At the Zoo with The Beatles Trivia Quiz

Answer: Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey

In "All We Are Saying: The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono by David Sheff", Lennon explains, "That [the tilte] was just a sort of nice line that I made into a song. It was about me and Yoko. Everybody seemed to be paranoid except for us two, who were in the glow of love. Everything is clear and open when you're in love. Everybody was sort of tense around us: you know, 'What is she doing here at the session? Why is she with him?' All this sort of madness is going around us because we just happened to want to be together all the time". I wonder how Ono responded to being referred to, if even symbolically, as a monkey?

"Come On, Come On", words repeated so often in the song, was actually Lennon's original working title for the song.

Fats Domino covered this song for a 1969 recording.

Answer: I Am the Walrus

In 1967, John Lennon received a letter from a student who explained that he and his classmates were being required by their teacher to explicate the lyrics of The Beatles' songs. Finding it rather entertaining that so much academic effort was being expended to comprehend the words of The Beatles, Lennon set out to create a song with lyrics that were as confusing as he could devise. To compound the song's lack of meaning, Lennon joined several different ideas he had been working on for several other songs that he was in the process of writing. For example, he took some ideas from a song set to the rhythm of a police siren, some from an intentionally nonsensical song about sitting on a cornflake, some from a short piece about sitting in a garden, and some from a children's rhyme he used to sing on the playground when he was a kid. Of course, there are references to Shakespeare's "King Lear", Carroll's "The Walrus and the Carpenter", a previous Beatles' song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds", and a couple of Lennon's own acid trips.

"I Am the Walrus" was originally released as the B-side to Paul McCartney's "Hello, Goodbye".

Answer: Blue Jay Way

"Blue Jay Way" first appears on The Beatles 1967 "Magical Mystery Tour" EP and album. George Harrison named the song after the street in Hollywood, Los Angeles, where he was waiting for Derek Taylor to pick him up for a trip north to San Francisco. Apparently, Taylor had lost his way among the fog that settled around the area, and Harrison was struggling to stay awake because of jet lag. He actually began composing the song while waiting for Taylor to arrive.

Some critics and scholars have commented that the song also serves as a "farewell" of sorts. Harrison was greatly disappointed by his trip to the Haight-Ashbury District. He had hoped to find a capsule of society whose members had dedicated themselves to an alternative lifestyle that involved the pursuit of art, music, literature, and so on, Instead, he found what he felt were "hypocrites" who had dropped out of life to waste their potential on psychedelics and other drugs. After he talked with John Lennon about his utter disappointment with the so-called counter-culture of Western society, The Beatles began to focus less and less on LSD and more and more on transcendental meditation.

Answer: Hey Bulldog

The Beatles decided to rename the song "Hey Bulldog" following a recording session during which McCartney spontaneously and improvisationally began barking toward the end of the song. Lennon quickly changed the lyric that followed from "Hey bullfrog" to "Hey bulldog", and then he and McCartney ended the song with a playful banter between the two of them with McCartney continuing to pretend to be a dog.

The recording is one of the last few to possess a vibe of genuine camaraderie, joviality, and teammwork among the four Beatles before various conflicts began to undermine the band's cohesion.

Answer: Piggies

George Harrison began working on "Piggies" while The Beatles were working on their "Revolver" album. However, he put the song aside and forgot about it until a couple of years later, and Harrison's "Taxman"--another anti-establishment song--ended up on "Revolver" instead. Two years later, he rediscovered the "Piggies" song and completed it so that it was included on "The Beatles" album, aka "The White Album".

Interestingly, Harrison's mother Louise provided him with the line "What they need's a damn good whacking" after he asked for her assistance during his visit to her home. Also, John Lennon convinced Harrison to change the final lines of the song from "Clutching forks and knives to cut their pork chops" to "Clutching forks and knives to eat their bacon".

Answer: Octopus's Garden

In 1968, while traveling off Sardinia in a boat belonging to the actor and comedian Peter Sellers, Ringo Starr was given a plate of squid for lunch after he had ordered fish and chips. In an adventurous mood, he decided to eat the squid and found it tolerable.

This led to a discussion between the ship's captain and Ringo about cephalopods, and the captain told Ringo about the tendency of octopuses ("octopi" is considered an incorrect Latin plural for "octopus") to gather shiny rocks, shells, and other items to arrange in "gardens" they create for themselves. Starr was smitten with the idea, particularly because a garden in a "hideaway beneath the waves" and "below the storm" appealed to him during a time in his life when he was troubled by growing conflicts between the members of The Beatles.

Answer: Martha My Dear

While the title of "Martha My Dear" certainly refers to his Old English Sheepdog and many of the lyrics seem to be inspired by the pet's playful and mischievous ways, Paul McCartney has claimed that the song is also about Jane Asher, the actor and author who at one time was his girlfriend.

The lyrics referred to in the question as well as "Take a good look you're bound to see / That you and me were meant to be for each other" and "Martha my dear you have always been my inspiration" are meant to be what McCartney would say to Asher.

Other songs inspired by Asher are "I'm Looking Through You", "Here, There, and Everywhere", "We Can Work It Out", and "For No One".

Answer: Rocky Raccoon

Paul McCartney wrote "Rocky Raccoon". He originally meant for the title and main character to be named "Rocky Sassoon", but eventually modified it because he thought "Rocky Raccoon" "sounded more like a cowboy", to quote his own words. McCartney's intention was to imitate the style of country and folk rock and satirize it at the same time.

The song is notable, musically, for a couple of reasons. The Beatles' producer George Martin played the piano to create the Old West saloon or honky-tonk sound, and it is the last song by The Beatles during which John Lennon played harmonica.

Answer: Dig a Pony

"Dig a Pony" was composed by John Lennon and included on The Beatles' "Let It Be" album. While Lennon would later remark that he felt the song was "garbage", he also claimed it was written for Yoko Ono and that he was attempting to imitate Bob Dylan's style of writing lyrics. "Dig a Pony" was one of the songs played and recorded during "the concert on the rooftop" on January 30, 1969, the final time The Beatles ever performed together in public.

Answer: Blackbird

Musically, "Blackbird" was inspired by Johann Sebastian Bach's "Bourree in E Minor". Bach's song is traditionally played on lute or classical guitar, and McCartney and George Harrison once tried to learn the piece as a "show off" song. The lyrics of "Blackbird", however, appear to be the result of various inspirations. McCartney has made different claims about the origin of the song, including that the idea for the song came to him one morning when he woke up in Rishikesh, India, to a blackbird singing and the words are supposed to be symbolic of transcendental awakening. Of course, on a number of occasions, he has claimed that the song is about the struggles of Black Americans and racial conflict in the United States during the 1960s. The words, again, are supposed to be symbolic of self-realization and rising from degradation.

However, he has also claimed that the song is a love song and is about finding love on a deeper plane. He did, after all, play the song live to an audience that had gathered outside his home on the first night that Linda Eastman stayed at his home.