The first thing that strikes you when you look at Lennon’s handwritten lyrics for A Day in the Life is how little John Lennon seemed to agonise over them. Save for a handful of scribbled-out words, the words appear to have tumbled out in one rhapsodic flow, pending the later addition of Paul McCartney’s middle eight.
What else do we know about A Day in the Life? We know that two days must have elapsed between Lennon’s lyric and the recording of the song which began on January 19, 1967. The two news stories — the death of London socialite Tara Brown and those holes in Blackburn, Lancashire — that inspired Lennon’s lyric can both be dated to the Daily Mail which appeared on January 17...No other Beatles song illustrates with such clarity the way Lennon and McCartney’s writing approaches complemented each other. Ever preoccupied with finding ways to smuggle avant-garde ideas into the confines of a pop song, it was McCartney – apparently, wearing a red butcher’s apron – who overrode George Martin’s misgivings and freighted in the New Philharmonia to create the song’s iconic 24-bar happening...It was McCartney also who contributed a cantering middle-section (“Got up/Got out of bed ... ”) once the rest of the song had been completed.
Definitely top 3 Xmastime Beatles super-slice of super-slices.
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