Just as Yesterday mysteriously came to Paul McCartney, Nowhere Man simply came to Lennon at dawn after he’d stayed up all night, struggling to come up with a new song for Rubber Soul. He happened upon a phrase, “nowhere man,” which, he felt, described his own fears about himself.

“I’d spent five hours that morning trying to write a song that was meaningful and good, and I finally gave up and lay down. Then ‘Nowhere Man’ came, words and music, the whole damn thing as I lay down.  I thought of myself sitting there, doing nothing and getting nowhere.”

Recorded on 21 and 22 October 1965, Nowhere Man is one of the first Beatles songs to be entirely unrelated to romance or love, and marks a notable example of Lennon’s philosophically oriented songwriting. Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison sing the song in three-part harmony. The lead guitar solo…