The Beatles: "A Day in the Life"

The Beatles "A Day in the Life" the final track on their landmark 1967 album Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is one of the greatest, most important, and influential songs in the history of popular music.

Composition

John Lennon and Paul McCartney were the principle songwriters of the Beatles and they often wrote songs together in the Beatles early days and later on they usually wrote separately. They also sometimes combined two separate song segments into one song and "A Day in the Life" is the penultimate example this. They put their parts together and formed a more complex and fully realized song. They had previously joined together segments in a similar way on "We Can Work It Out."

Lennon wrote the verses of "A Day in the Life" and McCartney wrote the "I'd love to turn you on" part and the middle section. McCartney's middle section had already been written when Lennon showed McCartney his new song and he thought that it would fit in well with this new song as the bridge.

Vocals

John Lennon sings the verse and the "I'd love to turn you on" part and Paul McCartney sings the bridge. This is normally how the Beatles worked. For the most part whoever wrote it sang it. The "I'd love to turn you on" part written by McCartney and sung by Lennon is a rare example of this not being the case.

The Orchestral Freak Out

Perhaps the most memorable sections of this song are the insane orchestral buildups which occur right before the middle section and also at the end of the song before the "final chord." As can be heard in the Anthology II version of this song the measures where the orchestra would be placed are counted off as a place holder as they knew they wanted something different there but they were unsure what at the time. A 41 piece orchestra was used and Paul McCartney was the conductor. McCartney told these highly trained musicians to begin at their lowest note and to make their way to their highest note by the end. This was quite an avant-garde thing to do and the musicians thought it was completely insane. The musicians were also asked to wear anything from fake noses to fake stick on nipples. The lead violinist performed wearing a gorilla paw.

Recalling his experience conducting the orchestra McCartney said "Then I went around to all the trumpet players and said, 'Look, all you've got to do is start at the beginning of the 24 bars and go through all the notes on your instrument from the lowest to the highest - and the highest has to happen on that 24th bar, that's all. So you can blow 'em all in that first thing and then rest, then play the top one there if you want, or you can steady them out.' And it was interesting because I saw the orchestra's characters. The strings were like sheep - they all looked at each other: 'Are you going up? I am!' and they'd all go up together, the leader would take them all up. The trumpeters were much wilder."

The Lyrics

The majority of the verse lyrics were inspired by two stories Lennon read in the newspaper. Lennon was experimenting with different lyric writing techniques at the time: For example the lyrics of another Sgt Pepper song "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite" were mostly taken directly from a poster he had read; similarly the lyrics for this song were mostly taken directly from the newspaper. One of the stories was about Guinness heir Tara Browne dying in a car accident and the other was about how the Blackburn Roads Surveyor had counted 4000 holes in the roads of

Blackburn and commented that the volume of material needed to fill them in was enough to fill the Albert Hall. The "I'd love to turn you on" lyric is often thought to be a drug reference but McCartney insists it is not necessarily about drugs but a more universal statement. McCartney says of this lyric "This [line] was the only one on the album written as a deliberate provocation. But what we want to do is to turn you on to the truth rather than on to pot."

The Final Chord

The song ends with an emphatic E chord played on three pianos simultaneously. The chord is sustained for 42 seconds on the recording with the recording faders being boosted as high as possible as the sound is dying out in order to capture it.

High Pitch Noise

After the final chord dies out and before the final loop starts there is an extremely high pitched sound which was overdubbed in with the intention of gaining the attention of any dogs who happen to be listening. Right after the high pitched noise and right before the loop there is a short burst of laughter, possibly some of the same laughter heard at the end of "Within You Without You."

The

Loop

The song (and thus the Sgt Pepper album) ends with a loop that was originally intended to loop on indefinitely until the listener lifted the record player needle off the record. With CDs this is not possible so the loop goes for about 20 seconds before fading out to give the listener some idea of this effect. It's hard to decipher anything intelligible in this loop but I hear "Never could be any other way" in what sounds like a woman's voice but could be a man's voice pitched up. There are also, I believe, at least two other voices in the loop but I cannot figure out what they are saying.

BBC Ban

This was the first Beatles song to be officially banned by the BBC. It was banned specifically because of the "I'd love to turn you on" lyric because they said it implicitly advocated drug use. A spokesman for the BBC stated: "We have listened to this song over and over again. And we have decided that it appears to go just a little too far, and could encourage a permissive attitude to drug-taking."

Quote by David Crosby (of The Byrds and

Crosby, Stills, & Nash)

David Crosby was at Abbey Road studios when The Beatles were recording this song. In an interview with Filter magazine, he said: "I was, as near as I know, the first human being besides them and George Martin and the engineers to hear A Day in the Life. I was high as a kite - so high I was hunting geese with a rake. They sat me down; they had huge speakers like coffins with wheels on that they rolled up on either side of the stool. By the time it got the end of that piano chord, man my brains were on the floor."

Second by Second (The Sgt Pepper CD version)

0:00 - The song begins with crowd noise from "Sgt Pepper Reprise" which is the song before it on the album and the crowd noise bleeds into "A Day in the Life" to help create a feeling of continuity. The acoustic guitar is also in the left channel from the start although it seems slightly quieter when first heard and then fades up quickly to its level throughout the rest of the verse.

0:07 - The piano comes in. The piano throughout the song is very evocative.

0:12 - The bass comes in with a quick little bitty right before the vocal starts. The bass is extremely expressionistic in this song, McCartney is a very lyrical thoughtful bass line composer and he does some of the best work of his career in this song. The bass is sitting right in the middle of the stereo spectrum.

0:13 - The vocals come in with echo effect. They are spread to the right side of the stereo spectrum (something rarely done in popular songs today.)

0:13 - Also at this time the percussion enters the left channel (joining the acoustic guitar.)

0:24 - Delicious little piano lick in the left channel. These sorts of nuances are a big part of why I love the Beatles music so much.

0:46 - Vocals float from the right to the middle during the lyric "He blew his mind out in a car"

0:47 - Lovely drum fill that seems evoke a sonic picture of the lyrics. This is the first time we hear the drums.

0:55 - Another drum fill and the drums keep going this time. Also that delicious piano lick comes back this time more towards the right channel and it sounds a bit louder in the mix.

1:10 - A different piano tidbit which seems to bring some intensity to the lyrics "house of lords"

1:22 - The little piano lick is back on the left this time and there's some cool interplay with the acoustic guitar.

1:39 - "I'd love to turn you on" lyrics enter with the vocals making their way from the middle to the left side.

1:43 - The orchestral freak out starts with an ominous sound that is echoing the melody of "I'd love to turn you on." Listen closely and you can hear counting in the left channel. I believe this is the same counting that can be heard much more clearly in the Anthology II version. This counting was done by Mal Evans who was the Beatles friend, assistant, and roadie.

1:53 - The orchestra has a noticeable increase in intensity here. It sounds like another overdub is dropped in on top. There were apparently four overdubs used in all to help increase the intensity of the buildup.

2:16 - The orchestra completes its buildup and a piano enters in the left channel simultaneously. There's also a pulsating bass that is placed in the middle of the stereo spectrum.

2:17 - Sound of an intake of breath can be heard on the right side.

2:18 - Alarm goes off in the left channel.

2:19 - What sounds like someone saying "one" can be heard in the right channel. The voice sounds like Paul McCartney to me.

2:21 - Drum fill in the middle and the vocals on the right both come in at this point.

2:25 - One of my favorite musical moments in the song is the piano (left) and the bass (center) right here.

2:42 - Starting here you can hear what sounds like John Lennon making strange voices in the right channel. You'll have to listen closely with headphones to hear this.

2:49 - The "ahh ahh ahh" vocal sung by Lennon begins, starting in the right channel and panning all the way to the left before making it's way back right eventually.

2:58 - What sounds like a cough is heard in the left channel.

3:15 - Another great moment in the song with the huge orchestra riff which comes in before the second verse.

3:18 - Second verse vocals start in the left channel.

3:44 - "I'd love to turn you on" in the left channel.

3:49 - The second orchestra freak out begins. This time you can hear counting in the right channel.

4:19 - The orchestra completes.

4:21 - The final chord is struck. That's John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and Mal Evans playing the same chord on three different pianos at the same time.

4:51 - What sounds like a chair creaking is heard in the right channel.

5:03 - Silence.

5:06 - High pitched noise is heard.

5:10 - Laughter.

5:11 - The loop starts.