"The song's famous, haunting lyric, "I know what it's like to be dead," originated from an August 1965 party in Los Angeles attended by members of The Beatles and The Byrds. While George Harrison was having a difficult, paranoid acid trip, Fonda continually leaned over to the group to comfort him, whispering, "I know what it's like to be dead". He explained that as a child, he had accidentally shot himself in the stomach and his heart had stopped beating three times.
John Lennon, who was attempting to enjoy a beautiful, sun-drenched day with the rest of the party, was deeply unsettled and annoyed by Fonda's persistent, eerie statements. Annoyed, Lennon snapped back: "You're making me feel like I've never been born. Who put all that shit in your head?"
These lines stuck in Lennon's memory and became the emotional and lyrical core of the song he wrote nearly a year later. He originally drafted the song as "He Said He Said," but changed "he" to "she" to obscure the fact that the song's subject was an uncomfortable conversation with Fonda."
I was a huge Beatles fan as a teenager...how else could I remember this fact 50 years after first learning about it?
Also, Klaus Voormann drew the cover....
"Voormann's association with the Beatles dates back to their time in Hamburg in the early 1960s. He lived in the band's London flat with George Harrison and Ringo Starr after John Lennon and Paul McCartney moved out to live with their respective partners. He designed the cover of their 1966 album Revolver, for which he won a Grammy Award. He also designed the graphics for the sheet music of songs from Revolver. Following the band's split, rumors circulated of the formation of a group named the Ladders, consisting of Lennon, Harrison, Starr and Voormann. This failed to materialise; however, all four would-be Ladders (plus Billy Preston) performed on the Starr track "I'm the Greatest", and Voormann did play on solo albums by Lennon, Harrison and Starr, as well as briefly being a member of the Plastic Ono Band. In the 1990s, he designed the artwork for The Beatles Anthology albums."
He's 88 years old now.
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