We watch, and it feels like anything could happen at a session that doubled as once-in-a-zeitgeist party, with Beatles, a host of rock luminaries – Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Donovan, Mike Nesmith – and forty classical musicians in formal attire gathered for a moment that would change the history of recorded sound.
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In the days before fame, the teenaged, pre-Beatle boys who’d later rock the world were known to set off on expeditions from one edge of Liverpool to another to meet with people rumored to know chords that they did not. A passion for music will drive one to search. There was also a time when hunting in record stores was a necessity of uncovering treasures, especially when it came to material that had not gained official release, which can be the most tantalizing material there is. It wouldn’t matter if it was a far-flung spot. You got yourself there, and you flipped through records in an ill-lit back aisle, desperate in hopes that the next flick of the fingers would reveal the much-anticipated treasure: a recording of a gig that seemed too good to be true, or an LP of outtakes from your favorite album.
Now there is that thing called the internet, where fingers on keys call up all that you could want, and one needn’t go anywhere save to the screen. What the new form of the hunt lacks in romance it makes up for in convenience and abundance. Plus, there are people to help in the cause, these oft-anonymous stewards of musical history who unearth, curate, and collate the music so that a site like YouTube functions as the ultimate record store back aisle, providing a person searches the right terms.
So while it’s not shocking when the entirety of the twenty-three surviving minutes of footage from the Beatles’ February 10, 1967 recording session becomes available, we’re dealing in a godsend all the same. This was the Beatlesesque day in the life for the orchestra that had been assembled at Abbey Road’s Studio One to overdub contributions to the song of the same name, and one can imagine the stories they must have told their grandkids.
The creative process tends not to take place in the company of others, which was one reason for filming Pollock and Picasso at work: to provide a visual aid for mystery. There’s playing on a stage in front of a crowd, but we usually think of that as performance rather than process, even though they may have overlap. A guitarist works a new riff that gives him an idea for a new song, for instance.
The filling of the two lacuna sections of “A Day in the Life” was a seemingly uncertain endeavor. The Beatles had a plan, though no one else would have known how it’d work out, with the musicians to focus on playing louder and louder, rather than to set notes. The complete extant footage – in scumbled, diffuse color – is soundless, but in this online version, late-night John Lennon home recordings – which would have made for a tidy “Revolution 10” and were part of the development of “You Know My Name (Look Up the Number)” – have been added and match the festive spirit of possibility and the daring sense of play. Don’t be fooled: play is adventurous, imaginative. The more so, the better the game.
We watch, and it feels like anything could happen at a session that doubled as once-in-a-zeitgeist party, with Beatles, a host of rock luminaries – Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Donovan, Mike Nesmith – and forty classical musicians in formal attire gathered for a moment that would change the history of recorded sound.
The scene looks like a birthing ground for chaos. Cinéma vérité has become cinéma psychedelia, with touches of Cocteau, Cornell, and Brakhage. The footage flickers, the camera cutting constantly. A scrim of darkness blankets what we see, which only serves to make these people – their exchanges, the way they regard each other, the looks – appear as if they’re part of a strobing nimbus of light. These are the goings-on of the other side of the looking glass.
Still, it’s hard at first to reconcile what the orchestral portions of “A Day in the Life” became while watching the footage of the session. Early on, a female gate-crasher is hauled off the premises. We wonder about the din. Studios and din don’t mix well, and there are so many voices in the room.
George Harrison has a private word with Patty Boyd, which must have necessitated turning a would-be whisper into a near-shout. You could think that the Beatles were leaving a lot on that day up to chance and whatever resulted would in part be authored by the whims of the fates. This doesn’t look like a controlled environment that helps with the focus required to create art.
But then there is Paul McCartney, who moves with ease from party to party, person to person. He looks like someone who’d fit in with anyone and make them feel good about themselves. He’s also a Beatle with a plan. John Lennon had the idea for using the orchestra in the first place, mostly because he couldn’t figure out how to close the gaps – or make use of them – in this, the last true Lennon-McCartney songwriting collaboration.
Once the musicians were present, it’s clear McCartney ran the show. He instructs, adjures, conducts. At one point we see him talking with percussionist Tristan Fry, who’d later play on Nick Drake’s “Saturday Sun” off of Five Leaves Left. McCartney is a man at his ease in this footage, someone who understands the premise and power of organized chaos, and the very image of confidence as if he knows exactly the result the Beatles are about to get.
Balloons are fastened to classical instruments, funny glasses and noses get donned by these men in their tuxes; one even sports a third eye on his forehead, as if he’s some Cyclopean delegate to these singular proceedings. Mal Evans twitches his eyebrows like some enlarged elf who already has notable, knowing experience with the two sections in question, having counted out their bars and manned that crucial alarm clock on the song’s first take a few weeks prior.
There’s also a competitive component to this kind of thing, and McCartney reveled in it. These were invited guests, but part of the appeal of having people there was so that when they heard Sgt. Pepper a few months hence, they’d scarcely be able to process how that day led to such an important part of that mind-altering music, to the Beatles’ credit. Now that’s control.
We’re also watching the last of the toppermosts of the poppermosts. The Beatles, as shapers of the culture and impactors of the world, would rise no higher than Sgt. Pepper and “A Day in the Life.” Much astounds about the latter, but one source of amazement dazzles via paradox: For everything the Beatles wrote, and everything people love that they wrote, and the quality of much of what they wrote, there’s a consensus that “A Day in the Life” is their best song. We are a culture of exaggeration and outsized – and oft-baseless – pronouncements. If we over-elevate one thing, we overly dock something else. But that’s not true for “A Day in the Life” and the rest of the Beatles’ output. The effect is reassuring, and you can still make your case for “She Loves You” or “Strawberry Fields Forever” or a dozen other contenders.
The post-Pepper part of the summer was less auspicious for the Beatles. Manager Brian Epstein would soon be dead, the group wouldn’t know which direction to take themselves in, Lennon sank back, the commanding McCartney pressed forward, and the band began their descent down the other side of the mountain. The comedown from a great height still involves great heights, and the Beatles always remained high above, just not where they were – and no longer atop the peak “A Day in the Life” represented.
But to return to online matters: we’ve all seen that post that circulates which says to the effect that one day you and your friends all went out to play together for the last time, and none of you knew it.
These twenty-three minutes of footage represent a Beatles-based twist on the idea. And now, thanks to the ultimate record store back aisle – minus the romance that was inherent in the journey – we have a glimpse – more than a glimpse – of these artist-friends gone inside to play for a final time as a spirited, unified collective.
Yes, the Sgt. Pepper sessions continued on, and the Beatles knew that what they were doing hadn’t been done before and were surely excited to share their creation with the world. But even within those sessions, “A Day in the Life” and February 10 were different: the last great day of play. As you watch, it’s easy to wonder if they knew, and this was how they made the most of it.
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All images are screenshots from the footage.
