The Beatles' 'A Day In The Life': The Making Of [Highlight From Episode 317]

Author Gene Popa on the making of The Beatles' classic "A Day In The Life". 

Listen to Episode 317: The Beatles' Metamorphosis From Pop Stars To Cultural Icons

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Here's a highlight from a recent episode of Booked on Rock.
Gene Pope is the author of The Color of Your Dreams.
Some Days in the Lives of the Beatles. The next
song from Sergeant Pepper's that you cover in the book
is one of the most iconic of all Beatles songs.
A Day in the Life, initially titled in the Life
of the Inspiration begins when John is reading London's Daily Mail.

(00:21):
This stood up some emotions within him. What was the
story he was reading and what were the other things
that he drew on to help complete the song's lyrics.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
Tarah Brown was the heir to the Guinness fortune, and
he was a very good friend of the Beatles and
the Rolling Stones and moved in their circles. Matter of fact,
the first time Paul McCartney took LSD, he took it
with Tara Brown and Tara unfortunately only sixty six, was
killed in an auto accident. He swove to avoid a
truck that had gotten into his lane. He was killed,

(00:50):
his passenger, his girlfriend survived, and John was ready distraught
over his death. You know, John was still a young
man and he hadn't seen that much death other than
his mother and a few other people, as is not uncommon,
but they have a close friend like that dies, so
tragically it stayed with him, and the papers were full
of ongoing stories about the inquest and the autopsy and

(01:11):
the funeral. The Beatles want to go to the funeral,
but they knew would turn into a media circus if
they did, so they'd stayed home and John was reading
this article about the latest developments in what was happening
with his estate, and it just inspired him to do
a song that was more slice of life, not just

(01:32):
the story of his dead friend. But he wanted to
make it sort of a recorded version of a newspaper,
to have various different stories pop up in the narrative
of the song. So he just literally started flipping through
the newspaper and picking random stories and said, okay, I'm
going to write about this now.

Speaker 1 (01:49):
And when they recorded the basic track, they left a
twenty four bar break between the end of John's first
segment and the start of Paul's interlude, and they didn't
know right away what they wanted to do there and
what they wanted to put in there. Several weeks go by,
then the idea comes up for an orchestra interlude, but
it wasn't an actual orchestra.

Speaker 2 (02:09):
Well, it wasn't a full orchestra. The Beatles originally wanted
a full ninety piece orchestra, and George Martin, who was
always keeping an eye on the budget, said you know,
how about we just get forty pieces and I record
them twice. And they thought, well, that'll work, that'll be fine,
And it was Paul who came out the idea of
let's have each instrument go from its lowest to highest notes,

(02:30):
but get there in their own time, in their own pace.
However the musician wants to do it to create this
cacophony that is technically music obviously, but it's also apocalyptic.
It's like something deep within the recesses of your mind.
And when the Beatles originally created that empty space in
the song, they had no idea what they were going

(02:52):
to put in there. They figured at some point they'll
think of something. And whoever had the original idea of
having an orchestra, kudos to them, because that was it.