As we mark this 50th anniversary of Sergeant Pepper, so many names besides John, Paul, George and Ringo come back into focus, including George Martin, Brian Epstein and Tara Browne.
Wait! Tara who? He was the 21-year old Guinness Brewery heir who was killed when he crashed his Lotus sports car on a Southwest London street in December 1966.
In 1980, John Lennon recalled reading of the young socialite's death. He told Playboy magazine, "I noticed two stories [in the Daily Mail]. One was about the Guinness heir who killed himself in a car... On the next page was a story about 4,000 potholes in the streets of Blackburn, Lancashire, that needed to be filled."
Using a bit of creative license, John claimed he wove the images of the two stories into the classic song "A Day in the Life."
Paul McCartney, who created the verse, had been a friend of Browne's. He has a different memory than John: "In my head I was imagining a politician bombed out on drugs who'd stopped at some traffic lights and he didn't notice that the lights had changed. The 'blew his mind' was purely a drug reference, nothing to do with a car crash."
Perhaps John didn't bring the point up directly as the song was assembled -- not wanting to upset McCartney, who'd just lost a friend. (Rolling Stone)