So my recollection is saying to John, ‘Just go and have a cup of tea or something. And it actually does sound very like me, if you analyze it. You refer back to something you’ve loved and try and take the spirit of that and write something new. Songs like ‘You’ve Really Got A Hold On Me’ and ‘Tears Of A Clown’ had really been a big influence. I said, ‘Well, you haven’t got a tune, let me just go and work on it.’ And I went down to the half-landing, where John had a Mellotron, and I sat there and put together a tune based in my mind on Smokey Robinson and the Miracles. But as I recall, he didn’t have a tune to it, and my recollection, I think, is at variance with John’s. I’ll give my memories of writing ‘In My Life.’ I arrived at John’s house for a writing session and he had the very nice opening stanzas of the song. John Lennon, Rolling Stone interview, by Jann Wenner, 1971 I think on 'Norwegian Wood' and 'In My Life' Paul helped with the middle eight, to give credit where it’s due. That was usually the case with things like 'In My Life' and 'Universe' and some of the ones that stand out a bit. I wrote it upstairs, that was one where I wrote the lyrics first and then sang it. I used to write upstairs where I had about ten Brunell tape recorders all linked up, I still have them, I’d mastered them over the period of a year or two - I could never make a rock and roll record but I could make some far out stuff on it. John Lennon, The Playboy Interviews, p.151, 1980 Inspired by Kenneth Allsop, the British journalist, and Bob Dylan. And that was the first time I consciously put my literary part of myself into the lyric. Up till then it had all been sort of glib and throw-away. And it was, I think, my first real major piece of work. But all lyrics written, signed, sealed, and delivered. Paul helped with the middle eight musically. It became 'In My Life,' which is a remembrance of friends and lovers of the past. John Lennon, The Playboy Interviews, p.129-30, 1980įor 'In My Life,' I had a complete set of lyrics after struggling with a journalistic version of a trip from home to downtown on a bus naming every sight. In 'In My Life,' his contribution melodically was the harmony and the middle eight itself. The whole lyrics were already written before Paul had even heard it. Now Paul helped with the middle-eight melody.
I can not do this! I cannot do this!īut then I laid back and these lyrics started coming to me about the places I remember. 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 Holiday's Bus Trip' song and it wasn't working at all. I wrote it all down and it was ridiculous. 'In My Life' started out as a bus journey from my house at 250 Menlove Avenue to town, mentioning every place I could remember. We were just writing songs a la Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly, pop songs with no more thought to them than that, to create a sound. 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?'. I think 'In My Life' was after In His Own Write. 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. Charles Lamb (1775-1834), "The Old Familiar Faces", in Palgrave's Golden Treasury, a popular anthology of English poetry, 1861 How some they have died, and some they have left me, / And some are taken from me all are departed / All, all are gone, the old familiar faces. I have had playmates, I have had companions / In my days of childhood, in my joyful schooldays / All, all are gone, the old familiar faces. Lennon's original manuscript for 'In My Life', from his personal Beatles-lyrics notebook.
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