March 20th, 2012

 

A Day in the Life

 

            There is perhaps no song that is as complete a representation of a band than the resounding, casually powerful “A Day in the Life” is for the Beatles.  In a way two separate songs by two separate people who were revealing themselves as very different from one another, “A Day in the Life” creates a reality unto itself as unlikely, but as consumable, as the Beatles themselves.  John Lennon and Paul McCartney were not the kindred souls listeners had interpreted them as being; a brutal fact that would slowly tear the band apart.  But for the 5:34 track length of “A Day in the Life”, their separate worlds inhabited the same reality.  And for as easy as it is to imagine the tune as a sad song, describing the inviolate differences between how people perceive the world, it claims victory in the ownership of perception.  For John and Paul, this meant their diverging personalities were still symbiotic, tucked beneath the interwoven blanket of shared existence.

            There is an eerie normalcy to the song which meshes authentically with everyday life.  If the song set out to depict that type of life, it succeeds by filtering experience into narrow segments that are readily identifiable and easily understood, to the point that we take them for granted as representative of actual life.  But taken as a whole, the combination of these experiences reveals a deep-rooted naivety and ignorance of the strangeness of life.  Ever vigilant against accepting the way things are, it makes sense that Lennon’s masterpiece is a call to arms against blind submission.

            “A Day in the Life” starts out unsuspecting enough.  A lone acoustic guitar bleeds out of the hoopla of the Sergeant Pepper energy, drawing us into a more somber mood with simple, almost carelessly strummed guitar chords.  A piano joins in, offering a muted, reserved accent to the notes.  When John’s voice finds its place inside this tepid sobriety, it is equally morose, but innocent.  Almost sweet.  The dark images he relays, supposedly ripped directly from an actual newspaper, are average enough as to seem unremarkable, making John’s unassuming voice a reliable narrator, matching tone with the emotion intended.  This remorseful voice seems sad for the distance with which we deal with everyday tragedy, apologetic for what we accept as normal: war movies, suicide, and the media’s inhumane indifference for the horrors it exploits.  “And though the news was rather sad, well I just had to laugh.”  John laughs at sad news because he recognizes our perceptions as incorrect for the world we see.  Because true emotion is inborn, not taken from societal cues, matching oneself with popularly accepted modes of behavior is ignorant, cowardly, and limiting to potential.  Buying in to contented acceptance is in result a way of turning off our minds and a refusal to regard the world in new ways.  As John would explain in other songs, like “Strawberry Fields”: “Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see.”  John recognizes a filthy detachment in the human tendency to strive for unquestioned normalcy.

            “A crowd of people turned away, but I just had to look.”  Near the end of the second verse, John positions himself as the contrarian, the one who seeks out truth, even if it is a less palatable and uglier form of truth.  But John does not sit idly on his throne of enlightened perception, he wants to help others see the light of higher consciousness.  When he says, “I’d love to turn you on,” he has big plans for helping the uneducated masses.  His means could range from lectures on political issues, to exampling civil protest, to offering hard, mind-expanding drugs; no matter the means, the goal is the same: question what you see and why you see it that way.  The song’s title and themes are in effect a hypothetical role playing exercise.  “A Day in the Life” of someone else.   What would you see?  What would you feel?  How would life be different?

            The song then attempts to actualize this process of self-transformation.  Producer George Martin’s contribution to the instrumental foundation of the song is a rapidly accumulating barrage of orchestral noise.  The segment is riveting and almost shocking, but in the song’s structure, it only acts as a portal, shifting us from one version of life to the next.  Once we get to our new life, the tempo shifts.  The sad, lonely guitar is replaced by a bopping piano.  We are miles away from the slow eulogies of Lennon, transplanted into the peppy, simple optimism of McCartney.  When that buzzing alarm goes off, we are officially inside “A Day in the Life”.

            Things are much more mundane in Paul’s world, concerning himself with getting dressed, drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes, and catching buses.  But we mustn’t forget that this life, though radically different than the previous life the song introduced us to, inhabits the exact same plane of existence.  Where McCartney now sees a pleasant morning, Lennon saw nothing but tragedy and disconnection.  The two visions collide when Paul admits that, “Somebody spoke and I went into a dream,” which is immediately followed with John moaning in a crescendo of melodic ambiance.  At this moment, many things are taking place at once.  John is staking claim as the cultural siren of his times, the one who can call people back to life, allowing them to transform their lives with the simple noises that he conjures from his throat (Bigger than Jesus, indeed).  Simultaneously, Paul is admitting that life is rosier and easier for him than people like John, as he doesn’t see the world in those tortured ways.  His life is simple details, day to day enjoyment, and accepting things as mostly for the best.  Paul is seduced by John’s vision of a more complete perspective, but he recognizes it as wildly different and possibly less satisfying than his natural inclination to leave things be.  But aside from these radically different perspectives, the transition back to John’s voice is a grand statement about the Beatles, life, and the power of music.  Something as true as a song can transport those who wish to be transported.  In a measure of sincere altruism, the Beatles refuse to force anything upon you; the song will offer you something if that is what you want out of it.  Their recognition of the varied ways of life is not a condemnation, but an observation.  The music is there for you if you need it; to allow you to see the world in a new way or to save those who need to be saved.  One can easily extrapolate this healing power to art in all forms, positioning “A Day in the Life” as important of a masterpiece as Coppola’s Godfather, Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, or Eliot’s Prufrock.  These conduits of expression transcend the medium they exist within, allowing emotional attachment to all who come their way.  Great art, above all else, is an invitation to the willing.

            That being said, for how epic the song is and for how grand are its schemes, it is still a beautiful, haunting song with a unique structure and lasting imagery.  After the middle section concludes, we are taken back to where we started, presumably sitting with John on a park bench while he idly thumbs through the newspaper.  This time, there is word of someone counting the number of holes in “Blackburn, Lancashire” and postulating that it may be enough to fill the “Albert Hall.”  But in light of our newfound recognition that life is comprised of all these collected modes of interpretation, we know that those holes mean something to someone, and everything is expanded in importance.  The simple, the expected, the banal – these things don’t exist in a shared universe.  One need only to imagine the world through another’s eyes to understand that, and once you do, your new world will be populated by meaningful flourishes of the intricacies of human nature.

            When Martin’s musical portal returns to again take us away from the last verse, there is powerful anticipation of where we may be headed.  To another life?  Up?  Down?  Heaven?  Hell?  No.  None of these.  There is just a defiant, impossibly resonant musical tone; a sound achieved by the process of many pianos being struck at once.  Like the song itself, a collaborative effort of John and Paul to create a singular thing of beauty, the pianos coalesce into a revolutionary vision of the world as a unified compilation of varied perspectives, creating a note as complete as life itself, strong enough to rattle on forever.