Latest / Booked On Rock with Eric Senich / The Beatles' 'A Day In The Life': The Making Of [Highlight From Episode 317]

Transcript

The Beatles' 'A Day In The Life': The Making Of [Highlight From Episode 317] · Booked On Rock with Eric Senich

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Here's a highlight from a recent episode of Booked on Rock.
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Gene Pope is the author of The Color of Your Dreams.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Some Days in the Lives of the Beatles. The next
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: song from Sergeant Pepper's that you cover in the book
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: is one of the most iconic of all Beatles songs.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: A Day in the Life, initially titled in the Life
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: of the Inspiration begins when John is reading London's Daily Mail.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: This stood up some emotions within him. What was the
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: story he was reading and what were the other things
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: that he drew on to help complete the song's lyrics.
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: Tarah Brown was the heir to the Guinness fortune, and
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: he was a very good friend of the Beatles and
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: the Rolling Stones and moved in their circles. Matter of fact,
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: the first time Paul McCartney took LSD, he took it
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: with Tara Brown and Tara unfortunately only sixty six, was
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: killed in an auto accident. He swove to avoid a
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: truck that had gotten into his lane. He was killed,
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: his passenger, his girlfriend survived, and John was ready distraught
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: over his death. You know, John was still a young
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: man and he hadn't seen that much death other than
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: his mother and a few other people, as is not uncommon,
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: but they have a close friend like that dies, so
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: tragically it stayed with him, and the papers were full
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: of ongoing stories about the inquest and the autopsy and
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: the funeral. The Beatles want to go to the funeral,
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: but they knew would turn into a media circus if
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: they did, so they'd stayed home and John was reading
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: this article about the latest developments in what was happening
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: with his estate, and it just inspired him to do
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: a song that was more slice of life, not just
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: the story of his dead friend. But he wanted to
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: make it sort of a recorded version of a newspaper,
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: to have various different stories pop up in the narrative
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: of the song. So he just literally started flipping through
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: the newspaper and picking random stories and said, okay, I'm
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: going to write about this now.
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: And when they recorded the basic track, they left a
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: twenty four bar break between the end of John's first
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: segment and the start of Paul's interlude, and they didn't
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: know right away what they wanted to do there and
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: what they wanted to put in there. Several weeks go by,
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: then the idea comes up for an orchestra interlude, but
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: it wasn't an actual orchestra.
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: Well, it wasn't a full orchestra. The Beatles originally wanted
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: a full ninety piece orchestra, and George Martin, who was
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: always keeping an eye on the budget, said you know,
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: how about we just get forty pieces and I record
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: them twice. And they thought, well, that'll work, that'll be fine,
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: And it was Paul who came out the idea of
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: let's have each instrument go from its lowest to highest notes,
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: but get there in their own time, in their own pace.
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: However the musician wants to do it to create this
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: cacophony that is technically music obviously, but it's also apocalyptic.
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: It's like something deep within the recesses of your mind.
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: And when the Beatles originally created that empty space in
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: the song, they had no idea what they were going
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: to put in there. They figured at some point they'll
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: think of something. And whoever had the original idea of
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: having an orchestra, kudos to them, because that was it.