Paul McCartney on "A Day in the Life"

"There's been a story about a man who'd made the grade and there'd been a photograph of him sitting in his car. John said, 'I had to laugh.' He'd sort of blown his mind out in the car. He was just high on whatever he uses, say he was pissed in this big Bentley, sitting at the traffic lights. He's driving today, the chauffeur isn't there, and maybe he got high because of that. The lights have changed and he hasn't noticed that there's a crowd of housewives and they're all looking at him saying, 'Who's that? I've seen him in the papers' and they're not sure if he's from the House of Lords. He looks a bit like that with his homburg and white scarf and he's out of his screws.

"That's a bit of black comedy. The next bit was another song altogether but it just happened to fit. It was just me remembering what it was like to run up the road to catch a bus to school, having a smoke and going into class. We decided: 'Bugger this, we're going to write a turn-on song.' It was a reflection of my school days -- I would have a Woodbine then and somebody would speak and I would go into a dream.

"This was the only one in the album written as a deliberate provocation. A stick-that-in-your-pipe . . . But what we want is to turn you on to the truth rather than pot."