John Lennon 'A Day in the Life' Handwritten Lyrics

I read the news today

John Lennon wrote the melody and most of the verse lyrics of 'A Day in the Life' in mid-January 1967. Much of it came straight from a newspaper. The January 17, 1967, edition of the Daily Mail carried a report on a custody ruling over the two young children of Tara Browne, the 21-year-old Guinness heir and friend of Lennon and McCartney who had died in a car crash on December 18, 1966. Lennon said Browne's death inspired the first two verses, though he also said the details of the crash in the song were fiction.

The same edition carried a short item headed 'The holes in our roads': a council survey had counted 4,000 holes in the road in Blackburn, Lancashire. That became the last verse. Lennon was stuck on how to connect the holes to the Albert Hall until his friend Terry Doran suggested the holes would 'fill' it.

Lennon then brought the song to Paul McCartney, who supplied the middle section, a memory of catching the bus to school, having a smoke and drifting into a dream. According to Lennon, McCartney also contributed the line 'I'd love to turn you on.' Lennon later called the song 'a good piece of work between Paul and me.'

Two drafts on one page

The manuscript is a single sheet written on both sides. One side holds Lennon's rough draft, with revisions in felt marker and ballpoint pen, spelling mistakes and crossed-out words. One report of the 2010 sale also describes corrections and notes in red ink.

The other side carries the lyrics written again, more neatly and with fewer corrections, in capital letters. Lennon left a break where McCartney's 'Woke up, fell out of bed' bridge would go, and the line '+ I love to turn you on' appears to have been added later. When the sheet was offered in 2006, the auctioneers suggested Lennon wrote both versions on the morning and afternoon of January 17, 1967, the same day as the Daily Mail stories. That date is the auction catalog's estimate, not a documented fact.

Together the two sides show the song as a work in progress, moving from a rough newspaper-inspired draft toward the version the Beatles began recording on January 19, 1967.

Mal Evans, the man who kept it

Malcolm 'Mal' Evans was born in Liverpool on May 27, 1935. He was a telephone engineer for the Post Office and a part-time bouncer at the Cavern Club when he befriended George Harrison. At 6 feet 6 inches he was known as the 'Gentle Giant.' He began working for the Beatles on August 11, 1963, as a roadie and bodyguard, and after the band stopped touring in 1966 he attended nearly all of their recording sessions.

He is part of 'A Day in the Life' itself. At the first session on January 19, 1967, the Beatles left a 24-bar gap between the second verse and McCartney's section; Evans counted out the bars on tape and set off the alarm clock that ends the passage. The alarm was meant to be edited out but stayed because it fit McCartney's opening line. Evans was also one of the players who struck the song's final E-major chord.

Evans collected lyrics and papers through those years. He was shot and killed by Los Angeles police on January 4, 1976, at age 40, after pointing what proved to be an air rifle at officers. In 1986 a trunk with his diaries and other effects was found in the basement of a New York publisher and sent to his family in London. The ownership of lyric sheets he kept has been contested: in 1996 McCartney went to the High Court to stop the sale of the 'With a Little Help from My Friends' lyrics, arguing Evans had collected them as part of his job.

Forty musicians and one chord

The Beatles began recording the song, under the working title 'In the Life of...', in Studio Two at EMI on January 19, 1967. To fill the empty bridge, Lennon asked George Martin for 'a tremendous build-up, from nothing up to something absolutely like the end of the world.' On February 10, Martin and McCartney conducted a 40-piece orchestra through a loose score that let each player climb from his instrument's lowest note to its highest. The session cost 367 pounds for the players, and guests including Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Marianne Faithfull and Donovan watched.

On February 22, Lennon, McCartney, Ringo Starr and Evans, on three pianos, with Martin on harmonium, struck a single E-major chord together. Engineers raised the recording level as it faded so that it rang for more than 40 seconds. In all the song took 34 hours to record.

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was rush-released in the United Kingdom on May 26, 1967. Days earlier, on May 20, the BBC had refused to broadcast the song, citing the line 'I'd love to turn you on' as a drug reference. Lennon called it 'the most innocent of phrases.' The ban was not lifted until March 13, 1972.

From $100,000 to $1.2 million

On August 27, 1992, Evans's estate sold the sheet at auction in London for $100,000 (56,600 pounds) to Joseph Reynoso, an American from Chicago.

In March 2006 it was offered again in New York in a sealed-bid sale. The bids were opened on March 7, 2006, with offers reported to start at about $2 million, but the sheet did not sell.

On June 18, 2010, it came up at auction in New York. Three bidders competed, and an unidentified American bidding by telephone won it for $1.2 million (about 810,000 pounds). The pre-sale estimate is reported as $500,000 to $700,000 in one account and $500,000 to $800,000 in another.

The result narrowly missed the record for Beatles lyrics. Most reports give that record as $1.25 million for Lennon's 'All You Need Is Love' lyrics in 2005; one report gives that figure as $1 million.

The Beatles' finest song

'A Day in the Life' is commonly ranked as the Beatles' finest song. Rolling Stone ranked it No. 28 on its 500 Greatest Songs of All Time in 2004 and 2011, and No. 24 in 2021, and in 2010 called it the Beatles' greatest song. Q magazine put it first among the 50 greatest British songs, and Mojo put it first among the 101 greatest Beatles songs.

The song's orchestral climb inspired the THX 'Deep Note' sound, according to its creator, James A. Moorer. McCartney has performed it live since his 2008 tour, in a medley with 'Give Peace a Chance.'

The 2010 sheet is the song's working manuscript, holding both Lennon's first rough lyrics and the cleaner copy, with the space left open for McCartney's part of one of their last true collaborations.

The numbers

Recorded

January 19 to February 22, 1967, EMI Studios, London

Studio time

34 hours in all

Orchestra

40 players, recorded February 10, 1967; 367 pounds in session fees

Final chord

E major, three pianos and a harmonium, sustained for more than 40 seconds

Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Songs

No. 28 (2004, 2011), No. 24 (2021)

Timeline

1. May 27, 1935

   Mal Evans is born in Liverpool.

2. Aug 11, 1963

   Evans begins working for the Beatles as roadie and bodyguard.

3. Dec 18, 1966

   Tara Browne, a friend of Lennon and McCartney, dies in a car crash.

4. Jan 17, 1967

   The Daily Mail prints the Browne custody report and the Blackburn potholes item that feed Lennon's lyrics.

5. Jan 19, 1967

   The Beatles begin recording the song at EMI's Studio Two; Evans counts the bars and sets off the alarm clock.

6. Feb 10, 1967

   A 40-piece orchestra records the song's crescendos.

7. Feb 22, 1967

   The final E-major piano chord is recorded.

8. May 20, 1967

   The BBC refuses to broadcast the song.

9. May 26, 1967

   Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is released in the UK, with the song as its final track.

10. Mar 13, 1972

    The BBC lifts its ban on the song.

11. Jan 4, 1976

    Mal Evans is killed by police in Los Angeles at age 40.

12. 1986

    A trunk of Evans's diaries and effects is found in a New York publisher's basement and sent to his family.

13. Aug 27, 1992

    Evans's estate sells the lyric sheet at auction in London for $100,000 to Joseph Reynoso of Chicago.

14. Mar 7, 2006

    Sealed bids for the sheet are opened in New York; it does not sell.

15. Jun 18, 2010

    The sheet sells at auction in New York for $1.2 million to an anonymous American telephone bidder.

The world in 1967

• Jan 4, 1967

  Donald Campbell dies on Coniston Water attempting to break his own speed record.

• Jan 27, 1967

  The UK, the Soviet Union and the United States sign the Outer Space Treaty.

• Mar 18, 1967

  The supertanker Torrey Canyon runs aground off Land's End, causing a major oil spill.

• Jun 27, 1967

  The first automatic cash machine is installed at a bank office in Enfield, north London.

• Jul 1, 1967

  BBC2 begins the first scheduled color television broadcasts in Britain.

• Jul 4, 1967

  Parliament decriminalizes private consensual homosexual acts between adult men in England and Wales.

• Aug 27, 1967

  Beatles manager Brian Epstein dies of an accidental overdose in London.

Price record

A realized auction price is what a buyer actually paid on the date shown, including the buyer's premium where the sale reported it. It is the strongest kind of reference price, and it is a record of one sale of one object on one day, not a promise of what the next example will bring.

By reference price, John Lennon 'A Day in the Life' Handwritten Lyrics is number 61 of 100 in the memorabilia entries of the FLOAT 100. 100 of those 100 rest on a realized sale; the rest carry an asking price or a guide value, and each page says which. Rank within the FLOAT 100 itself (60 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• Two items in the same day's Daily Mail, a custody report and a count of potholes in Blackburn, Lancashire, fed the song's verses.
• The man who saved the sheet, Mal Evans, is on the record: he counts the bars and sets off the alarm clock in the middle of the song.
• The back of the sheet leaves a gap where Paul McCartney's 'Woke up, fell out of bed' section would go.
• The sheet failed to sell in a 2006 sealed-bid sale with offers reported to start around $2 million, then brought $1.2 million in 2010.
• Its price rose twelvefold between the 1992 and 2010 sales.
• The BBC banned the song before the album came out and did not lift the ban until 1972.
• The final chord was held for more than 40 seconds by turning up the recording level as it faded, so the studio's rustling papers and a squeaking chair can be heard.