Official album • Released in 1996
5:05 • Outtake • C • Takes 1, 2 and take 6 overdub. Assembled expressly for the Anthology, this composite embraces the best of the unreleased outtakes of A Day In The Life, plotting the making of the song that brought such a monumental close to the album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. The opening talk, the sounding of the alarm clock (used so effectively in the finished master) and the intro - John muttering "sugar plum fairy, sugar plum fairy"instead of the more conventional count-in - is from the start of Take 1, when the song was first taped on 19 January 1967. The main body of the music is Take 2, recorded during the same session. At this point the tape features John's acoustic guitar and haunting live lead vocal, sundry percussion instruments, piano (played by Paul) and an echo-drenched Mal Evans, one of the Beatles' two assistants, counting out the first of two long gaps that would later be so famously filled with the orchestral crescendos. After the counting, the track slips into mono to illustrate a guide vocal from Paul, taped on 20 January as an overdub on to Take 6 but then superseded by a better recording of the passage on 3 February. The original survives, however, thanks to a mono mix done in the interim, on 30 January. Take 2 then returns, leading into a new mix of the orchestral crescendos recorded on 10 January, but instead of the familiar final piano chord the track ends with Paul talking about the orchestral overdub, a short extract from one of four tapes of ambient studio sounds recorded at the same session.
Paul McCartney : Bass, Piano, Vocals Ringo Starr : Congas, Drums John Lennon : Acoustic guitar, Vocals George Harrison : Maracas George Martin : Producer Geoff Emerick : Recording engineer Mal Evans : Alarm clock, Backing vocals (bar count)
Session Recording: Jan 19, 1967 • Studio EMI Studios, Studio Two, Abbey Road
Session Overdubs: Jan 20, 1967 • Studio EMI Studios, Studio Two, Abbey Road
Session Overdubs: Feb 10, 1967 • Studio EMI Studios, Studio One, Abbey Road
