"A Day in the Life"

It's weird how this blog has ended up not about me so much as about the stuff that I like. Am I boring? Do I have no life? Questions best left unanswered for now.

Even though I don't like the concept of picking favorites per se, I like to ask others what their favorites are. I don't think it really reveals anything deeply meaningful about someone, but makes for fun conversation nevertheless.

If I had to pick a favorite Beatles song at the moment, it would have to be "A Day in the Life." This is, perhaps, the greatest collaboration that Lennon and McCartney ever did. Lennon was responsible for the verses, McCartney for the "middle eight" ("Woke up, fell out of bed....") and all four Beatles collaborated with George Martin on its arrangement.

First off, if anyone ever doubts why Ringo Starr is the greatest drummer in rock and roll, listen to this song. Listen to the fills. How dramatic, how dynamic. A charming punter from Liverpool becomes a powerful orchestra unto himself on the drums. Every note is perfect and in its right place. Nothing wasted.

I don't really like the notion that art is particularly about things, or explains things, like an equation where x=0 or some such nonsense. Such analysis seems incomplete and misleading to me. Art is much more complex, about feelings we can't name, things we don't know. Feelings are the most important part for me.

For some reason, also, I am generally unable to decipher song lyrics in any analytical sense. I know what the words are, and can sing along, but they might as well be gibberish syllables to me. If forced to analyze them, I can come up with a decent little explanation, but it's insufficient really. Song lyrics are not experienced as words alone, in a vaccum, but are welded to the melody and production. Attempting to reduce a song's effect to a meaning or an explanation by a reading of the lyrics alone is a strange exercise. I tend to listen in a more or less abstract fashion. I think, though, that some meaning is there, waiting to be excavated. And though each person's meaning may be different from another's (and each may have several differing meanings that she keeps to herself), this is all right. That's why it's art.

If forced to take a stab at "A Day in the Life," though, I can muster something. The chords and lyrics, inseparable really, are like reading a diary of the common man. Lennon said that he got the inspiration for the verses from reading news articles in The Daily Mail. So we're talking about common life, ordinary life. And yet, it quickly becomes existential. Our singer's response to news of an noteworthy death is to laugh at the photograph accompanying the newsclipping. People are crowded at the scene of the accident, and they recognize the driver as someone they should know, someone important. We're left to wonder why this notable demise should be any more or less important than the myriad deaths occuring daily.

We move into a picture show, watching a movie about war. (I've always wondered if this was inspired by Lennon's role in Dick Lester's How I Won the War, which was filmed before the sessions for Sgt. Pepper. Lennon wrote "Strawberry Fields Forever" while on location for the movie.) Though the English army is victorious, most people cannot bear to watch. Memories of the Second World War? Echoes of Vietnam perhaps? Our singer can watch. He's different from the rest, able to intellectualize the experience. His "having read the book" can mean both that he's read the novel from which the movie is adapted, and also that he's learned, or enlightened. He's "read the book." Perhaps he experiences things on a more detached, abstract level. Is this better than those who live from visceral reaction to visceral reaction?

And then, a daydream. A little flash, remembering high school. Perhaps this was before enlightenment. Deep down, despite a modern, detached attitude, isn't the singer still the same person he was before? Which is the better person, the purer person? The one who is intellectual and detached from death, life's great mystery, or the passionate youth who bummed cigarettes from his classmates? What will he remember when he dies? Which will feel more real?

And then, his younger self dreams. Is it a dream about the future, about where the singer is now?

Back to the newspaper - there are holes in our roads (A side note: that sentence is the actual headline of the newspaper article that inspired the verse.) Absurd whimsy. The problems of life, the little details, are as meaningless and myriad as holes in pavement. Is "now they know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall" Lennon's take on Bogart in Casablanca (Our problems don't amount to a hill of beans?) I don't know. I always appreciated it as a non-sequiter.

As good as the music is, the lyrics, chords, arrangement, what pushes this over the top for me, and makes it my favorite, is the orchestra. McCartney, I think, had the idea for the orchestra to be given one note to start on and one note to end on, and twenty-four bars to figure out how to get there. The maelstrom that ensues is a glorious, glorious noise. I can't describe what it does to me, it's indescribable. Tears have been shed listening to this. I don't know what it means, or why it's there, but it has a very, very profound effect on me. What especially gets me is, after the dischord, when the orchestra, in tune and in time, supports Lennon's wordless ah's before the last verse. There's one more maelstrom, and then, several hands on several pianos strike an E Major chord which sounds into eternity. Sometimes, in the back of my mind, in daydreams, I picture footage of The Bomb detonating at Bikini Island. (On a side note, please listen to Love's "Seven and Seven Is")

So, you'll notice I really didn't describe the actual song too much, just some impressions about it. Perhaps this was deliberate. You should go listen to it. Listen. Listen. Listen. And maybe tell me what your favorite Beatles song is. For the sake of conversation, of course.