"Nowhere Man," the Beatles
Instead of a fiftieth anniversary, I plan to celebrate as my Music Video Of the Week a sixtieth anniversary, because more was going on musically in February 1966 than in February 1976.
This month marks the sixtieth anniversary of the first U.S. release of the Beatles song "Nowhere Man," composed and recorded for Rubber Soul but left off the U.S. edition of that LP so it could be released as a single later on. ("Nowhere Man" made its LP debut in the United States on Yesterday and Today, a hybrid of tunes left of the American editions of the three Beatles albums preceding Sgt. Pepper.)
John Lennon was under a deadline to write songs for Rubber Soul, which the Beatles had to get out for an early-December release for the Christmas gift-giving season but did not start recording until the middle of October. At one point at home, John had to think if something to help fill out the record, and he had a severe case of writer's block. No ideas for a new song would come to him. Having sat at his desk trying to write a new song, he gave up and went to lie down on his couch. As he rested on the couch staring at the ceiling, he felt frustrated and thought he was getting nowhere. Then he started thinking of himself as a nowhere man, sitting in a nowhere land. The muse struck.
In the fifteen years between the British release of "Nowhere Man" in December 1965 and his death, John Lennon never expressed pride or satisfaction with the song. He wrote it off as a space filler, something that was inspired by lack of inspiration. Yet "Nowhere Man" was a groundbreaking song for the Beatles in that it was the first song they'd ever written that was about something other than boy-girl relationships. It was at heart about alienation, and soon many rock acts would be writing songs about alienation, and The Dark Side of the Moon - Pink Floyd's masterpiece - was an entire concept album about the feeling of being isolated and alienated. It was also a taste of what was to come from the Beatles - Revolver had at least eight or nine songs about something other than boy-girl relationships, and Sgt. Pepper would have fewer such songs still.
In the United States, "Nowhere Man" was chosen as the next Beatles single in the U.S., most likely for its groundbreaking subject matter at a time when pop songs began adapting the folk-song tradition of having something to say. Released in February 1966 with another Rubber Soul track left of the U.S. edition of that album, "What Goes On," as its B-side, it peaked at number three on the Billboard singles chart and was the last British Beatles album track released as a single in the U.S. except for "The Long and Winding Road."
This clip, my Music Video Of the Week, shows the Beatles performing "Nowhere Man" at the Budokan in Tokyo in July 1966. NHK, the Japanese national TV network, filmed this concert to air on television for fans in Japan who couldn't get to see the Beatles in person; the film is regarded as one of the finest Beatles concert documentaries. Enjoy.
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