In My Life was composed at Kenwood, John Lennon's house in Weybridge, England.
I used to write upstairs where I had about ten Brunell tape recorders all linked up, I still have them. I'd mastered them over the period of a year or two – I could never make a rock 'n' roll record but I could make some far out stuff on it. I wrote it upstairs, that was one where I wrote the lyrics first and then sang it. That was usually the case with things like In My Life and [Across The] Universe and some of the ones that stand out a bit...I think on Norwegian Wood and In My Life Paul helped with the middle eight, to give credit where it's due.
Rolling Stone, 1970
McCartney's recollection of the song is somewhat different. Although he and Lennon said much over the years about the backgrounds to their songs, only when discussing In My Life and Eleanor Rigby did their memories substantially differ.
I arrived at John's house for a writing session and he had the very nice opening stanzas of the song. As many of our songs were, it was the first pangs of nostalgia for Liverpool...As I recall, he didn't have a tune to it, and my recollection, I think, is at variance with John's. I said, 'Well, you haven't got a tune, let me just go and work on it.' And I went down to the half-landing, where John had a Mellotron, and I sat there and put together a tune based in my mind on Smokey Robinson and the Miracles...
I recall writing the whole melody. And it actually does sound very like me, if you analyse it. I was obviously working to lyrics. The melody's structure is very me. So my recollection is saying to John, 'Just go and have a cup of tea or something. Let me be with this for ten minutes on my own and I'll do it'...
I tried to keep it melodic but a bit bluesy, with the minors and little harmonies, and then my recollection is going back up into the room and saying, 'Got it, great! Good tune, I think. What d'you think?' John said, 'Nice,' and we continued working with it from then, using that melody and filling out the rest of the verses...
So it was John's original inspiration, I think my melody, I think my guitar riff. I don't want to be categorical about this, but that's my recollection... I find it very gratifying that out of everything we wrote, we only appear to disagree over two songs.
Many Years From Now, Barry Miles
In the studio
One of the first songs to be recorded for Rubber Soul, The Beatles recorded the rhythm track of In My Life on 18 October 1965. This they did in three takes, after a period of rehearsal.
The instrumental break was left without a solo, as the group was undecided as to how it should sound. This dilemma was solved on 22 October by George Martin.
In My Life is one of my favourite songs because it is so much John. A super track and such a simple song. There's a bit where John couldn't decide what to do in the middle and, while they were having their tea break, I put down a baroque piano solo which John didn't hear until he came back. What I wanted was too intricate for me to do live, so I did it with a half-speed piano, then sped it up, and he liked it.
Anthology
Martin originally tried the solo on a Hammond organ, which didn't give the desired sound. He then switched to a piano, performing the celebrated solo slower and an octave lower than it sounds on the final version, so that it gave the desired harpsichord effect when sped up.
I did it with what I call a 'wound up' piano, which was at double speed – partly because you get a harpsichord sound by shortening the attack of everything, but also because I couldn't play it at real speed anyway. So I played it on piano at exactly half normal speed, and down an octave. When you bring the tape back to normal speed again, it sounds pretty brilliant. It's a means of tricking everybody into thinking you can do something really well.
Sounds Of The Sixties, BBC Radio 2
I love this song and I adore these comments as well. May I please try to clarify this issue. I believe they are referring to the musical link created by the melody of “With lovers and friends… ” heading back to … “In my life”. That may be considered the “middle 8” here, and it is genius. The song is genius, combining classical music with popular music and coming up with something unique and beautiful.
Paul is only writing that he took the musical ideas John handed him, told him to go have a cup of tea, sat down and put it all together. John is only saying he wrote the lyrics and had the general musical idea beginning with “There are places I remember…”. They really do not disagree that much. Both could be basically right. Paul could feel he tied it all together musically and John could remember that he had the musical idea and Paul tied it together with a twist on “With lovers and friends…”. Both agree on George Martin’s classical music input on the piano… Are they so far apart? I don’t think so. John certainly did not have a complete musical composition when he went to Paul. Paul certainly did not say he came up with the basic idea… they both deserve credit, and we may accept both 80 % to 90 % of both accounts.
Peace and love to all.
Cheers.
Vive les Beatles pour une éternité !
Umm… not quite. John is saying that all Paul contributed (musically) was the instrumental middle 8 bars, and some harmony ideas. This is a Lennon song musically and lyrically through and through.
Paul disagrees, read Many Years From Now
well, with the proviso that none of us were there, the disagreements are interesting. Basically Lennon is saying the melody is his and Paul helped tie the song together musically. Basically 80% Lennon and 20% Paul. Paul is saying that he wrote the intro bit and the music for the song…more of a 50/50 mix…Similar to their disagreement on Rigby…Lennon says he wrote about 50% of the lyrics…Paul said Lennon contributed about 20% with George, Ringo and Pete Shotten all helping with lyrics…So, who’s right? Who knows?
The song belongs to John. Sorry, Paul.
Considering the number of songs they worked on and the fact that people’s memories can be unreliable,if they only disagreed on who wrote two of those songs, I’d say that ain’t bad at all. In both cases they agree that there was some collaboration; the disagreement is over the extent. I can easily imagine how such disagreements arise- they frequently arise in other bands. That’s one reason why crediting all the songs they wrote to Lennon-MccCartney was a good idea: there was no need to argue over the precise amount of credit each one should have for each song. At some points John wrote more; at others Paul wrote more. It seems to have more less evened out over time.
Of all the Beatles songs I love, know by heart, and have played for decades (which is almost all of them), this is, at once, the most heartbreaking and exhilarating.
Whenever I hear this track (and I’ve heard it thousands of times) images of people always flash through my mind. Like a dream, almost. But not a dream, just memories crowding one upon the other that feel dream-like at this point.
Sadness. Happiness. Melancholy. Wishfuillness. All of it in a rush.
Only music (lyrics, melody, and arrangement) can do that to a human. Nothing else.
This is the all time best “life” song that has ever been written. The words the melody the feeling. My wife and I walked my daughter down the isle to an amazing piano player do this in slow tempo. Hope some of you Beatle fans can one day do the same at your daughters wedding.
This song ranks up with the greatest Beatles tunes, Strawberry Fields, I Am The Walrus, Elanor Rigby, and A Day In The Life. Those songs were all masterpieces, the kind of songs where you could say, even if a person never did anything else in life, that song alone made them great.
In My Life has now been analysed sylistically, mathematically, by structure, tone, melody etc, by some Harvard people, and they found a very high probability for who made this song (the music that is).
You’ll find the allegedly convincing result here: https://phys.org/news/2018-07-lennon-mccartney-statistical-analysis-authorship.html
The so-called scientific study “proves” Paul’s contribution to “In My Life” was minimal which is at variance with his recollection. I hope Paul doesn’t give in to any possible urge he may have to publicly respond to this. The song is a Lennon/McCartney masterpiece and let’s leave it at that.
All that matters is it’s a great Lennon / McCartney song as so many of them are. Just let it be.
If you meant to tell people to “just let it be”, as it’s a bad thing to try and seek the truth about these things, I think that appears as kind of an arrogant thing to say. It being a “great Lennon / McCartney song” isn’t necessarily “all that matters” for everyone. But maybe I misinterpreted you (sorry if that’s the case, then I’ll stand corrected). Anyway, it’s perfectly legitimate and actually very interesting for many Beatles-fans to get knowledge about these things.
About the study – which of course isn’t 100% scientific in itself – personally, I don’t think Paul didn’t contribute to this song. He clearly did. Far more than 0.018% or whatever that meant (I don’t think that’s what it actually meant..). What seems to be a reasonable reading of it though, is that John’s recollection of this is more believable than Paul’s. Nothing more.
PS I’m the same guy as “Vince”, had to create a new account.
Overall, yes, it’s definitely a Lennon song.
But I don’t doubt for a second that McCartney contributed to it
– on the “though I know I’ll never lose affection” section
– possibly when creating their vocal harmony, slight changes in the melody became necessary
Although the mathematical approach sounds appealing to me, it appears they are concluding that Paul contributed less than John even said he did. And they then add that Paul wrote The Word, and John said he wrote it. So, I’m going to choose to believe that John wrote the verses melody, and Paul wrote the middle 8 melody. And then I’ll repeat my mantra that part of the magic of the early and mid Beatles was that they didn’t worry much about who was contributing what, and their surrendering of their individual egos was what made them so much better together than they were apart. They completed each other artistically in such a perfect way. It was only later after the bond was broken that they started worrying about individual credit. In the early days they spoke in terms of “we” I think.