Sir Paul McCartney changed his tune over the Beatles’ A Day In The Life. He now insists that he wrote those opening lines, and not John Lennon.
The song famously begins with the line “I read the news today,” from 1967’s groundbreaking album Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
It continues: “He blew out his mind in an automobile/He didn’t notice the lights had changed.”
Macca, 79 years old, claimed that the song was about a politician.
He now supports Lennon’s explanation of the lyrics being inspired by a car accident that killed Tara Browne (21-year-old Guinness heir) in 1966.
Sir Paul is quoted in 1997’s biography Many Years From Now as saying that he was imagining a politician who was high on drugs and had stopped at traffic lights, but didn’t notice that they had changed.
He said that Tara Browne had been the inspiration, but he doesn’t believe this to be the case.
Sir Paul McCartney (79) seems to now support John Lenon’s explanation of A Day In The Life being inspired by a car accident that killed Tara Browne, 21, in 1966. (Pictured from left to right: RingoStarr, John Lenon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison).
Sir Paul says that the crash inspired him in his new book The Lyrics.
Browne is the subject of his remark. He was in a car and lost his mind/He didn’t notice the lights had changed.
Lennon, who was shot in New York in 1980, had stated that Browne’s accident ‘was in me when I was writing this verse’.
The Lyrics gives the background of 154 of Sir Paul’s song lyrics and has been described by him as ‘as close as an autobiography’.
He states in the foreword: “I hope that what my songs have shown people something about me and my life that they haven’t seen before.”
The book will be available for purchase next Tuesday.