“A Day In The Life” is banned by the BBC

Saturday, May 20, 1967

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From Daily Mirror – May 20, 1967

John woke up one morning and read the Daily Mail. The news stories gave him the ideas for the song. Well, BBC, he was actually smoking Park Drive! Even people at the BBC do these things. So, face it, BBC! If they want to ban ‘A Day In The Life’, that’s their business, drugs must have been in their minds – not ours! The point is, banning doesn’t help. It just draws attention to a subject when, all the time, their aim is to force attention away from it. Banning never did any good. It’s just beyond me what they mean. To say ‘A Day In The Life’ is about drugs is just rubbish! We were just trying to reflect a day in anybody’s life. As John read a newspaper story about somebody digging up a road in Blackburn, Lancashire, it was like images in a dream that was what we were after. Going upstairs on a bus and having a smoke. Does that have to be about drugs? Well, the BBC thinks it might be! As a matter of fact, we meant Park Drive. Every morning, I went to school, woke up, fell out of bed, dragged the comb across my hair, found my coat and hat. The song’s just about anything. It goes into a story, and it forms a dream on top of a bus. Nobody knows what you’re talking about in a song, sometimes. If they’d wanted to, they would have found plenty of double meanings in our early stuff. How about, ‘I’ll Keep You Satisfied’ or ‘Please Please Me’? Everything has a double meaning if you look for it long enough. There’s a double meaning in anything everyone says if you search for it. Still, I don’t care if they ban it, because there are plenty of other tracks they’ll play.

Paul McCartney – From “The Beatles: Off the Record” by Keith Badman, 2008

Last updated on April 21, 2024

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