FeedMeGoodTunes has been doing a "British Week," and topped it off by posting an article from the British magazine, Q, regarding the genesis of "A Day In The Life." it's a good read...Q MagazineOctober 2005:
1. A DAY IN THE LIFE. The Beatles.1000 songs in one. Revolutionized British pop at a stroke.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.
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