“Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes…”
You know you sang along with that. I certainly did.
This song is part of English history and on this particular day in 1967, the Beatles did a last minute remix of it along with “Strawberry Fields Forever” the double a side single that they released it with.
To me this is a classic song that melds an orchestra with contemporary instruments, and even finds time to add sound effects – a bell for the fire engine referenced in the lyrics. I love the electric piano holding down the chords sitting in snugly with the piccolo trumpet solo.
The way this changes key in the chorus and then back for the verse always caught my ear as an adult musician, as a kid it was just a song that I remember hearing a lot, and still conjures up memories of summer mornings at school where two older kids – Mark and Philip used to sing with me Beatles songs and this one will forever stay in my memory.
Penny Lane is a street in Liverpool where the Beatles grew up, and even things like the Barbershop name checked in the first verse is there, and this is probably one of the most reflective of their songs, lyric wise. This is a beauty of a song. I could write an essay on this but I’ll save it for another day.
