How a Car Dealer Helped John Lennon Find the Perfect Lyric for “A Day in the Life”

Inspiration for a rock ‘n’ roll song can come from strange places, from newspaper clippings to the advice of a car dealer—for the Beatles’ psychedelic classic “A Day in the Life,” John Lennon used both. The closing track from Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is a true testament to the Beatles’ deep dive into strange and unusual musical experimentation.

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The song travels through multiple sections, from Lennon’s melancholy melodies to McCartney’s bouncy interlude to an absolute cacophony of noise directed by Ringo Starr’s steady beat buried in the mix. It’s an eccentric Frankenstein of a song, all of its pieces sewn together by musical motifs and the sheer determination of the Fab Four.

…and the newspaper and luxury car dealer, of course.

A Car Dealer Suggests Perfect Lyric For “A Day in the Life”

When John Lennon began writing the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band closer, “A Day in the Life,” he had a copy of Daily Mail propped up on the music stand of his piano. “I noticed two stories,” Lennon recalled in Anthology. “One was about the Guinness heir who killed himself in a car. That was the main headline story. He died in London in a car crash.” (Interestingly, this is the same heir who was with McCartney when he got into the moped crash that scarred his lip and kicked off the Beatles’ mustachioed era.)

“On the next page was a story about 4,000 potholes in the streets of Blackburn, Lancashire,” Lennon continued. “There was still one word missing in that verse when we came to record. I knew the line had to go, Now they know how many holes it takes to — something — the Albert Hall. It was a nonsense verse, really, but for some reason, I couldn’t think of the verb. What did the holes do to the Albert Hall? It was Terry who said ‘fill’ the Albert Hall, and that was it. Perhaps I was looking for that word all the time but couldn’t put my tongue on it. Other people don’t necessarily give you a word or a line. They just throw in the word you’re looking for anyway.”

The Terry in question was Terry Doran, who had been friends of the Beatles since the early 1960s when he sold them their first car and gig van. The luxury car dealer later came to be the manager of Apple Publishing and personal assistant to Lennon and George Harrison.

A Truly Concerted Effort

Whether Terry Doran gave John Lennon the lyric about holes filling the Albert Hall or merely reminded the Beatle of the word he was looking for, as the musician suggested, Doran’s recommendation was the one that stuck. I read the news today, oh, boy, Lennon sings in the last verse, four thousand holes in Blackburn, Lancashire. And though the holes were rather small, they had to count them all. Now they know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall.

Next, the song transitions into a trippy, psychedelic sequence from the mind of Paul McCartney. “Paul’s contribution was the beautiful little lick in the song, I’d love to turn you on, that he’d had floating around in his head and couldn’t use,” Lennon recalled in Anthology. Despite the tensions that would grow among the band in the latter half of the 1960s, Lennon said, “Paul and I were definitely working together. The way we wrote a lot of the time: you’d write the good bit, the part that was easy. I read the news today, or whatever it was.”

“Then, when you got stuck or whenever it got hard,” he continued, “instead of carrying on, you just drop it. Then we would meet each other, and I would sing half, and he would be inspired to write the next bit, and vice versa. He was a bit shy about it because I think he thought it was already a good song.” As Lennon put it, “I thought it was a damn good piece of work.”

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