Lennon's lyrics were mainly inspired by contemporary newspaper articles, including a report on the death of Guinness heir Tara Browne. The recording includes two passages of orchestral glissandos that were partly improvised in the avant-garde style. In the song's middle segment, McCartney recalls his younger years, which included riding the bus, smoking, and going to class. Following the second crescendo, the song ends with one of the most famous chords in music history, played on several keyboards, that sustains for over forty seconds.
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Paul and I were definitely working together, especially on "A Day in the Life" ... The way we wrote a lot of the time: you'd write the good bit, the part that was easy, like "I 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. He was a bit shy about it because I think he thought it's already a good song ... So we were doing it in his room with the piano. He said "Should we do this?" "Yeah, let's do that."[8]
The Beatles began recording the song, with a working title of "In the Life of ...", at EMI's Studio Two on 19 January 1967.[34] The line-up as they rehearsed the track was Lennon on piano, McCartney on Hammond organ, Harrison on acoustic guitar, and Starr on congas.[35] The band then taped four takes of the rhythm track, by which point Lennon had switched to acoustic guitar and McCartney to piano, with Harrison now playing maracas.[35][36]
The orchestral portions of "A Day in the Life" reflect Lennon and McCartney's interest in the work of avant-garde composers such as Karlheinz Stockhausen, Luciano Berio and John Cage.[48][nb 4] To fill the empty 24-bar middle section, Lennon's request to George Martin was that the orchestra should provide "a tremendous build-up, from nothing up to something absolutely like the end of the world".[51] McCartney suggested having the musicians improvise over the segment.[39] To allay concerns that classically trained musicians would be unable to do this, Martin wrote a loose score for the section.[52] Using the rhythm implied by Lennon's staggered intonation on the words "turn you on",[53] the score was an extended, atonal crescendo that encouraged the musicians to improvise within the defined framework.[39] The orchestral part was recorded on 10 February 1967 in Studio One at EMI Studios,[54] with Martin and McCartney conducting a 40-piece orchestra.[55] The recording session was completed at a total cost of 367 (equivalent to 7,087 in 2021)[56] for the players, an extravagance at the time.[57] Martin later described explaining his score to the puzzled orchestra:
The Beatles hosted the orchestral session as a 1960s-style happening,[60][61] with guests including Mick Jagger, Marianne Faithfull, Keith Richards, Brian Jones, Donovan, Pattie Boyd, Michael Nesmith, and members of the psychedelic design collective The Fool.[55] Overseen by Tony Bramwell of NEMS Enterprises, the event was filmed for use in a projected television special that never materialised.[55][nb 5] Reflecting the Beatles' taste for experimentation and the avant garde, the orchestra players were asked to wear formal dress and then given a costume piece as a contrast with this attire.[65] This resulted in different players wearing anything from fake noses to fake stick-on nipples. Martin recalled that the lead violinist performed wearing a gorilla paw, while a bassoon player placed a balloon on the end of his instrument.[57]
Following the final orchestral crescendo, the song ends with one of the most famous final chords in music history.[57][68] Overdubbed in place of the vocal experiment from 10 February, this chord was added during a session at EMI's Studio Two on 22 February.[69] Lennon, McCartney, Starr and Evans shared three different pianos, with Martin on a harmonium, and all played an E-major chord simultaneously. The chord was made to ring out for over forty seconds by increasing the recording sound level as the vibration faded out. Towards the end of the chord the recording level was so high that listeners can hear the sounds of the studio, including rustling papers and a squeaking chair.[70] In author Jonathan Gould's commentary on "A Day in the Life", he describes the final chord as "a forty-second meditation on finality that leaves each member of the audience listening with a new kind of attention and awareness to the sound of nothing at all".[71]
Following "A Day in the Life" on the Sgt. Pepper album (as first released on LP in the UK and years later worldwide on CD) is a high-frequency 15-kilohertz tone and some randomly spliced studio chatter. The tone is the same pitch as a dog whistle, at the upper limit of human hearing, but within the range that dogs and cats can hear.[76] This addition was part of the Beatles' humour and was suggested by Lennon.[77][nb 6] The studio babble, titled in the session notes "Edit for LP End" and recorded on 21 April 1967, two months after the mono and stereo masters for "A Day in the Life" had been finalised, was added to the run-out groove of the initial British pressing.[78] The two or three seconds of gibberish looped back into itself endlessly on any record player not equipped with an automatic phonograph arm return.[77][79] Some listeners discerned words among the vocal gibberish,[78] including Lennon saying "Been so high", followed by McCartney's response: "Never could be any other way."[79] US copies of the album lacked the high-pitched tone and the studio babble.[78]
The Anthology 2 album, released in 1996, featured a composite remix of "A Day in the Life", including elements from the first two takes, representing the song at its early, pre-orchestral stage,[83] while Anthology 3 included a version of "The End" that concludes by having the last note fade into the final chord of "A Day in the Life" (reversed, then played forwards).[84] The version on the 2006 soundtrack remix album Love has the song starting with Lennon's intro of "sugar plum fairy", with the strings being more prominent during the crescendos.[35] In 2017, a handful of outtakes from the recording sessions, including the first take, were included on the two-disc and six-disc versions of the 50th-anniversary edition of Sgt. Pepper.[83] The six-disc version of that edition also included, on a disc of mono mixes, a previously unreleased early demo mix of the song in its pre-orchestral stage, as of 30 January.[85]
James A. Moorer has said that both "A Day in the Life" and a fugue in B minor by Bach were his sources of inspiration for Deep Note, the audio trademark he created for the THX film company.[111] The song's final chord inspired Apple sound designer Jim Reekes in creating the start-up chime of the Apple Macintosh featured on Macintosh Quadra computers. Reekes said he used "a C Major chord, played with both hands stretched out as wide as possible", played on a Korg Wavestation EX.[112]
McCartney has performed the song in some of his live shows since his 2008 tour. It is played in a medley with "Give Peace a Chance".[127] On 11 March 2022, the song was certified silver by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) for sales and streams exceeding 200,000 units.[128] 2ff7e9595c
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