In My Life

August 30, 2013 • 4:33 am

In my view, this song and “Yesterday” are the finest love songs ever recorded by the Beatles. In fact, I like this one even better than “Yesterday,” though it’s truly a close call.

“In My Life” is from the Rubber Soul album (1965), and is rated, deservedly, #5 on the Rolling Stone’s list of the 100 greatest Beatles songs. (It’s also ranked #23 on the same magazine’s list of the 500 greatest songs of all time.)*

It’s a perfectly written song, with lyrics that are simple but deeply moving, and has just two verses (no bridge) comparing the past to the present. The piano interlude, by George Martin, makes the song.

It’s surely one of the greatest rock ballads of all time. And Rubber Soul was the start of the greatest run of innovative rock music ever produced by one group.

This song is usually credited to Lennon, though, given its nature, one could easily imagine that it was written by McCartney. In fact there’s some dispute about who did what here. As Rolling Stone notes:

“In My Life” is one of only a handful of Lennon-McCartney songs where the two strongly disagreed over who wrote what: According to Lennon, “The whole lyrics were already written before Paul even heard it. His contribution melodically was the harmony and the middle eight.” According to McCartney, Lennon basically had the first verse done. At one of their writing sessions at Lennon’s Weybridge estate, the two painstakingly rewrote the lyrics, making them less specific and more universal. (Some of Lennon’s lines, like his reference to the late Stu Sutcliffe, the Beatles’ former bassist, in “some are dead and some are living,” remained.) McCartney also says he wrote the melody on Lennon’s Mellotron, inspired by Smokey Robinson, as well as the gentle opening guitar figure.

Regardless of its true authorship, “In My Life” represented Lennon’s evolution as an artist. “I started being me about the songs, not writing them objectively, but subjectively,” Lennon said. “I think it was Dylan who helped me realize that — not by any discussion or anything, but by hearing his work.” The Beatles were huge Dylan fans by early 1964, playing The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan nonstop in between gigs. When Dylan visited the Beatles in New York that August, he famously introduced them to marijuana. (He thought the Beatles were already pot smokers, having misheard the lyrics “I can’t hide” in “I Want to Hold Your Hand” as “I get high.”) Dylan and pot would be the great twin influences that led the Beatles out of their moptop period and on to their first masterpiece, Rubber Soul.

Before that album, “We were just writing songs à la the Everly Brothers and Buddy Holly,” Lennon said, “pop songs with no more thought to them than that.” He rightly called “In My Life” “my first real, major piece of work. Up until then, it had all been glib and throwaway.”

I’d give Lennon most of the credit, but, as usual, without the synergy of McCartney this song would never have become a classic.

Lovely, no?

Wikipedia adds a bit about the recording:

The song was recorded on 18 October 1965, and was complete except for the instrumental bridge. At that time, Lennon had not decided what instrument to use, but he subsequently asked George Martin to play a piano solo, suggesting “something Baroque-sounding”. Martin wrote a Bach-influenced piece that he found he could not play at the song’s tempo. On 22 October, the solo was recorded with the tape running at half speed, so when played back at normal pace the piano was twice as fast and an octave higher, solving the performance challenge and also giving the solo a unique timbre, reminiscent of a harpsichord.

Here are the original lyrics (in Lennon’s hand, I believe), and you can see how much worse they were than in the final version:

Original_lyrics_to_John_Lennon's_'In_my_life'

*Can you guess what #1 is? Go over and see. It’s not “Layla,” though, which I’d rank as the greatest rock song of all time. But the Beatles are clearly the greatest group. I hasten to add that this is only my subjective opinion (though it happens to be correct).

43 thoughts on “In My Life”

    1. Truly great song, and I’ve got to think that McCartney’s contribution was substantial. As an example of Lennon’s dubious memories, McCartney could not have just contributed to the “middle eight” because this is a rare early song that doesn’t HAVE a true middle eight (I think Lennon is referring to “though I know I’ll never lose affection …). The only odd think about the song for me is the way George Martin truncates the fine harpsichord solo in a rather abrupt flourish.

      2. Even odder: apparently it’s not a harpsichord at all, but a piano played back at double speed. (See the Wikipedia quote just after the video above.)

        Learning this actually tarnishes the song a bit for me. These days I find myself preferring music that’s been laid down in one take with minimal post-processing (which pretty much rules out all of current pop music).

        1. That’s right. Martin said he tried to achieve a harpsichord-like sound with the speeding up – I should have said harpsichord-like solo.

  3. “Can you guess what #1 is?”

    I can’t even work out what my own no. 1 is let alone pick out someone else’s choice! Too many good ones to choose from!

  4. Maybe my #1 is Iron Maiden’s “Hallowed Be Thy Name”, the live version from the “Live After Death” album.

  5. I think the first time I heard In My Life was whilst watching The Beatles Anthology Tv series. I immediately loved the song. I was given Rubber Soul as Xmas present not long after and it is still one of my favourite albums. You can see that album was the beginning of Lennon & McCartney’s songwriting really starting to take off.

    My other favourite from Rubber Soul is Norwegian Wiid (This Bird Has Flown).

  6. Arguably the greatest Beatles song.

    However, everyone knows that the greatest record ever is God Only Knows by the Beach Boys. Followed by, perhaps, Surf’s Up (Smile Sessions version).

    Sheesh!

    1. Everybody but this B-Boys fan, who treasures more highly ‘The Warmth of the Sun,’ and will brook no criticism here concerning his impeccable taste.

        1. I agree with all you, and I might add that “I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times” and “Cabin Essence” are also the greatest track of all time.

  7. I was in Vietnam in 1965-66 and I was only vaguely aware of the Beatles, but later, 1968 or 1969 I think, I discovered this song and it came to mean a lot to me.

    1. No! Great tune, but overplayed & over-covered to death. All meaning lost because it’s everywhere even in the lift [elevator].

  9. I like so many songs. It seems silly to rank them and give a hierarchy. I remember some years ago I listened to “And Your Bird Can Sing” over and over. At another point, it was “I Will” from the White Album.

    That George Martin remixed and mashed-up “Love” album is a gorgeous thing. For a while I was listening to that only for several weeks.

  10. Yesterday is my favorite. My guilty pleasure is Day Tripper. I can’t explain why, but I love the guitar riff.

      1. I’ve been told by my musically inclined friends that it’s “too pop” and not one of their best efforts. It’s also one of the songs that goes to 11 when I’m alone in the car.

        1. Jimi Hendrix did an enjoyable version. It wasn’t too pop for him. It’s on the Radio 1 sessions album.

    2. I liked their uncomplicated early leather rocker stuff ~ both their own compositions & the covers that got them up to speed. They were a bloody amazing hot, sweaty live band.

      Seeing them taking the roof off from a tiny stage in Hamburg or The Cavern must have been a bit special. Mostly I can take or leave their tape loops, multi-tracking, sitars etc. & just groove to their early tight, high energy 4-piece + harmonies perfection ~ So that’s my guilty secret… 🙂

      Anyway, here’s an example of what Liverpool humour, hard gigging & audience manipulation produces:-

      Shut Up While He’s Talking by John Lennon [1964]

      1. I should add that the above clip is from the days when the Mop Tops included comedy in their sets between the songs…

  11. Transcription of above photo of early Lennon lyrics:-

    “There are places I’ll remember,
    All my life, tho’ some have changed,
    Some forever but not for better,
    Some have gone and some remain.

    Penny Lane is one I’m missing,
    Up church Rd to the clock tower,
    In the circle of the Abbey,
    I have seen some happy hours.

    Past the tramsheds with no trams,
    On the 5 bus into town,
    Past the Dutch and St. Columbus,
    To the Dockers Umbrella that they pulled down.

    All these places have their memories,
    Some are dead and some are living”

    The Dockers Umbrella was the world’s first electric elevated railway [opened 1893] ~ take that Chicago Loop!

  12. The Old Familiar Faces By Charles Lamb [1775 – 1834]:-

    I have had playmates, I have had companions,
    In my days of childhood, in my joyful school-days,
    All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

    I have been laughing, I have been carousing,
    Drinking late, sitting late, with my bosom cronies,
    All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

    I loved a love once, fairest among women;
    Closed are her doors on me, I must not see her —
    All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

    I have a friend, a kinder friend has no man;
    Like an ingrate, I left my friend abruptly;
    Left him, to muse on the old familiar faces.

    Ghost-like, I paced round the haunts of my childhood.
    Earth seemed a desart I was bound to traverse,
    Seeking to find the old familiar faces.

    Friend of my bosom, thou more than a brother,
    Why wert not thou born in my father’s dwelling?
    So might we talk of the old familiar faces —

    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.

      1. McCartney came from a fairly ordinary working class [but aspirational] beginnings. He passed the 11-plus exam [only four in his year of ninety managed that] which got him into Liverpool Institute High School for Boys ~ that changed his life.

        Without that 11-plus pass & his dad being a jazz trumpeter & a pianist [with a piano at home] there would have been no Beatles. The Liverpool Institute almost certainly had Palgrave’s Golden Treasury of poetry & prose as a standard source in English Lit. classes ~ that book was everywhere in the schools. My school English Dept. in the 60s had over 40 of the one-volume condensed version so that each person in class had a copy to read from.

        The Charles Lamb poem is in there…

      2. Roger McGough, the rather fine poet who formed The Scaffold in 1962 with Paul McCartney’s brother Mike & John Gorman, and which, in 1968, had a number one hit with the song Lily the Pink. Had this to say in a 2006 INTERVIEW

        …and went back to Liverpool where my first job as a teacher was at St Kevin’s comprehensive school in Kirkby. The set textbook was Palgrave’s Golden Treasury of Verse which I’d had at school and not enjoyed, so I started telling the kids the poems I was writing and they enjoyed them because they were about grannies and football. I realised there was a market, that I was a poet.

        It’s worth clicking the link & reading. He also says Lennon & McCartney were very dismissive of “poetry” ~ Paul McCartney thought poetry was “a bit too girly,” but I’m certain McCartney was having to read Palgrave every week in school whether he liked it or not.

  14. What about a list of the worst Beatles songs? They have been elevated to such a height that I think it does a disservice to a good many other bands. Personally, I think the Sex Pistols did as much with one album as most did with whole catalogs. So, with that rant, I nominate as the worst Beatles song . . . Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da!

  15. For me, this is most defintely not my favorite, or even one of my favorite, Beatles’ songs. And definitely not one of my favorite R&R ballads.

  16. Speaking of Stuart Sutcliffe, although most films with the Beatles as characters (i.e. other actors playing the Beatles) are generally lame & cheesy, a happy exception is 1994’s “Backbeat” all about the short life of the Beatle’s first drummer. A should-see for Beatles’s fans, IMO.

    2. “Nowhere Boy” is pretty good. A wonderful performance by Kristin Scott Thomas as ‘Aunt Mimi”. At the end (spoiler alert) this comes up on the screen “John phoned Aunt Mimi when he got to Hamburg….and every week for the rest of his life”. Got a little bit of irritation in the eye at that point.

    1. It’s like when Phil Collins replaced Peter Gabriel as front man for Genesis. He dismissed all previous Genesis records as “some of it was okay”. Not sure he was serious either.

  21. Being from Liverpool, this song resonates with me more than any other Beatles song. Definitely their best piece of work, and has been used in conjunction with one of the greatest sporting achievements of the city. As a scouser, my opinion is instantly more valid…ha!

    1. Don’t know what Jerry thinks but many people with credentials outside popular music have recognised the quality of the Beatles work. Scaruffi doesn’t like them. That’s fine. I hate jazz – but I don’t think it’s worthless. It’s just not to my taste. Have a look at this and make your own mind up http://tinyurl.com/kwgxg4g

      In the words of Howard Goodall:- “From a standing start, knowing only a handful of chords between them, John Lennon and Paul McCartney turned themselves into the most influential composers of the late twentieth century. Their music wasn’t just immensely popular. It also proved that traditional western harmony – the main building block of European music – still had plenty to offer. (Even though avant-garde composers had turned their back on it.) By mixing pop and classical techniques, and cross-fertilising them with Indian, and electronic music, The Beatles refreshed and revitalised western harmony. They also transformed the recording studio from a dull box where you recaptured your live sound, into a musical laboratory, of exciting and completely new sounds. This was one of the most crucial advances in the way popular music was to be produced. But Lennon & McCartney didn’t just influence all popular music that followed them. They influenced classical music too. The leading classical composers of our own era have turned back to traditional harmony. More than anyone, Lennon & McCartney prefigured this trend. They showed that the old musical forms could be refashioned and refreshed, to make music that was both exciting and popular, and sophisticated and new. They, more than anyone, saved the western musical tradition from extinction, and gave it a new purpose and a direction. Not bad going for two boys who met at a local church fete and taught themselves their instruments.”

Comments are closed.