John Lennon: I was writing the song with the "Daily Mail" propped up in front of me on the piano, I had it open at their "News In Brief" or "Far and Near" whatever they call it. There was a paragraph about 4,000 holes in Blackburn, Lancashire, being discovered and there was still one word missing when we came to the record. I knew the line had to go "Now they know how many holes it takes to fill 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 [Doran] who said 'fill' the Albert Hall.
Paul McCartney: There'd been a story about a man who'd made the grade, and there'd been a photograph of him sitting in his car. John said, "I had to laugh". He'd sort of blown his mind out in the car. He was just high on whatever he uses, say he was pissed in this big Bently, sitting at the traffic lights. He's driving today, the chauffeur isn't there, and maybe he got high because of that. The lights have changed and he hasn't noticed that there's a crowd of housewifes and they're all looking at him saying "Who's that? I've seen him in the papers" and they're not sure if he's from the House of Lords. He looks a bit like that with his homburg and white scarf and he's out of his screws.
That's a bit of black comedy. The next bit was another song altogether but it just happened to fit. It was just me remembering what it was like to run up the road to catch a bus to school, having a smoke and going into class. We decided: "Bugger this, we're going to write a turn-on song." It was a reflection of my school days - I would have a Woodbine then, and somebody would speak and I would go into a dream.
This was the only one in the album written as a deliberate provocation. A "stick-that-in-your-pipe"... But what we want is to turn you on to the truth rather than pot.
John Lennon (in 1967) - "I was writing the song with the 'Daily Mail' propped up in front of me on the piano. I had it open to the 'News In Brief' or whatever they call it. There was a paragraph about four thousand holes being discovered in Blackburn Lancashire. And when we came to record the song there was still one word missing from that verse... I knew the line had to go, 'Now they know how many holes it takes to --something-- the Albert Hall.' For some reason I couldn't think of the verb. What did the holes do to the Albert Hall? It was Terry Doran who said 'fill' the Albert Hall. And that was it. Then we thought we wanted a growing noise to lead back into the first bit. We wanted to think of a good end and we had to decide what sort of backing and instruments would sound good. Like all our songs, they never become an entity until the very end. They are developed all the time as we go along."
John Lennon (in 1968) - "'A Day in the Life' --that was something. I dug it. It was a good piece of work between Paul and me. I had the 'I read the news today' bit, and it turned Paul on. Now and then we really turn each other on with a bit of song, and he just said 'yeah' --bang bang, like that. It just sort of happened beautifully, and we arranged it and rehearsed it, which we don't often do, the afternoon before. So we all knew what we were playing, we all got into it. It was a real groove, the whole scene on that one. Paul sang half of it and I sang half. I needed a middle-eight for it, but Paul already had one there."
John Lennon (in 1980) - "Just as it sounds: I was reading the paper one day and I noticed two stories. One was the Guinness heir who killed himself in a car. That was the main headline story. He died in London in a car crash. On the next page was a story about 4000 holes in Blackburn, Lancashire. In the streets, that is. They were going to fill them all. Paul's contribution was the beautiful little lick in the song 'I'd love to turn you on.' I had the bulk of the song and the words, but he contributed this little lick floating around in his head that he couldn't use for anything. I thought it was a damn good piece of work."
Paul McCartney (in 1984) - "That was mainly John's, I think. I remember being very conscious of the words 'I'd love to turn you on' and thinking, Well, that's about as risque as we dare get at this point. Well, the BBC banned it. It said, 'Now they know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall' or something. But I mean that there was nothing vaguely rude or naughty in any of that. 'I'd love to turn you on' was the rudest line in the whole thing. But that was one of John's very good ones. I wrote... that was co-written. The orchestra crescendo and that was based on some of the ideas I'd been getting from Stockhausen and people like that, which is more abstract. So we told the orchestra members to just start on their lowest note and end on their highest note and go in their own time... which orchestras are frightened to do. That's not the tradition. But we got 'em to do it."
