User:Kodster/Sandbox

Lyrical inspiration and collaboration

The verses were written by Lennon while reading the Daily Mail on January 17, 1967. He read in the newspaper about the death of Tara Browne, the 21-year-old heir to the Guinness fortune and friend of The Beatles, who had crashed his Lotus Elan after driving through a red light. Lennon wrote the final verse of the song after reading an article in the Daily Mirror about the substantial amount of potholes in Blackburn, a city in Lancashire. However, he had a problem with the words of the final verse, not being able to think of the word "fill" for the line, "Now they know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall". His friend Terry Doran suggested what the word should be.

The description of the accident in "A Day in the Life" was not a literal description of Browne's fatal accident. Lennon said, "I didn't copy the accident. Tara didn't blow his mind out, but it was in my mind when I was writing that verse. The details of the accident in the song — not noticing traffic lights and a crowd forming at the scene — were similarly part of the fiction."

McCartney provided the middle section of the song, a short piano piece he had been working on independently, with lyrics about a commuter whose uneventful morning routine leads him to drift off into a reverie. He had written the piece as a wistful recollection of his younger years, which included riding the bus to school, smoking and going to class. The line "I'd love to turn you on" was also contributed by McCartney, which serves as a chorus to the first section of the song. McCartney also provided a short, wordless vocal bridge back into Lennon's part of the song. Lennon commented on McCartney's section, saying, "I had the bulk of the song and the words, but he contributed this little lick floating around in his head that he couldn't use for anything. I thought it was a damn good piece of work."