So, Aki Takahashi, the pianist was doing an album for a Japanese record. ((Two Gongs)) So, they wanted her to do Beatles arrangements. She said, “Well, I’d rather ask composers to do their own,”, and so they said okay. So, she called me up and said “Would you like to do one”? I said sure, you choose a song for me. I didn’t have any particular choice of songs. So, she wrote me back and said, well, how about Strawberry Fields? So, I said sure. Why did you choose that? She said well, the line ‘Nothing is real’ reminds me of your work.

So, that song was chosen for me. And I thought well, what do I do with it? I don’t want to do a piano arrangement of that song. And I just got the idea of place. We remember where we heard these songs for the first time, often I think — and having done I Am Sitting In A Room, I thought, well, maybe if I could just put the song into a teapot, that seemed to be a Japanese idea. And I did. I sat at the piano, I recorded this song and I put it — I had a little — I found a teapot, so I put a little loudspeaker inside it, and started to play it back into the pot. And I was shocked and surprised to discover when I raised the lid of the pot.

The resonances of the tones would come out very strongly. It’s like raising the roof on a building or raising the ceiling. And that’s how I made that piece. Sort of accidental in a funny way. I make a lot of accidental things, I think. ((Spoleto))