can't vouch for its accuracy, but it makes of an interesting read . . .
http://www.palmdigitalmedia.com/excerpt.cgi/1401400299(snip)
"In the case of "A Day In The Life," it was Paul who made John's composition whole. Lennon had the melody and story line -- the verses about a man who "blew his mind out in a car," the English Army that "had just won the war," the "four thousand holes in Blackburn, Lancashire" -- but the song needed something more. Lennon didn't like laboring over songs, preferring instead the Zen purity of inspiration, so when he got stuck after completing the main verses he set the song aside. "I needed a middle-eight for it
, but that would have been forcing it," he later explained. "All the rest had come out smooth, flowing, no trouble, and to write a middle eight would have been to write a middle eight, but instead Paul already had one there."
"Paul did indeed have the fragment "Woke up, fell out of bed..." lying around. The two partners agreed that its peppy portrait of the alienating hustle of modern urban life -- based on Paul's memories of rushing to school in the morning -- made the ideal counterpoint to John's gently ominous, dreamlike commentary on the hollow absurdity of status, order, and worldly attachments. The initial idea for the song had come, as it so often did with Lennon, from an item in the mass media. "I was reading the paper one day and noticed two stories," he recalled. "One was about 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 four thousand potholes in the streets of Blackburn, Lancashire, that needed to be filled. Paul's contribution was the beautiful little lick in the song, 'I'd love to turn you on,' that he'd had floating around in his head and couldn't use. I thought it was a damn good piece of work."
"The Guinness heir, whom the Beatles had happened to know, was born to a life of fantastic privilege. By conventional standards he was "a lucky man who made the grade." He had everything money could buy, but found himself no more immune to death's arbitrary, dispassionate arrival than the lowliest proletarian. A momentary, all too human lapse -- "he didn't notice that the lights had changed" -- and he was gone. In the moment of death, all delusion is shattered, everyone is equal. Lennon clinches the point with the wistful, mocking epitaph "Nobody was really sure if he was from the House of Lords." The gathered crowd knows they've "seen his face before" but they can't place it; in the broad scheme of things, he is barely a bit player. The wealth and position that seemed so important, to the heir and the larger society, is revealed as trivial and fleeting. Equally blinded by a different kind of triviality are the bureaucrats of the final verse, who insist on tabulating the precise number of holes in the roads of Blackburn, Lancashire, even "though the holes were rather small." No wonder the singer would "love to turn you on." To see his fellow human beings sleepwalking so numbly through the glorious richness that life offers is heartbreaking."
- much more . . .
http://www.palmdigitalmedia.com/excerpt.cgi/1401400299