The Beatles song John Lennon called his “first real major piece of work”
The Beatles were transitioning by the mid-1960s. No longer content with the mop-top image and rudimentary love songs that had surrounded them since their accent to fame earlier in the decade, the band began searching for new sounds and more meaningful lyrical themes that coincided with their maturation.
Early kernels of this evolution could be heard in the more sophisticated styles of songs like ‘And I Love Her’ and ‘This Boy’, but when John Lennon was confronted by a reporter as to why he never wrote any songs about his own life, Lennon decided to take on the challenge by returning to Liverpool and seeking inspiration from his childhood.
“I think ‘In My Life’ was the first song that I wrote that was really, consciously about my life, and it was sparked by a remark a journalist and writer in England made after In His Own Write came out. I think ‘In My Life’ was after In His Own Write,” Lennon recalled to David Scheff in 1980. “But he said to me, ‘Why don’t you put some of the way you write in the book, as it were, in the songs? Or why don’t you put something about your childhood into the songs?’ Which came out later as ‘Penny Lane’ from Paul – although it was actually me who lived in Penny Lane – and ‘Strawberry Fields’.”
He added: “‘In My Life’ started out as a bus journey from my house on 250 [sic] Menlove Avenue to town, mentioning every place I could remember. And it was ridiculous. This is before even ‘Penny Lane’ was written and I had Penny Lane, Strawberry Fields, Tram Sheds – Tram Sheds are the depot just outside of Penny Lane – and it was the most boring sort of ‘What I Did On My Holidays Bus Trip’ song and it wasn’t working at all. I cannot do this! I cannot do this!”
Lennon’s original lyrics for ‘In My Life’ simply listed a number of sights from his hometown, one of which was Penny Lane. It was only after he decided to forgo the specific references and focus on the feeling of his youth that Lennon experienced a breakthrough. “But then I laid back and these lyrics started coming to me about the places I remember. Now Paul helped write the middle-eight melody. The whole lyrics were already written before Paul had even heard it. In ‘In My Life’, his contribution melodically was the harmony and the middle eight itself.”
“For ‘In My Life’, I had a complete set of lyrics after struggling with a journalistic vision of a trip from home to downtown on a bus naming every sight,” Lennon continued. “It became ‘In My Life’, which is a remembrance of friends and lovers of the past. Paul helped with the middle eight musically. But all lyrics written, signed, sealed, and delivered.”
To Lennon, ‘In My Life’ represented his first true step beyond the rudimentary pop and disposable love songs that The Beatles had been making up to that point. For the author, it was a major milestone. “And it was, I think, my first real major piece of work,” Lennon explained. “Up till then, it had all been sort of glib and throwaway. And that was the first time I consciously put my literary part of myself into the lyric. Inspired by Kenneth Allsop, the British journalist, and Bob Dylan.”
Check out ‘In My Life’ down below.
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