Sir Paul McCartney has gone against what was once believed to be Beatles canon by claiming he wrote A Day in the Life – not John Lennon.
The 1967 Beatles track’s lyrics were previously credited to Lennon-McCartney while it was long attributed the verses were mainly written by Lennon, with Sir Paul contributing the song’s middle section.
Not so, says Sir Paul, as the 79-year-old has now contradicted the previous account and insisted it was inspired by a car accident which killed his friend, 21-year-old Guinness heir Tara Browne.
Previously Lennon – who was shot dead in 1980 – said Browne’s crash ‘was in my mind when I was writing that verse.’
However, Sir Paul flipped those claims in a 1997 biography, Many Years from Now, where he gave a very different account of the song’s inspiration, saying it was about a politician.
Shedding more light on the inspiration behind the track in new book The Lyrics – which is written with Paul Muldoon and Sir Paul, and has described as being ‘as close to an autobiography’ as he will ever write – the musician wrote of Browne, as per The Telegraph: ‘I wrote about him in A Day in the Life. “He blew his mind in a car/he didn’t notice that the lights had changed”.’
Previously writing about the track which featured on Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Ban, Sir Paul said: ‘[The lyrics have] been attributed to Tara Browne, the Guinness heir, which I don’t believe is the case. In my head I was imagining a politician bombed out on drugs who’d stopped at some traffic lights and didn’t notice that the lights had changed.’
The Lyrics is due to be released next Tuesday and is expected to chart the intricate details around the154 songs he has written.
Keen to spill all the Beatles tea, Sir Paul’s revelation comes after he recently insisted it was Lennon who ‘instigated’ The Beatles’ split in 1970.
He said in an episode of the new BBC Radio 4 interview series This Cultural Life: ‘I didn’t instigate the split. That was our Johnny.
‘This was my band, this was my job, this was my life, so I wanted it to continue.’
On the speculation that was rife at the time that their demise was his doing, the 79-year-old music legend insisted: ‘I had to live with that because that was what people saw. All I could do is say, “no”.
‘I am not the person who instigated the split.
‘Oh no, no, no. John walked into a room one day and said I am leaving the Beatles. Is that instigating the split, or not?’
Lennon had told the rest of the band that he wanted to leave the group.
Sir Paul suggested the other members – including drummer Ringo Starr, 81, and the late George Harrison, who died aged 58 in 2001 – had all reached the same point in their lives when it was time to move on, even if they didn’t realise it at the time.
The Penny Lane star previously said: ‘There was a meeting where John came in and said, “I’m leaving the group.” And looking back on it, he’d reached that stage in his life. We all had.’
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