posted
Okay, so Sgt. Pepper's is a concept album. Starting with Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band introducing everyone to the show and having the second to last song being the reprise where they thank everyone for coming and say they are ending the show. So what is the significance of having A Day in the Life come AFTER the reprise?
Besides anything having to do with the signficance of the actual song in the plot of the Paul is dead story, why put it after the reprise? Just to make it stand out as a clue in that whole thing? The only thing I've been able to come up with outside of this, is that it's like the encore to the show.
Anybody in the know?
Posts: 8741 | Registered: Apr 2001
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posted
The only thing I can say for sure is that they most decidedly did not do it as a "Paul is Dead" clue. They did not deliberately perpetuate that hoax. Some fans came up with it and retroactively declared that various things were clues, and all this certainly came as news to the Beatles when they heard about it.
Posts: 1814 | Registered: Jul 2004
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posted
I don't know if I'd say that. There are way way way too many clues throughout Beatles songs and album covers. Most notably Sgt. Peppers(He dies) and Abbey Road album covers. I once sat through a pretty interesting presentation that went over everything.
My point is that they probably didn't put A Day in the Life last on the album as a clue to that whole story line, but A Day in the Life IS important to that whole story line in and of itself and was most definitely perpetuated by the Beatles themselves. Maybe just not publicly.
posted
In reading the Beatles Anthology book, and watching the Bealtes Anthology dvds, the Beatles themselves never refer to the "paul is dead" hoax. The only story they give about A Day in the Life is that John wrote it using stories he read in a newspaper. Plus there's that bit in the middle, which Paul didn't think was good for a whole song, and John and Paul agreed would fit nicely in the middle of A Day in the Life.
I believe George or John also commented that they thought even having a reprise of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was a stupid idea. I'll have to look for an exact quote later today.
Another funny thing is that even though Sgt. Pepper started as a concept album, The Beatles got lazy and pretty much abandoned the whole idea after the first couple of songs. Paul was the only one who was really into it anyways.
posted
I actually just found a some great stuff in the Beatles Anthology book. I'm about to head out the door for school, but I can post some more info. when I get home in about ten hours.
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And in regards to The Beatles never referring to the hoax, it's like The Floyd never referring to The Wizard of Oz. If it's a good hoax, they never would refer to it. That doesn't mean it wasn't their doing.
Posts: 8741 | Registered: Apr 2001
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posted
Of all the songs on Sgt. Pepper, they spend the most time talking about A Day in the Life in the Bealtes Anthology. Some stuff about how A Day In The Life was conceived:
quote: JOHN: I was writing 'A Day In The Life with the Daily Mail propped in front of me on the piano. I had it open at their News in Brief, or Far and Near, whatever they call it. I noticed two stories. One was about a Guiness 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 4,000 potholes in the streets of Blackburn, Lancashire. There was still one word missing in that verse when we came to record. I knew the line had to go: 'Now they know how many holes it takes to -- something -- the Albert Hall.' It was a nonsense verb, really, but for some reason I couldn't think of the verb. What did the holes do in Albert Hall?.....
Paul and I were definitely working together, especially on 'A Day In The Life'.... Paul's contribution was the beautiful 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.
Paul goes on to talk about the actual recording techniques used in the song, as well as his contribution, simply saying it was a little party piece that he had written but was not inspired to finish.
They talk a bit about hidden meanings in A Day In The Life, and the album in general:
quote: JOHN: Was that the one that everyone thought was something obscene, and never was? If you play it backwards and all that. We listened to it backwards and it seemed to say something obscene but we had no idea; it was just one of those things.
I'd like to meet the mad who banned this song of ours. I'd like to turn him on to what's happening. Why don't they charge the Electricity Board with spreading drugs because to get electricity you have to 'switch on'? Hidden meanings. Everything depends on the way you read a thing. If they want to read drugs into our stuff, they will. But it's them that's reading it, them!
quote: RINGO: People think things are hidden on the album. Well, I didn't think anything was hidden.We did put on a lot of animal noises, but a lot of the talking that was on there was only there because the state of the art was pretty primitive at the time....
....all those people who play records backwards and get something rude should play it the right way and it probably says something nice.
So that's pretty much all the Beatles themselves have to say about hidden messages or meanings in the songs on Sgt. Peppers. I don't know dude, maybe you have a point that the Beatles themselves would never talk about the 'paul is dead' hoax, so as to keep it more mysterious. I agree that they probably dropped a bunch of clues to support the myth, but half of those clues are also probably bunk. But we all know that anyways.
As to A Day In The Life being a clue to Paul's apparent death, I don't think it is. I'm not sure why exactly they put it at the end. I always figured it was because it was the most climactic song they had at the time, what with the orgasm of orchestral sound leading to and away from Paul's middle lick, followed by the denouement of John's quiet finish.
Anyways, I hope some of the anthology stuff was enlightening, and if it wasn't, well hey, it's the Beatles talking and that's never dull.
Posts: 1855 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
I think you're right on the encore thing about the order. Did you know, BTW, that the songs are not in the order they were originally supposed to be in?
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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posted
Yep, the Beatles couldn't agree on nothin' by the time they finished cutting tracks for SgtPepper. So they threw up their hands and the record company put the thing together.
Posts: 8501 | Registered: Jul 2001
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posted
I know I'm missing something, but what is the Paul is dead hoax, I have never heard of it, what happened, who believed it, why do you think the beatles originated it?
I'm a pretty big beatles fan, but I was born after John Lennon died, so I missed most of the press coverage.
Posts: 5362 | Registered: Apr 2004
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posted
There are a large number of clues, some which seem credible and some of which are ridiculous, which seem to indicate that Paul died in a car accident in the mid-60s. Of cource Paul didn't die; the main debate is whether the Beatles themselves started the hoax, or whether it was overzealous fans. The Beatles themselves all deny that they ever purposely put clues in the lyrics or on the album covers, especially John, who was quite emphatic in his denials.
So the basic gyst of the 'paul is dead' hoax is that he died and was replaced by a fan who won a Paul McCartney lookalike contest. Some apparent evidence of this is a picture or two of Paul from the white album where he has a scar above his upper lip: the result of cosmetic surgery to make the lookalike look more like Paul.
Some of the more famous clues:
1) In Sgt. Pepper, Paul is wearing a badge which says OPD, which supposedly stands for Officially Proclaimed Dead.
In actuality, the badge says OPP, standing for Ontario Provincial Police.
2) Apparently the cover of Abbey Road was supposed to represent a funeral procession, with George as a gravedigger, John as the Priest, Ringo as a mourning friend, and Paul is of course the deceased, with his bare feet and cigarrette.
I think that the Beatles are just wearing their current taste in clothes. Paul claims that it was really hot, and that he just wanted to take his shoes off. Who knows?
There are many, many, many more clues.
It's funny, I've heard that John was getting sick of the whole thing, so he wrote 'I am the Walrus' to stump all the fans who were looking for meaning in his songs. He just wrote gibberish so that he could have a laugh at how it was interpreted. And of course he wryly wrote in Glass Onion, "Here's another clue for you all, the walrus was Paul." And of course Alice in Wonderland was John's favorite book, and apparently the Walrus died after eating some black clams. Really the only ones who died were the clams.
Posts: 1855 | Registered: Mar 2003
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On the Abbey Road cover Paul is the only one out of step with the rest of the band.
the license plate on the white car is supposedly an acronym for something along the lines of Linda McCartney 28 if Paul not Dead. can't remember it exactly.
On Sgt. Pepper's the whole cover is a funeral image. Many of the people pictured on the cover were deceased. If you take a mirror and place it across the bottom half of the words "Sgt. Pepper's" on the drums in the middle of the picture it reads something like 'he dies' and there's two hands pointing out from either side with fingers pointing directly at the two Pauls. There's also some sort of indian death statue there too.
Then there's all the clues throughout the different songs. One of which has them saying something like "Paul is Dead. We burried Paul".
DPR, there's something cool you can do with 'Dark Side of the Moon' and 'The Wizard of Oz'. If you start the album exactly on the third MGM lion roar and turn down the volume on the movie, the album serves as an alternate soundtrack to the film. With many lines matching up with the action on the screen, but mostly the song changes and pace of the music matching up extremely well. Some people say it's just a coincidence, but I challenge anyone to watch it, especially during the tornado and the lead in to Money, and still tell me it's all a coincidence.
Posts: 8741 | Registered: Apr 2001
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posted
that's sad. you don't own a boombox or something along those lines that you could play the cd on?
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