John Lennon has never been the most diplomatic when discussing The Beatles’ back catalogue. There may be some songs that worked better than others, but most of Lennon’s ire tended to get directed back at Paul McCartney half the time, especially towards the end of their time together when McCartney seemed to be taking credit for the band breaking up. For all of the “granny music” comments that Lennon fired at his old bandmate, he admitted being stunned when his partner wrote one line from ‘A Day in the Life’.
Outside of the dramatic closer, you wouldn’t get Lennon to say too many nice things about Sgt Pepper. If you think about it, half of the album belongs to McCartney, with Lennon getting a handful of deep cuts, one classic in ‘Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds’ and poor George Harrison only being given the one song on ‘Within You Without You’.
Granted, if your bandmate just insisted that your next album needed to be a concept, you wouldn’t exactly be enthused, either. Lennon may have risen to the challenge by writing fanciful songs like ‘Good Morning Good Morning’ and ‘Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite’, but no storyline about a fictional band could really compare with ‘A Day in the Life’.
For Lennon, this was his magnum opus, mixing his love of poetry and avant-garde music in a pop song format. Despite it being Lennon’s baby, McCartney ended up turning in some of the best moments from the song as well, including the sudden shift where we go from a burnt-out man reading the paper to a well-to-do socialite running late for work.
Those verses sound like they’re happening on two different planets, so how the hell do you connect them? It’s not easy to do, but McCartney managed to get the job done with one line, saying ‘I’d love to turn you on’ right before the orchestra begins to build, almost simulating the existential whirlwind that happens when flying on acid.
Lennon already laid the groundwork for the track, but he admitted that this piece was one of the most fantastic sections McCartney wrote, remarking in The Beatles Anthology, “Paul’s contribution was the beautiful little lick in the song: ‘I’d love to turn you on,’ that he’d had floating around in his head and couldn’t use. I thought it was a damn good piece of work.”
McCartney also recalled the moment the line was written, remarking at The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, “I remember the little look we gave each other when we said, ‘I’d love to turn you on.’ We kinda knew what we were doing there. It was a sneaky little look.” Even though the song has nothing to do with the concept, it feels like a postscript for what The Beatles were doing.
The curtain already fell on the concept, but this projects into the future for what The Summer of Love would be. The Beatles represented what pop music could sound like at its best, but after hearing that one line, you knew there were an infinite number of possibilities for where songs could go.
