The Beatles, “A Day in the Life



The Beatles, “A Day in the Life.”

The two albums preceding Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts club band were Rubber Soul (1965) and Revolver (1966). In both of these the Beatles had begun to explore more and more the potential of the four track recorder. They were also broadening their stylistic range with songs such as “Norwegian Wood,” (featuring a Sitar) and “Eleanor Rigby” (sung to the accompaniment of a string octet. In late 1966 the group, deafened by the screaming of their fans decided to abandon live performances and concentrate on studio work.

A major influence of the time was the acclaim of an album entitled “Pet Sounds,” by The Beach Boys. It had taken a year to make, and was the first successful concept album in which all songs are related in style and purpose.

Initially, the Beatles planned a concept album around the theme of nostalgic childhood memories based on locations in Liverpool. They made a start (Between Nov. 66 and Feb 67) with the recording of Lennon’s Strawberry Fields, McCartney’s Penny Lane (plus an earlier song When I’m Sixty-Four) and A Day In the Life which combined music from both composers. Due to the pressures of their recording companies, they were forced to release Strawberry Fields and Penny Lane as two sides of a single.

From then on the concept album took on a different theme, using an old theatrical device of a performance within a performance. We are supposed to have the impression that it’s not The Beatles we hear, but in fact it is Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band – an imaginary Edwardian concert band. The band’s title is significant – they are a band creating an illusion for lonely people – but they themselves are lonely people. It is the theme of loneliness and how it is covered up which links the songs on the album.

This concept album embraced a far broader range of styles than The Beach Boys album. Because the songs were linked by theme rather than by musical content they could juxtapose some very different styles:

• Music Hall (When I’m Sixty-Four)

• Community songs (With a little Help From my Friends)

• Surreal Fairground music (Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite!)

• Psychedelic Imagery (Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds)

To help create the illusion, the album begins with tuning-up, audience noises and applause. To maintain this illusion throughout, the separate tracks are closely spaced and sometimes overlap (this was deliberate to make it difficult for DJ’s to split the songs to play on the radio!)

When the LP was released, it also featured Sgt Pepper cutouts, a collage of portraits to decipher and a printed version of the complete lyrics. This was designed to involve the listener further in the illusion of Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. The printing of lyrics was unusual at the time, and reflects that the lyrics were often ambiguous and open to interpretation. The illusion is brought to an end (seemingly) with a reprise of the opening number, with it’s title line shortened, and playing at a more urgent tempo. Insistent repeats of “Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely, Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely,…..” fade out to end the CD.

A Day In the Life exists outside of this ending, like an epilogue to the main show. This at last is The Beatles performing. John Lennon’s commentary on the news has an icy tone. McCartney’s middle section creates ambiguity – was the first half an illusion too? Then an alarm clock is heard and we hear an account of the humdrum of existence which quickly reverts to dreaming. He gets on a bus, has a smoke (of what?) and goes into a dream. Lennon’s final stanza loses all sense of coherence and so does the concluding music. And so you’re again suspicious that the whole thing is still part of the illusion. After the final chord, a locked playout is heard with sounds from the post-production party and an inaudibly high tone put there at Lennon’s request “to annoy your dog.” So are we back to reality?

Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band was a great success and was even originally banned by the BBC (as all truly successful pop music is!) This album helped to establish the role of the album as a vehicle for more complex musical ideas in pop music. It was followed by numerous concept albums, by double and triple albums, by rock operas and by substantial progressive rock works which drew on elements of classical and avant - garde art music.

Sgt Pepper is also significant in that it uses the studio as a tool in it’s own right, not just as a way to capture an idea of the live performance.

A Day in the Life.

This begins as the final chord of the previous song fades away. It creeps in almost unnoticed with an acoustic guitar outlining the chord pattern (G-Bm-Em-Em7-C) which will be used in the following verses, joined after two bars by piano and bass. When the drummer enters he is limited to a simple quaver rhythm on maracas.

A key element is the dispassionate delivery of the lyrics. The singer’s detachment is expressed technically through panning Lennon’s voice hard to the right of the accompaniment in the stereo field. Musically it is expressed through motifs that sound more like repetitive thoughts than a melodic line – short, jumpy figures in free rhythm, frequently coming back to the same intervals.

The tonality is often ambiguous as the D major dominant chord is totally avoided in the verses. The harmonic progressions are often modal sounding, especially with the use of F major, the chord on the flattened leading-note. In fact, G major is never convincingly established as a key – the piece eventually resolves in E Major.

The vocal line is slightly different in each verse, reflecting the improvisatory nature of the singing. In verse 2 the tension almost imperceptibly begins to mount. The full drum kit enters on the crucial words “He blew his mind out in a car” and the previous ten bar length of the verse is shortened to nine bars. The semitonal figure at the end of the verse eventually is inverted and leads us into the orchestral section which is described as “an almost pitchless spiral of sound.”

The tempo is tightened for McCartney’s bridge section, which is focused on the tonal area of E major, although there is a strong modal element, with prominent use of D natural, the characteristic flat seventh of the mixolydian mode on E:

Mixolydian mode on E

E-F#-G#-A-B-C#-D-E

This section is also similar to Lennon’s verse in it’s use of repetitive intervals (mainly 3rds) rather than stepwise melody, and asymmetric structures made up of 2 ½ bar phrase lengths. Lennon’s motifs focus mainly on the interval of the 4th between B and E, McCartney’s section focuses on the interval of a 5th between B and E (lower). This reverses the normal role of the two singers, with McCartney traditionally taking the higher parts.

In the second transition (bars 58-67) Lennon’s vocalization reflects the idea of a dream, and is underpinned by massive root-position harmonies that turn on its head the conventional cycle of 5ths patterns – for here the 5ths rise instead of fall, twice outlining the pattern of C-G-D-A-E with the full weight of orchestral bars.

The final verse is musically similar to verse 3 (although now Albert Hall is now decorated with concerto=like piano chords). However, it has the left and right channels reversed – several people have remarked how this gives the effect that something has bee fundamentally been changed by the reminder of the reality in the bridge. The lyrics are now trivial snippets from the newspapers, but are delivered with the same deadpan as the other lines.

The reappearance of the orchestral spiral links the coda to the earlier transition, but leads to a dramatic silence followed by a bright E major chord, reverberating for 42 seconds before leading into the locked groove of the final track.

The way the band use the orchestra as a special effect is really novel in A Day in the Life. The orchestra were told to start on the lowest note possible on their instruments, and then to ascend by the smallest possible intervals to a top E, without trying to keep in time with other players. They also may or may not have been influenced by one or two herbal “jazz cigarettes” in the recording studio!

Another unusual feature is the use of a different singer and composer for the middle section.

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