, play it loud, you never remembered it this good. John, John, John, thank you. There's lots of us in your tree.


 Let me take you down, 'cos I'm going to Strawberry Fields
 Nothing is real, and nothing to get hungabout
 Strawberry Fields forever

 Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see
 It's getting hard to be someone but it all works out, it doesn't matter much to me
 Let me take you down, 'cos I'm going to Strawberry Fields
 Nothing is real, and nothing to get hungabout
 Strawberry Fields forever

 No one I think is in my tree, I mean it must be high or low
 That is you can't you know tune in but it's all right, that is I think it's not too bad

 Let me take you down, 'cos I'm going to Strawberry Fields
 Nothing is real, and nothing to get hungabout
 Strawberry Fields forever

 Always, no sometimes, think it's me, but you know I know when it's a dream
 I think I know I mean a "Yes" but it's all wrong, that is I think I disagree

 Let me take you down, 'cos I'm going to Strawberry Fields
 Nothing is real, and nothing to get hungabout
 Strawberry Fields forever
 Strawberry Fields forever
 Strawberry Fields forever