Not to
denigrate your personal experience with
Yer Blues, but I believe you are wrong. I think that
Yer Blues is
not a serious song. It is a satire. A satire of the then dominate
British Blues Explosion. That's part of the reason the lyrics are so simple and repetitive, to
mimic the standard blues tune. Most people easily recognized that
Back in the USSR is a satire of the
Beach Boys because the
lyrics are so obviously satirical, but if you were to just listen to the music it sounds like an honest piece of
West Coast Pop. Likewise, the music of
Yer Blues (while a bit
psychedelic a la
Cream) is a straight up blues rendition; however, the
lyrics are so
un-beatlesesque that one is led to question whether or not it is a satire.
For an example of a similar satire, check out
Russian Poetry of the early 19th Century. In this time, Poets were forbidden to criticized the government openly so they did so covertly. At that time,
Poetry was classified into several distinct forms with well known
conventions:
Odes,
Idylls etc. So a
Poet would title a
poem an
Ode, write
stanzas praising the government, but instead of writing in the standard
meter of an Ode (in english, iambic) he'd write in a different meter. There is not a direct connection between
Yer Blues and these poets, but you can see the similarities.
Of course, I did not personally know
John Lennon, so I cannot say for sure that
Yer Blues is a satire; however, I have heard this position advanced several times before. For example,
All Music Guide writes of
The White Album:
"Never before had a rock record been so self-reflective, or so ironic; the Beach Boys send-up "Back in the USSR" and the British blooze parody "Yer Blues" are delivered straight-faced, so it's never clear if these are affectionate tributes or wicked satires."