Oh boy! Now Paul McCartney says HE wrote famous opening lyrics to A Day In The Life

  • A Day In The Life featured on 1967 album Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
  • Sir Paul McCartney, 79, had previously claimed the song was about a politician 
  • But now appears to support John Lennon's view that it was inspired by car crash 

Sir Paul McCartney has changed his tune over Beatles classic A Day In The Life and now insists he wrote the opening lines, not John Lennon.

The song from the ground-breaking 1967 album Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band famously starts: 'I read the news today, oh boy'.

It goes on: 'He blew his mind out in a car/He didn't notice that the lights had changed.'

Macca, 79, previously claimed the song was about a politician.

But he now appears to support Lennon's explanation that the lyrics were inspired by a car crash which killed Guinness heir Tara Browne, 21, in 1966.

In the 1997 biography Many Years From Now, Sir Paul was quoted as saying: 'In my head I was imagining a politician bombed out on drugs who'd stopped at some traffic lights and didn't notice that the lights had changed.' 

He added the inspiration had 'been attributed to Tara Browne, which I don't believe is the case'.

Sir Paul McCartney, 79, now seems to support John Lennon's explanation that the song A Day In The Life was actually inspired by a car crash which killed Guinness heir Tara Browne, 21, in 1966 (Pictured left to right: Ringo Starr, John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison)

Sir Paul McCartney, 79, now seems to support John Lennon's explanation that the song A Day In The Life was actually inspired by a car crash which killed Guinness heir Tara Browne, 21, in 1966 (Pictured left to right: Ringo Starr, John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison)

But in his new book, The Lyrics, Sir Paul writes that he was inspired by the crash. 

He says of Browne: 'I wrote about him in A Day In The Life. He blew his mind out in a car/He didn't notice that the lights had changed.' 

Lennon, who died in a New York shooting in 1980, had said Browne's crash 'was in my mind when I was writing that verse'.

The Lyrics reveals the background to 154 of Sir Paul's songs and has been described 'as close to an autobiography' as he will ever publish.

In the foreword, he says: 'I hope that what I've written will show people something about my songs and my life which they haven't seen before.' 

The book will go on sale next Tuesday. 

Oh boy! Now Paul McCartney says HE wrote famous opening lyrics to A Day In The Life 

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