Strawberry Fields Forever

Lennon wrote it in Almería, Spain, while filming Dick Lester's How I Won the War in autumn 1966. Strawberry Field was the name of a Salvation Army children's home in Woolton, near Lennon's Aunt Mimi's house, where he had played as a child. The lyric is among the most explicitly autobiographical and Lennon-vulnerable of his career.

Two completely separate takes, recorded in different keys and at different tempos, were spliced together by George Martin and Geoff Emerick on Lennon's instruction (he liked the beginning of one and the end of the other). The slower take was sped up; the faster one slowed down — and by chance the two converged in approximately the same key. The splice point is at roughly the one-minute mark. Mellotron, slide cellos, brass, backwards drums and Indian percussion swarm across the four-track. Final mixing was completed only days before its 17 February 1967 release as a double A-side single with Penny Lane.

Failed to reach UK number one (held off by Engelbert Humperdinck's Release Me) — Brian Epstein later called this the worst defeat of the band's career. Routinely listed among the band's greatest records. The Dakota memorial mosaic across from Lennon's apartment is named for it.