A few years back I boldly proclaimed that John Lennon is The Beatle Most Inspired by Lewis Carroll’s Works. Turns out, I may have been wrong.* Paul McCartney is also a Lewis Carroll devotee; he just doesn’t get as much frabjous fanfare as John.
To review, John Lennon’s affection for Lewis Carroll is well-documented, most indelibly in his posthumously-published Playboy interview where he discussed, in depth, LC’s connection to Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds and I Am the Walrus. Over the years, Paul McCartney has not received nearly as much press for his love of everyone’s favorite Oxford don. But lately, it’s like the guy can’t shut up about it!
In Paul’s 2021 book The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present, Lewis Carroll gets a whopping seven index entries! Paul credits LC with inspiring songs as diverse as the early Beatles ditty I’ll Get You to the Wings banger Old Siam, Sir. Is frothy fun like Yellow Submarine included? You bet it is. Is the much darker serial killer anthem Maxwell’s Silver Hammer included? Surprisingly, also yes. To quote The Cute One: “Also invoked is the world of the children’s nursery rhyme, where people are always getting their heads chopped off – and of course, the Queen of Hearts from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, who’s always saying “Off with their heads!”
The most surprising revelation, for me, from The Lyrics is that the hard-rockin’ Helter Skelter derives its “Do you, don’t you?” refrain from the Mock Turtle’s dirge-like “Will you, won’t you join the dance?”
It goes far beyond The Lyrics. Paul quotes about LC abound. Heck, even in paulmccartney.com’s monthly You Gave Me the Answer column, buried amongst hard-hitting fan questions such as “Do you have a favorite fragrance?” LC gets a shout out!
PaulMcCartney.com: In the song ‘Uncle Albert / Admiral Halsey’ you sing ‘I had a cup of tea and a butter pie’. Firstly, what is a butter pie? And is there a meaning behind ‘the butter wouldn’t melt so I put it in the pie’?
Paul: No, there’s no meaning behind it. Because I like surrealist art, I also like surrealist words. A great example of this is Lewis Carroll writing Alice in Wonderland – it’s a crazy thing, you’ve got a cat sitting in a tree that grins and talks, and you’ve got Alice falling down a hole and meeting the red queen, and so on. That whole tradition was something that I loved, and when I met John I learned that he loved it to. So, it was something that became a bond between us.**
These recent statements, coupled with quotes from 1997’s Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now by Barry Miles, certainly solidify Paul’s status as an Alice aficionado. Those garden statues on the cover of The Ballad of John and Yoko, after all, did not actually belong to John and Yoko. They were Paul’s, sprinkled throughout his Cavendish Avenue lawn. Maybe they’re still there!
Lastly, ya’ll ready for this? Alice Is Everywhere happens to have some inside information (that’s also available to anyone on Facebook) that the choice of Lewis Carroll for the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club album cover was actually Paul’s and not John’s. Mark Richards of the superb Lewis Carroll Resources wrote on Facebook on February 1, 2021: ‘A few years ago Peter Blake, who (with Jann Haworth) designed the cover of the Beatles Sgt Pepper album, told me that Paul was the one who selected Lewis Carroll as one of the “heroes” to be included on that iconic record sleeve.’
So there you have it. Paul McCartney may indeed be the Beatle Most Influenced by Lewis Carroll’s Works, not John Lennon after all. Of course, Paul has had an 45 additional years to create music, due to an assassin’s bullet, so he’s got sheer volume on his side. And it’s not a contest, after all. But is it fun for Carrollians who are Bugs About the Beatles to debate and think about? Absolutely.
Ready for more Beatles/Lewis Carroll canon? Check out Alice Is Everywhere’s previous podcasts and blogs on the topic, do a deep dive on Nick Coate’s Alice & the Eggmen substack and tune in to a special presentation from the Lewis Carroll Society of North America on Sept 20, 2025!
*Mark this day with a White Stone, as it will never happen again.
** Paul confuses the Red Queen with the Queen of Hearts here. We’ll allow it.