File:John Lennon - It's Not Too Bad-Strawberry Fields Forever (Santa Isabel Demos 1966)

In 1966, John Lennon was in Almeria (Spain) filming Richard Lester's action comedy "How I Won the War" in which he played the bespectacled supporting character (The Gripweed Musketeer) and was taking a break from the Beatles and the anxiety and loss of intimacy that came with being part of them. Being in the villa, the wrought iron gates and lush gardens reminded Lennon of those days when he played in "Strawberry Field," a Salvation Army-owned garden near his childhood home in Liverpool. With that feeling in his heart, he hastened to complete a nostalgia-laden melody he had begun to shape on a previous tour of the United States and reflected on the clear-sky beaches of Almeria as he plucked the strings of his inseparable acoustic guitar to shape "It's Not Too Bad", a composition that would later become the psychedelic rock classic "Strawberry Fields Forever". This is how the "Santa Isabel demos" were born.