John himself always said the lyric was “psychoanalysis set to music” and declared it and “Help!” to have been “the only true songs I ever wrote.” For him, the words signified how little he had really changed in the years since Strawberry Field was his adventure playground. “The second line [of the second verse] goes ‘No one I think is in my tree.’ What I was trying to say was ‘Nobody seems to be as hip as me, therefore I must be crazy or a genius. It’s the same problem I had when I was five.’” In fact, egotism is the last very thing that strikes you. The air of hippie wisdom and stoicism soon
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