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SongMeanings: A Day In The Life

02 July 2004   

 

SongMeanings: A Day In The Life

browne_and_wife_1933asis Tara Browne's dad: Lord Oranmore and Browne and his mum, I guess.

A slightly more death of an innocent version from Music History: Tara Browne had been driving his Lotus Elan on Redcliffe Gardens when a Volkswagen pulled out in front of him, causing him to swerve his car, striking a parked van. Browne died on the way to the hospital.

There's more technical analysis of the song, about the orchestra the two different songs knitted together...

This song has been playing over and over here, the last few days. Funny how songs can get to you like that. I needed to find out the story, who was it who blew his brains out?

A day in the life
I read the news today oh boy
about a lucky man who made the grade
and though the news was rather sad
well I just had to laugh
I saw the photograph.

He blew his mind out in a car
he didn't notice that the lights had changed
a crowd of people stood and stared
they'd seen his face before
nobody was really sure
if he was from the House of Lords.

Song meanings: The song refers to Tara Browne, a partygoer in his day, deemed a "socialite" by The Pretty Things in the title of the song "Death of a Socialite," dedicated to Tara. He was the son of Lord Oranmore and Browne, thus had he lived to see the age of twenty-one, he would have inherited his father's estate engrossed by the Guiness beer company. I think this is what the House of Lords line refers to. John was not very close to Tara, though they surely had met. Paul, on the other hand, was a friend of Tara's. Another cog in the Paul Is Dead controversy is the scar Paul got on his lip after wrecking a motorcycle while joyriding with Tara.

In the early morning hours of December 18, 1966, with his girlfriend Suki Poitier in the passenger seat, he sped through a red light in Redcliffe Square, swerved to miss an oncoming VW Bug, and slammed into a parked van, killing Tara. Yet, Suki walked away hardly scratched. In January, the article about Tara's death was run in the Daily Mail and John put it in the song. Suki, by the way, dated many rockstars including Jimi Hendrix, Brian Jones, and Keith Richards.

Somebody who died when I was three years old. As old as Bradley is now. The pictures we paint from such a few words.

Two good ways of going in my book. A car accident, or bullet to the brain.


1830 Also posted to: personal . At: 8:43:02 PM  . .
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