'The Walrus was Paul'?

 

In Glass Onion John Lennon writes 'Here's another clue for you all/The Walrus was Paul'. What did he mean?

I threw the line in - "the Walrus was Paul" - just to confuse everybody a bit more. It could have been "the fox terrier is Paul"

Clear enough. But in another interview John muddied the waters with an alternative explanation. Glass Onion shout-out was, he claimed, 'a present to Paul' -  listen here. The logic of this is a little hard to follow: 'I had found happiness with Yoko and so now wanted to thank Paul for his work in keeping the band going.'

Hmm. Didn't quite come across that way in his tell-all Rolling Stone interview Lennon Remembers (1970). The initial explanation seems more plausible:

I was having a laugh because there'd been so much gobbledygook about Pepper -  play it backwards and you stand on your head and all that.