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Friday, January 20, 1967

Recording "A Day In The Life" #2

For The Beatles

Last updated on February 17, 2023


Master session

Location

  • Recording studio: EMI Studios, Studio Two, Abbey Road

Timeline

Master release

AlbumSome of the songs worked on during this session were first released on the "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (UK Mono)" LP

Some of the songs from this session also appear on:

The Beatles had begun recording “A Day In The Life” on the previous day. On this day, they continued working on the track during a session that lasted from 7 pm to 1:10 am.

The next night’s session began with an intensive review of what had been laid down on tape. Our job was to decide which of John’s lead vocals was the “keeper.” We didn’t have to necessarily use the entire performance, though. Because we had the luxury of working in four-track, I could copy over (“bounce”) the best lines from each take into one track — a process known as “comping.” […] Lennon sat behind the mixing console with George Martin and me, picking out the bits he liked. Paul was up in the control room, too, expressing his opinions, but George Harrison and Ringo stayed down in the studio; they just weren’t involved to that extent.

Geoff Emerick – From “Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of The Beatles“, 2006

Three reduction mixes of Take 4, which were numbered Takes 5 to 7, were then created in order to reduce the number of tracks from four to two. After reviewing the mixes, they decided that Take 6 was the best and used it as the basis for subsequent work.

Paul attempted to record the vocals for the middle-eight section onto track three (“Woke up, got out of bed…“). During this first attempt, he made a mistake by singing “everybody spoke and I went into a dream” instead of “somebody…“. This recording was preserved in a rough mix released on Anthology 2 in 1996. Paul re-recorded his vocals on February 3.

In what could only be described as pure serendipidity, it happened to begin with the lyric “Woke up / Fell out of bed…” which, incredibly, perfectly fit the alarm clock ringing. If ever there was an omen that this was to be a very special song in the Beatles canon, this was it.

Geoff Emerick – From “Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of The Beatles“, 2006

On track four, Paul McCartney then recorded his bass part, and Ringo Starr played the drums. However, both of these performances would be re-recorded on February 3.

John Lennon also made some changes to his vocals, double-tracking them during the phrases “I’d love to turn you on,” as well as the quick falsetto words that precede these passages.

Work on “A Day In The Life” continued on February 3, 1967.


Session activities

  1. A Day In The Life

    Written by Lennon - McCartney

    Tape copying • Tape reduction take 4 into take 5

  2. A Day In The Life

    Written by Lennon - McCartney

    Tape copying • Tape reduction take 4 into take 6

  3. A Day In The Life

    Written by Lennon - McCartney

    Tape copying • Tape reduction take 4 into take 7

  4. A Day In The Life

    Written by Lennon - McCartney

    Recording • SI onto take 6

    AlbumOfficially released on Anthology 2


Staff

Musicians on "A Day In The Life"

Production staff


Going further

The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions • Mark Lewisohn

The definitive guide for every Beatles recording sessions from 1962 to 1970.

We owe a lot to Mark Lewisohn for the creation of those session pages, but you really have to buy this book to get all the details - the number of takes for each song, who contributed what, a description of the context and how each session went, various photographies... And an introductory interview with Paul McCartney!

Shop on Amazon

The Beatles Recording Reference Manual: Volume 3: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band through Magical Mystery Tour (late 1966-1967)

The third book of this critically - acclaimed series, nominated for the 2019 Association for Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC) award for Excellence In Historical Recorded Sound, "The Beatles Recording Reference Manual: Volume 3: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band through Magical Mystery Tour (late 1966-1967)" captures the band's most innovative era in its entirety. From the first take to the final remix, discover the making of the greatest recordings of all time. Through extensive, fully-documented research, these books fill an important gap left by all other Beatles books published to date and provide a unique view into the recordings of the world's most successful pop music act.

Shop on Amazon

If we modestly consider the Paul McCartney Project to be the premier online resource for all things Paul McCartney, it is undeniable that The Beatles Bible stands as the definitive online site dedicated to the Beatles. While there is some overlap in content between the two sites, they differ significantly in their approach.

Read more on The Beatles Bible

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