How John Lennon Wrote the Beatles’ Best Song, “A Day in the Life”

If you’re under 60, you prob­a­bly heard the line “I read the news today, oh boy” before encoun­ter­ing the song it opens. Even after you dis­cov­ered the work of the Bea­t­les, it may have tak­en you some time to under­stand what, exact­ly, it was that John Lennon read in the news. The “lucky man who made the grade” and “blew his mind out in a car” turn out to have been inspired by the young Guin­ness heir Tara Browne, who’d fatal­ly wiped out in his Lotus Elan. The fig­ure of 4,000 holes in the roads of Black­burn came from anoth­er page of the same edi­tion of the Dai­ly Mail. These are just two of the mem­o­rable images in “A Day in the Life,” which son­i­cal­ly recon­structs the fab­ric of the nine­teen-six­ties as the Bea­t­les knew it.

In his new video below, Evan Puschak, bet­ter known as the Nerd­writer, calls “A Day in the Life” “arguably the Bea­t­les’ best song.” Crit­ic Ian Mac­Don­ald is rather less ambigu­ous in his book Rev­o­lu­tion in the Head: The Bea­t­les’ Records and the Six­ties, pro­claim­ing it “their finest sin­gle achieve­ment.”

And if any sin­gle fac­tor shaped its devel­op­ment, that fac­tor was LSD. “A song about per­cep­tion — a sub­ject cen­tral both to late-peri­od Bea­t­les and the coun­ter­cul­ture at large — ‘A Day in the Life’ con­cerned ‘real­i­ty’ only to the extent that this had been revealed by LSD to be large­ly in the eye of the behold­er,” he writes. Lennon may have proven to be the group’s most ded­i­cat­ed enthu­si­ast of that short­cut to enlight­en­ment. It’s worth not­ing, as Puschak does, that it was Browne who first “turned on” Paul McCart­ney.

Though pri­mar­i­ly John’s work, “A Day in the Life” would­n’t be what it is with­out Paul’s dou­ble-time bridge, whose jaun­ti­ly nar­ra­tive ordi­nar­i­ness makes the vers­es all the more tran­scen­dent. The need for some kind of tran­si­tion between these dis­parate John and Paul parts led to George Mar­tin’s com­mis­sion­ing a 40-piece orches­tra instruct­ed to play from the low­est notes up to the high­est, a col­lec­tive glis­san­do quadru­ple-record­ed and mixed to sound like the end of the world. In the­o­ry, per­haps, all this — to say noth­ing of Lennon’s ref­er­ences to the Albert Hall, the House of Lords, and his own role in Richard Lester’s How I Won the War — should­n’t work togeth­er. But the result, as Mac­Don­ald puts it, remains one of “the most pen­e­trat­ing and inno­v­a­tive artis­tic reflec­tions of its era,” as expe­ri­enced by the young men stand­ing at its very cen­ter.

Relat­ed con­tent:

A 17-Hour Chrono­log­i­cal Playlist of Bea­t­les Songs: 338 Tracks Let You Hear the Musi­cal Evo­lu­tion of the Icon­ic Band

The Exper­i­men­tal Move­ment That Cre­at­ed The Bea­t­les’ Weird­est Song, “Rev­o­lu­tion 9”

The Amaz­ing Record­ing His­to­ry of The Bea­t­les’ “Here Comes the Sun”

Is “Rain” the Per­fect Bea­t­les Song?: A New Video Explores the Rad­i­cal Inno­va­tions of the 1966 B‑Side

The Mak­ing of the Last Bea­t­les Song, “Now and Then”: A Short Film

A Vir­tu­al Tour of Every Place Ref­er­enced in The Bea­t­les’ Lyrics: In 12 Min­utes, Trav­el 25,000 Miles Across Eng­land, France, Rus­sia, India & the US

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.