A DAY IN THE LIFE
(Lennon-McCartney)
1967


For many, this track represents the pinnacle of achievement for the 
Beatles.  A collaboration with John writing the opening and ending and Paul 
penning the middle section.  John's song was inspired by two independent 
events that featured in a copy of the Daily Mail newspaper he had found 
lying around.  The first was the death of his friend Tara Brown, an heir to 
the Guinness family fortune.  The second was a light hearted report that 
there were an estimated 4,000 holes in the road in Blackburn, Lancashire.

There had been a 24 bar gap in the song when the three sections were 
linked.  Paul suggested to George Martin that an ideal way of closing the 
gap would be to have an orchestra building up to crescendo, or as John put 
it, "a sound building up from nothing to the end of the world."  Martin 
hired 40 musicians from the Royal Philharmonic and London Symphony 
Orchestras and instructed them to play without a score.  They were given the 
highest and lowest notes allowed, but within the framework they could play 
as they pleased.  The song ends with a crashing piano chord that takes 40 
seconds before the reverberation fades out.

The lyric "I'd love to turn you on" created a minor controversy.  Fearing 
that it somehow related to drugs, the BBC banned the song.  As John said, 
"This was the only one on the album written as a deliberate provocation.  A 
stick that in your pipe... But what we want is to turn you on to the truth 
rather than pot".



G      Bm      Em      C

G                Bm            Em  C         Em            Am       Cmaj7
      I read the news today oh boy   about a lucky man who made the grade
G                    Bm              Em  C             F      Em      Em7
      And though the news was rather sad   well I just had to laugh
C               F    Em      Cmaj7
      I saw the photograph



G                 Bm            Em
      He blew his mind out in a car
C               Em              Am         Cmaj7
      He didn’t notice that the lights had changed
G                Bm               Em     C                 F    Em
      A crowd of people stood and stared   they'd seen his face before
                          Em7                      C
Nobody was really sure if he was from the House of Lords



G             Bm            Em   C             Em            Am      Cmaj7
      I saw a film today oh boy,   the English army had just won the war
G                Bm             Em   C            F      Em
      A crowd of people turned away,   but I just had to look
       Em7      C
Having read the book



            Bm   G   Am      Em
I’d love to turn you on



E
Woke up fell out of bed, dragged a comb across my head
                            F#m
Found my way downstairs and drank a cup
    E            F#m
And looking up I noticed I was late



         E
Found my coat and grabbed my hat, made the bus in seconds flat
                          F#m   B7
Found my way upstairs and had a smoke
    E                    F#m
And somebody spoke and I went into a dream
C      G      D      A      E      G      Bm      D      Em7      A
Ah



G                Bm            Em
      I read the news today oh boy
C                   Em                  Am   Cmaj7
      Four thousand holes in Blackburn, Lancashire
G                    Bm                Em     C             F          Em
      And though the holes were rather small,   they had to count them all
                                Em7                      C
Now they know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall



            G        Am      E
I'd love to turn you on