Cultural References
The episode features several references to The Beatles and McCartney's solo career. For instance, McCartney tells Lisa that playing his 1970 song "Maybe I'm Amazed" backwards will reveal a secret recipe for lentil soup. A modified version of the song plays in the final scene, then over the closing credits of the episode; when played backwards, McCartney can be heard reciting the recipe in the song. Mirkin had McCartney record the recipe, which was later added in reverse over the original song. McCartney thought it was "very funny" that the staff wanted to "send up the whole cult thing" of backmasking on the Beatles' songs. "A secret lentil soup recipe seemed a nice parody of that," he said. One of the backwards snippets says, "Oh, and by the way, I'm alive," a reference to the Paul is dead theory.
When Lisa, Apu, and the McCartneys gather on the Kwik-E-Mart roof, Apu tells Lisa, "I learned long ago to tolerate others rather than forcing my beliefs on them. You know, you can influence people without badgering them always. It's like Paul's song, 'Live and Let Live'." Paul corrects Apu and says the song's title is actually "Live and Let Die". In the same scene, Apu refers to himself as the "fifth Beatle", and Linda alludes to a line in the Beatles' 1969 song "Octopus's Garden". The McCartneys later ask Lisa if she would like to hear a song, and Apu sings part of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band", to which the McCartneys snap along.
Read more about this topic: Lisa The Vegetarian
Famous quotes containing the word cultural:
“The rumor of a great city goes out beyond its borders, to all the latitudes of the known earth. The city becomes an emblem in remote minds; apart from the tangible export of goods and men, it exerts its cultural instrumentality in a thousand phases.”
—In New York City, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)