For 'She Said She Said', John had
combined two of his unfinished songs but here, for the first
time, he put together an unfinished song of his own with one
of Paul's to create 'A Day In The Life', the track that many
regard as the most outstanding on Sgt Pepper.
John's part of the finished song
was drawn from his interminable newspaper reading. The
reference to the 4000 holes in Blackburn, Lancashire, came
from the Far And Near column in the Daily Mail dated January
17, 1967. This reported that a Blackburn City Council survey
of road holes had revealed the mindboggling fact that there
was one twenty-sixth of a hole in the road for each
Blackburn resident. When John was stuck for an ending to the
line 'Now they know how many holes it takes to fill',
needing something that rhymed with 'small', Terry Doran (his
friend from the motor trade) suggested the Albert
Hall.
The film about the English army
winning the war referred to in the lyric was How I Won The
War, which John had himself acted in. Although the subject
of several articles, the film wasn't premiered until October
1967.
The man who 'blew his mind out in a
car' was Tara Browne, an Irish friend of the Beatles and a
well-known socialite, who met his death in a car accident on
December 18, 1966. The coroner's report was issued in
January 1967. 'I didn't copy the accident,' John told Hunter
Davies. 'Tara didn't blow his mind out. But it was in my
mind when I was writing that verse. The details of the
accident in the song &endash; not noticing traffic lights
and a crowd forming at the scene &endash; were similarly
part of the fiction.
In real life, Browne was driving
down Redcliffe Gardens in Earls Court during the early
hours, when a Volkswagen pulled out of a side street into
his path. In swerving to avoid it, his Lotus Elan ploughed
into a stationary van and he was pronounced dead on arrival
at a local hospital. The autopsy revealed that his death was
the result of 'brain lacerations due to fractures of the
skull.' His passenger, model Suki Potier, escaped with
bruises and shock.
Tara Browne, great grandson of the
brewer Edward Cecil Guinness and son of Lord Oranmore and
Browne, was part of the new young aristocracy who loved to
mingle with pop stars. Although only 21 at the time of his
death, he would have inherited a 1,000,000 pounds fortune at
the age of 25 and was described on his death certificate as
a man 'of independent means' with a London home in Eaton
Row, Belgravia. After schooling at Eton, Browne married at
18 and fathered two boys before separating from his wife and
taking up with Suki Potier. He frequented London nightspots
such as Sibylla's and the Bag O'Nails and had become
particularly friendly with Paul and Mike McCartney and
Rolling Stone Brian Jones. For his 21st birthday, he had the
Lovin' Spoonful flown to his ancestral home in County
Wicklow, Ireland. Mick Jagger, Mike McCartney, Brian Jones
and John Paul Getty were amongst the guests.
Paul's unfinished song, a bright
and breezy piece about getting out of bed and setting off
for school, was spliced between the second and third verses
of John's song. 'It was another song altogether but it
happened to fit,' Paul said. 'It was just me remembering
what it was like to run up the road to catch a bus to
school, having a smoke and going into class... It was a
reflection of my schooldays. I would have a Woodbine (a
cheap unfiltered British cigarette) and somebody would speak
and I would go into a dream.'
The references to having a smoke,
dreams and 'turn-ons' meant that the track was banned from
the airwaves in many countries. There were even some who
were convinced that the holes in Blackburn, like the holes
Paul had been keen to fix, were heroin addicts' track
marks.
In 1968 Paul admitted that 'A Day
In The Life' was what he called 'a turn-on song'. 'This was
the only one on the album written as a deliberate
provocation,' he said. 'But what we want to do is to turn
you on to the truth rather than on to pot.' George Martin
comments: 'The woke up, got out of bed bit was definitely a
reference to marijuana but 'Fixing A Hole' wasn't about
heroin and 'Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds' wasn't about LSD.
At the time I had a strong suspicion that 'went upstairs and
had a smoke' was a drug reference. They always used to
disappear and have a little puff but they never did it in
front of me. They always used to go down to the canteen and
Mal Evans used to guard it.'
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