One of the most widely quoted lyrics from the Beatles classic "I Am the Walrus" was an inside — and X-rated — joke between John Lennon and Animals singer Eric Burdon.

Dangerous Minds reminds us that, while it's common knowledge among many of the Beatles faithful that Lennon was referring to Burdon when he sang the lyric "I am the eggman," there's been a bit of confusion regarding the story behind the nickname. According to the most commonly told version of the story, Burdon achieved "Eggman" status through his habit of "breaking raw eggs on girls during sex" — but as Burdon himself explained in his 2002 memoir Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood, it was actually the other way around.

"It may have been one of my more dubious distinctions, but I was the Eggman — or, as some of my pals called me, ‘Eggs,'" writes Burdon. It all started one sunny morning when he stood in the kitchen, "cooking breakfast naked except for my socks," and a "Jamaican girlfriend called Sylvia" took it upon herself to send the meal in an entirely different direction.

"She slid up beside me and slipped an amyl nitrate capsule under my nose. As the fumes set my brain alight and I slid to the kitchen floor, she reached to the counter and grabbed an egg, which she cracked into the pit of my belly," continues Burdon, and from there, you can let your imagination fill in the rest — or check out Dangerous Minds to get the complete details regarding how one becomes an Eggman. Long story short, the nickname stuck, and Lennon was thoroughly amused.

"I shared the story with John at a party at a Mayfair flat one night with a handful of blondes and a little Asian girl," Burdon recalls in his book. "'Go on, go get it, Eggman,' Lennon laughed over the little round glasses perched on the end of his hook-like nose as we tried the all-too-willing girls on for size."

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