"A Day In the Life" C/D

CLASSIC

Classic, verging on useless classic.

The Man Called U.N.K.L.E otm

In January 1967, John Lennon picked up a copy of the Daily Mail. As he flicked, two separate stories sparked his imagination. One was a report on the death of a Beatles friend, Guinness heir Tara Browne, in a car crash in South Kensington, London. The other was a piece about a plan to fill in 4000 potholes in Blackburn, Lancashire. Two months later, this contrast between the tragic and the trivial ended up -- via an unfinished Paul McCartney piano ditty about his childhood, an alarm clock, a 40-piece orchestra, and five people (the four Beatles plus super-roadie Mal Evans) bashing one chord on three pianos -- as a recorded masterpiece and the greatest British pop track ever.

A Day in the Life was also the twist ending to the biggest album of the '60s. Upon its release in June 1967, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was universally acclaimed as the official soundtrack to The Summer of Love, and the harbinger of a brave and better new world. Nevertheless, the most vivid and provocative song on the album ended it all, literally, on a grim note. It was the glassy-eyed mystery of A Day in the Life, stating baldly that life was both violent and mundane, that lent the entire album edge, substance, and a chilly prophecy of the end of '60s optimism.

But, if fatalism drenched the song, then its three most (in)famous elements twisted the meaning of it all yet again. The avant-garde orchestral cacophonies shaped by McCartney and producer George Martin suggested both fury and freedom; the "I'd love to turn you on" line, despite being seen as a drug reference by a ban-happy BBC, was, according to McCartney, "written as a deliberate provocation... to turn you onto the truth"; and the final 53-second piano chord, stretching into what seems like infinity, feels as much about endless future possibilities as crushing finality.

So... that key quality of quiet desperation; occasional rising hysteria, quickly repressed. The subtle tensions between apathy, misery, dreaminess; the search for meaning and the all-important glimmer of hope that keeps us going, A Day in the Life takes "Oh well, mustn't grumble" on a voyage into the realms of high art. Which is why is remains the ultimate sonic rendition of what it means to be British.

And, no, I haven't felt the need to listen to it in a long-ass time,, though once over the summer we were all sitting around a bong and I was high enough to say HEY MAN LETS PUT ON SGT PEPPERS, but I left to get french fries before Lucy in the SKy.

He sort of did - "Perfect Day!"

i would, but yousendit.com is giving me a server error!

i shall try again later. but i'm also going to hazard a guess at your real gmail address ;)

as for the original question: IT IS SO UNBEARABLY FUCKING CLASSIC AND GODLIKE THAT I REALLY DOUBT THE SANITY OF ANYONE WHO THINKS OTHERWISE.

See, it's steaming piles of horseshit like this that make me want to not like the song -- the whole sentiment of the lyrics is really so banal and obvious, and yet it's made out to be socially "important".

Nevertheless, it's a good song.

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HAHAHAHAHA classic sixties b.s.

Surely there are few more astounding ways to end an album than Tomorrow Never Knows and A Day In The Life, again, especially regarding them in the context of the time they were released.

For all The Beatles don't need any more praise and it all gets a bit tiresome, sometimes they actually deserve it.

http://s60.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=1I3ZCLLHP8ATF2R9AEK5H42MSW

Re the original: terminal overfamiliarity. Doubt I could hear it properly now even if I had a mind to listen, which I don't; but I've been surprised by stuff like this before, so who knows.

Musical mystery solved on tour

Friday, March 31, 2006 Posted: 1614 GMT (0014 HKT)

CNN) -- Condoleezza Rice has been fixing a few holes in her knowledge of England during a brief visit to the country.

The U.S. secretary of state's tour of the industrial northwest, accompanied by her UK counterpart Jack Straw, has seen her visit historic sites, meet with dignitaries and attend gala events.

Her visit to Liverpool and Blackburn was billed as an opportunity for Rice and Straw to demonstrate how U.S. foreign policy directly affects British citizens. (Full story)

It follows a visit by Straw to Rice's home state of Alabama in October, where she gave him a high-profile taste of life in the Deep South.

Rice, who arrived at Liverpool's John Lennon Airport late Thursday, also listed some personal items on her two-day itinerary.

A Beatles fan, Rice has an opportunity to indulge in her passion for the group in its home town of Liverpool, where she returns later Friday.

Rice also sought to put to rest a conundrum from her youth: What exactly did the Beatles mean when they sang about there being "4,000 holes in Blackburn, Lancashire"?

She admitted the song "A Day in a Life" had puzzled her ever since it was released in 1967, and asked for a little help from her friend Straw in shedding light on the lyrics.

During a stop in Blackburn, Straw summoned up his Beatles trivia to tell Rice that Lennon -- who was murdered in New York by a deranged fan in 1980 -- penned those words after reading a story in the Daily Mail newspaper.

As Lennon himself explained in a Playboy interview, "I was reading the paper one day and noticed two stories. One was about the Guinness heir who killed himself in a car. That was the main headline story. He died in London in a car crash.

"On the next page was a story about four thousand potholes in the streets of Blackburn, Lancashire, that needed to be filled."

Simple as that. Except there is still no explanation for the next line of the song, "Now they know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall."

For another trip by Rice, perhaps.

ok this is pretty wild from Terry Manning (Stax/ Ardent engineer) read down the thread and some guy claims the same thing happened at Motown around the same time----

This happened a while ago, but it is still very fresh in my mind, and has always been a mystery. Since it is the 38th anniversary of the incident, almost to the day, here it is.

One day in the famous 1960's, I was working at Ardent Studios' original commercial location on National Street in Memphis. I was, as often happened, the last one to leave the studio that particular night. I straightened things up in the control room sometime between midnight and 1 AM, and walked through the entry lobby, past the front desk, and prepared to leave by the front door. As always, I turned and gave one last look to see that everything was OK; all looked normal. The front desk was right there beside me, and was completely free of anything on it.

Well, as also often happened, I was the first one back the next morning (except for Janie the Maid, who always came about 8 AM to clean). I showed up to unlock and get ready for the day's session about 10. When I entered through the same front door through which I had left a few hours earlier, I immediately saw an acetate disk laying right in the middle of the front desk. I was sure it had not been there the night before, and I had never seen this particular disk before. I immediately asked Janie if the door had been locked, or if anyone had come by to drop this off. She answered that no, she had come in through the back door, locked it immediately as always, and no one had been there at all.

I was puzzled. There was no writing on this acetate, neither on a label, nor in grease pencil (Chinagraph). [For those of you who are post acetate-lathe-vinyl records, an acetate was a phonograph-type disk cut manually on a lathe, usually for reference purposes. The grooves were somewhat soft compared to a pressed vinyl record, and it was thus only playable a few times before degradation occurred. This was usually placed in a paper sleeve, and sometime had a label manually applied, with the hole in it, of course.]

As I wasn't sure exactly what this was or why it had appeared there, I was determined to find out some answers. But first, I had to turn on some control room equipment, and be sure everything was operational and ready for the upcoming session. I performed these tasks quickly, so that I would have time to check out the mystery acetate. Finally, I was able to put it on the turntable, and listen through the JBL control room monitors. There was one song only, on one side only, of this 10 inch disk.

A plaintive acoustic guitar started playing...

...then a voice...

........"I heard the news today, oh boy..."

This song was unknown to me, but it sure had a hauntingly familiar sound to it...

The track progressed through the verses. Long languid tom rolls, perhaps slowed down...sure sounding like a group I knew about...

Then the bridge...a familiar type of chord change...

"Woke up, got out of bed, dragged a comb across my head..."

OK, this was certainly either an amazing copy of The Beatles sound, or...but it couldn't be The.......impossible...

Well, MAYBE someone could imitate Lennon somewhat, and MAYBE someone could imitate McCartney somewhat...there were some pretty good Beatle knock-offs out there on occasion...but surely NO ONE could imitate BOTH singers so closely....??? What was going on? I immediately grabbed a roll of Sony 1/4" tape (thank goodness!) and made a dub of the song.

Soon, other people arrived. I related my story to, and played the song for, John Fry, owner of Ardent. He knew nothing about how the acetate might have gotten there, but he agreed it sure did sound like you-know-who...A couple of other people also heard and agreed. But NO ONE had any idea where the mystery acetate had come from.

Later in the day, I was really bursting with puzzlement, and couldn't stand it any longer. So I found the phone number for Abbey Road Studios in St. John's Wood, London (still remember that number, too), and placed a transatlantic phone call. This was a really big thing to do back then...one didn't often correspond with "the rest of the world" as we do today. The phone rang...and rang...and rang...finally someone answered, so far away from little National Street in Memphis, Tennessee.

Of course, at Abbey Road (as I found out so well several years later when I based myself out of that wonderful building), they were completely used to, and quite btired of, strange people calling up trying to talk to The Beatles, or to ask Beatle questions, or some sort of tomfoolery. So I wasn't exactly greeted warmly. But I explained to the receptionist, very slowly and carefully, that I was calling from a professional recording studio in the United States, I was not a rabid fan, and I was pretty sure I had a copy of an unreleased Beatles' song, AND I had no idea from whence it came! Eventually she was persuaded, and asked me to hold on...I held on, and held on....and held on. Finally, a male voice came on the line. It was a man who said he "worked with" the Beatles. I explained my story to him, and he laughingly said that thanks, but this was impossible. So I sang him the first verse of the song...."HOLD ON A MOMENT PLEASE!!!!!"

After a great pause, another male voice came on the line. This was someone I definitely knew about...Mr. George Martin, speaking from the control room of Studio 2. I told him the story, sang him the song, and thoroughly befuddled and confused him. He agreed that yes, this was indeed a Beatles' song. It was brand new, having been recorded only some days earlier, and was to be included on a new album to be released some time later. But he had NO CLUE as to how I had this. Nor did I! A complete mystery!

I promised that I would do nothing untoward with this, as I was a professional in the same business (well, maybe not quite the same business as Mr. Martin, but related), and I understood the need for privacy...I wouldn't sell it, nor give it to radio, nor do anything else unacceptable with it. He asked me to send him the acetate, if I could, but he still had no explanation. He thanked me. Interestingly, in the background, I could clearly hear toms being bashed repeatedly on a music backing track. "Boom, boom, boom..." It was "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds" being recorded. What a privilege to listen in to a Beatles' session!!!!!

I took the acetate, and carefully hid it, inside of a large book in John Fry's bookshelf, in his office. I put the 1/4" dub away in a box of other tapes. I did plan on returning the disk to Mr. Martin. However, when the next day I went to retrieve the acetate, it had disappeared! Honestly, it just wasn't there! No one else had known where I put it, nor seen me hide it. Another strange mystery.

I never saw that acetate again. Nobody ever had any explanation. I asked everyone I possibly could think of, but NOTHING. I do still have the dub, however. I listened recently, just to "pinch myself" again, as I have done several times over the years. This version of the song is obviously not the final released mix. AND, it starts cleanly...only the acoustic guitar. On the album, there are sound effects cross fading into it...no hint of those here.

As strange as this sounds, I swear every word of this is completely true.

Terry

That Trent Reznor, always leaving songs around for people to find.

Plus it was "really" about the original McCartney's horrific and fatal car accident. That still speaks to me.
-- Binjominia (Brilhante), Monday, 5 December 2005 21:38 (2 years ago) Link

OTM.

The part in "Young Americans" that uses that snippet from this songs pushes it from superclassic to megaultraclassic.

-- My name is Kenny (My name is Kenny), Tuesday, 6 December 2005 06:35 (2 years ago

huh? which part?

At one point the backing singers on the Bowie song sing "I heard the news today oh boy" and then Bowie goes off a bit.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/ank0pi

a day in the life, track 1 of 4, vocal

Possibly Lennon's greatest vocal performance. The delivery is matter-of-fact and deeply wistful at the same time.

Never really listened to the counting closely before. Is it Ringo?

I think the counting was Mal Evans.

It was.

"Sugar plum fairy, sugar plum fairy..."

That's not George Martin counting; it's Mal Evans. Beatles trivia strikes again!
-- Doctor Casino, Tuesday, 6 December 2005 00:54 (2 years ago) Bookmark Link

Looks like we'd been here before.

Obviously a classic, but so is also the rest of the album.

Let's do a poll of cover versions. My money is on The Fall.

smoke weed everyday in the life

Huh.

This ban was unwittingly broken by Milli Vanilli in their sell-out 1989 show, where they performed the song with guests Jeff Lynne and a young PJ Harvey. Fortunately for the German R&B stars the ban was long forgotten by venue authorities so no retrospective action was taken.

https://www.royalalberthall.com/about-the-hall/news/2015/april/royal-albert-hall-was-furious-over-beatles-lyric-newly-discovered-documents-reveal/

Check the date on that.

fuck. thank you.

I can imagine MacCartney still singing his part to himself as he comes downstairs in the morning and puts the kettle on. Wobbling his little head.