A Day in the Life

"A Day in the Life" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles that was released as the final track of their 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Credited to Lennon–McCartney, the opening and closing sections of the song were mainly written by John Lennon, with Paul McCartney primarily contributing the song's middle section. [Wikipedia]

Two unfinished fragments — Lennon's news-paper-reading verses (inspired in part by the death of Tara Browne in a car crash and a Daily Mail story about potholes in Blackburn) and McCartney's 'Woke up, fell out of bed' middle eight — welded together by deliberate calculation. Mal Evans counted off 24 bars on each of the two empty bridges with an alarm clock, the alarm becoming an unintended part of the final mix. The result became the band's most ambitious closing track and ranks among the most extensively documented compositions in the canon (Lewisohn 1988, p.94). John's lyric touched on a friend's recent death in a car accident, providing the song's emotional core; the final chord was sustained as it faded and lasted fifty-three seconds (Kozinn 1995, pp.152, 155).

Begun 19 January 1967, completed 22 February. The 41-musician orchestral glissando was recorded on 10 February in front of an invited audience including Mick Jagger, Marianne Faithfull, Donovan and Mike Nesmith. The orchestra was instructed only on starting and finishing notes; how each musician got from low E to high E over 24 bars was up to them. The closing E-major piano chord (three pianos played simultaneously by Lennon, McCartney, Starr and Mal Evans, plus a harmonium by George Martin) lasts 53 seconds and was recorded with the studio's compressors gradually opened to capture every fraction of decay. Extensive tape editing welded Lennon's take 15 vocal opening to take 24's final quarter, creating the seamless transitions across the song's disparate sections (Lewisohn 1988, p.98-101). Emerick recalls that John's masterpiece received more time and attention during Pepper sessions than almost any other song, with exotic instrumentation like plucked piano, backward cymbals, and swordmandel; Ringo and George's instrumental assignments were reversed after the first run-through (Emerick 2006, pp.366, 388).

• A Day in the Life is the closing track of Sgt. Pepper and the band’s most ambitious 1967 production — two distinct sections from Lennon and McCartney, welded together and joined by a 40-piece orchestral crescendo, finished with a sustained 53-second piano chord.¹
• The orchestral overdub was recorded on 10 February 1967 in Studio One with 40 classical musicians given graphic scores (“start on your lowest note, end on your highest, over 24 bars”); the final piano chord was recorded on 22 February 1967, edit pieces 1–9 dropped onto take 6.¹