There much more stories about how they wrote it. Eg. the story about the orchestra. They booked the strings for a few days, but only had an idea of the downgoing glissando. He explained it to them, but they just stared. What does he mean? Which tones? So he took some empty note sheets, marked the beginning and the end and then drew a straight line from the top left to the bottom right, which was not easy because it spanned multiple lines. Now they got it. And they could play it now easily.

Also the Andy Warhol story. He made a painting of the crashed Lotus, the one they saw in the newspaper. I saw it live in my hometown's Warhol exhibition. This was quite a moment. Not even the curator knew about "A Day in the life" but it was so obvious.

One of my favorite things about this song is the way it was originally placed on the record. There's the huge piano chord, then silence, then a high pitched sound allegedly to mess with people's dogs, and then a second or two of gibberish speech that endlessly loops around the inner circle of the record.

Digital media plays that gibberish for a few seconds and then fades out, which is a different experience from the original record which would play it until you actually stopped the record.

It reminds me of how the move from CRT to LCD televisions broke the NES light gun, and makes me wonder what other edge cases we're unknowingly changing or disabling with current technology upgrades.

For a more musical deconstruction, check out Scott Freiman's video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTBB6iQbTsE

Also check http://www.icce.rug.nl/~soundscapes/DATABASES/AWP/aditl.shtm.... He has an absolute bible of a collection of analyses for every song in the Beatles' catalogue.

Thanks. For some, its about the lyrics. But for me, it is the music.

Hmm, not sure about the very grandiose 'quadruple plagal cadence' over 'circle of fifths'

aka "Hey Joe"

oh man, thanks, I know what I'm watching all night tonight

It's also worth noting how heavily the whole Sgt. Pepper is influenced by Freak Out! by Frank Zappa. That record basically singlehandedly started the psychedelic revolution in rock. If you don't know it go listen to it!

>"Freak Out! by Frank Zappa. That record basically singlehandedly started the psychedelic revolution in rock."

Zappa did some amazing stuff, but he didn't invent psychedelic rock. Can read more about the early history here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rock

Not invented, right (but I didn't say exactly that). However in the context of Sgt. Peppers:

According to David Fricke, the album was a major influence on The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Paul McCartney regarded Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band as The Beatles' Freak Out!

from Wikipedia

Okay, but I'd say there were probably multiple major influences. Pet Sounds is also meant to be a major influence on Sgt. Peppers:

https://www.quora.com/How-did-The-Beach-Boys-Pet-Sounds-infl...

It came out in '67, so it wouldn't have influenced Sgt. Peppers, but I read that John Lennon had like 10 copies of Beefheart's Safe as Milk (Ry Cooder played guitar on that one).

According to Wikipedia Pet Sounds was released in 1966 and Sgt Peppers in 1967.

Not only that that but McCartney and Wilson both know that they were influences on each other.

That last E chord never fails to send shivers down my spine.

Only chord more famous is the one that starts Help!

Surely you mean A Hard Day's Night?

Arguably, A Hard Day's Night's opening chord is the most iconic of theirs.

Is the major chord heard when a Mac boots up a reference to "A Day in the Life"?

Also-- there's a complete transcription of the Beatles output published by Hal Leonard. For the orchestral gliss from "A Day in the Life" there is an ascending line drawn on a single staff, and the staff is titled "orchestra". I thought that was pretty funny.

he's right it is not there best album, which is indeed rubber soul or revolver, however when Lennon sings 'she was just 17, you know what I mean", I've got a pretty damn good idea what he was on about...

Great article. Great story.

Hey. So this domain blocks access. I'd like to propose that posts containing links to all such domains be automatically held back. The reason is that posts to sites that require paid access are clearly and unquestionably spam, which is the promotion of paid material. And spam links should not be considered legitimate posts on any social media site wishing to maintain credibility and quality of discussion. Thanks for considering this.

>> The reason is that posts to sites that require paid access are clearly and unquestionably spam.

Nonsense, also citation required. WSJ has top-notch content.

I'm not being blocked. Are you sure that your ISP isn't blocking the website?

When I click on the link it says I need to purchase a $39.99/year or $3.99/month subscription to view the article.

(So weird someone is downvoting my posts about this, what possible reason could there be to do such a thing.)

HN has established guidelines with respect to paywalls.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

> Are paywalls ok?

> It's ok to post stories from sites with paywalls that have workarounds.

> In comments, it's ok to ask how to read an article and to help other users do so. But please don't post complaints about paywalls. Those are off topic.

Like your parent, I haven't had any issues ever accessing submissions from the Atlantic. Of course, that doesn't mean, that you're not having issues. Just today someone mentioned that they're able to access WSJ articles using the web link, while I'm not able to do so.

With respect to this (and other submissions from the Atlantic Monthly), I've never needed to use the web link. Submissions from the Atlantic Monthly are quite frequent on HN. I can't recall reading of anyone else having issues.

Does the "web" link (beneath the submission title between the "past" and "comments" links) work for you?

One reason: excluding all paid journalism seems dumb.

Ad hominems are fallacies.

I've come to think that quoting latin phrases at people is in itself a logical fallacy. Is there a latin phrase for that?

Probably because you have AdBlock installed. The Atlantic has a soft paywall.

Correct. If you have an ad blocker installed, you get the paywall. I simply ignore theatlantic.com links and go on with my life.

Rather uncharitable, no? The Atlantic doesn't bombard visitor with ads; they are considerate in maintaining the user experience. If people are reluctant to take a paid subscription, and consider Adblocking as righteous, how many options are left for publishers to monetise?

The Atlantic is willing to provide their content on terms of subscription or viewing ads. Your parent chooses not to accept those terms and not view their content. 'ryandrake isn't expressing an expectation that the Atlantic provide content without ads and without a subscription and is willing to not have access to the Atlantic content. This seems completely reasonable and fair to me.

Wait, let me get this straight: It's uncharitable to choose not to visit a web site due to not agreeing to its terms?

Ads and trackers... I don't mind helping out The Atlantic but their advertisers want more than just to serve me up links and visuals, they want to harvest my browsing history.

It's called Patreon.

It's the only choice. Or they will be blocked, period.

Yes that's just what we need, more paymetons exclusive content.

At least you didn't get squashed by a passing truck, running outside in your silly self-inflicted state.

Yeah. I consider myself lucky. But wont happen again now that the song is deleted.

I'm guessing something else will happen.

I find it interesting(strange) that individuals think this sort of smug contrarianism is welcome on HN.