In the 1960s, The Beatles were enjoying No. 1 hits like candy. And on this day in 1967, they scored yet another No. 1 in the United States with a psychedelic pop jam. On this very day, March 18, 1967, The Beatles scored a hefty hit with “Penny Lane”. The song peaked at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart on this day. It remained at the top for one week. “Penny Lane” would remain on the chart in some fashion for 10 weeks.
The song was released as a double A-side with “Strawberry Fields Forever”. That song ended up being a bit less popular in the United States than “Penny Lane”. “Strawberry Fields Forever” peaked at No. 8 on the Hot 100.
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The Origins of “Penny Lane”
“Penny Lane” was written by Paul McCartney. The tune makes some pretty direct references to where he and bandmates George Harrison and John Lennon grew up in Liverpool. The lane in question was a real place, a street in Liverpool that McCartney traversed often in his youth, as did two of his bandmates. “Penny Lane” is the most stark reference to the street. Though, Lennon had previously written the song “In My Life” with an original lyric that referenced the street.
Much of Lennon and McCartney’s songwriting partnership can be linked back to bus rides taken via Penny Lane throughout Liverpool. McCartney confirmed that notion himself.
“‘Penny Lane’ was kind of nostalgic, but it was really [about] a place that John and I knew,” said McCartney in 2009. “I’d get a bus to his house and I’d have to change at Penny Lane, or the same with him to me, so we often hung out at that terminus, like a roundabout. It was a place that we both knew, and so we both knew the things that turned up in the story.”
“The bank was there, and that was where the tram sheds were and people waiting and the inspector stood there, the fire engines were down there,” Lennon said of the song and its namesake in 1970, per the book Revolution In The Head: The Beatles’ Records And The Sixties. “It was reliving childhood.”
“Penny Lane” was originally supposed to make it to Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. In the end, it was released as a double A-side single. That was done to satisfy their record company’s need for a new release. Outside of hitting No. 1 in the US, “Penny Lane” was a Top 5 hit throughout Europe and the UK.
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