John Lennon and Paul McCartney worked closely together while writing “A Day in the Life.” The two Beatles wrote different portions of the song to create the final version. Though Lennon was the one who began working on it, McCartney made major contributions to the song. Still, Lennon said McCartney seemed almost shy when he presented his portions.
John Lennon said Paul McCartney seemed bashful while writing ‘A Day in the Life’
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Lennon and McCartney began writing more as individuals in the latter half of the 1960s, but they still worked closely together on songs.
“Paul and I were definitely working together, especially on ‘A Day In The Life,’” Lennon said in The Beatles Anthology. “The way we wrote a lot of the time: you’d write the good bit, the part that was easy, like ‘l read the news today’ or whatever it was. Then when you got stuck or whenever it got hard, instead of carrying on, you just drop it. Then we would meet each other, and I would sing half and he would be inspired to write the next bit, and vice versa.”
According to Lennon, McCartney seemed a bit bashful every time he brought his portions of the song forward.
“He was a bit shy about it, because I think he thought it was already a good song,” Lennon said. “Sometimes we wouldn’t let each other interfere with a song either, because you tend to be a bit lax with someone else’s stuff; you experiment a bit.”
John Lennon and Paul McCartney used the news to write the song
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As they were writing, Lennon and McCartney took inspiration from current events.
“John got ‘he blew his mind out in a car’ from a newspaper story,” McCartney said. “We transposed it a bit — ‘blew his mind out’ was a bit dramatic. In fact, he crashed his car. But that’s what we were saying about history: Malcolm Muggeridge said that all history is a lie, because every fact that gets reported gets distorted.”
They moved from that story to one about “holes in Blackburn,” to one about how “Dame So-and-so had played the Albert Hall.” By doing this, they cobbled the song together.
McCartney revealed one of his major contributions to the song
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Though Lennon said McCartney seemed shy about his contributions to the song, the latter seemed excited about what he brought to “A Day in the Life.” It was McCartney’s idea to have orchestral accompaniment on the song.
“There was also the big orchestral build-up,” McCartney said. “I just sat down and thought, ‘Oh, this is a great opportunity. This is the song, man!’ It was a crazy song, anyway, with ‘I’d love to turn you on’ and lots of psychedelic references. We could go anywhere with this song; it was definitely going to go big places.”
He instructed the orchestra on how to accompany them.
“I had to go round to all the session musicians and talk to them: ‘You’ve got fifteen bars. If you want to go together, you can,’” McCartney said. “The trumpet players, always famous for their fondness of lubricating substances, didn’t care, so they’d be there at the note ahead of everyone. The strings all watched each other like little sheep: ‘Are you going up?’ — ‘Yes.’ — ‘So am I.’ And they’d go up a little more, all very delicate and cozy, all going up together. But listen to those trumpets — they’re just freaking out. The result was a crazy big swing storm, which we put together with all the other little ideas. It was very exciting to be doing that instead of twelve-bar blues.”
