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Both songs were written about actual places in the band’s hometown of
Liverpool. Paul McCartney wrote “Penny Lane” in response to Lennon’s
“Strawberry Fields” (though both are credited to the Lennon/McCartney
team). Both the street itself and particular sites along it mentioned in
the song are actual places, and the name was also assigned to a bus
shelter on a roundabout where the members of The Beatles often passed
through in their youth.
The song in fact began many years earlier with notes McCartney took
about the barber’s shop and woman selling poppies while waiting at the
bus stop for Lennon. The shelter itself would later become a restaurant
named Sgt. Pepper’s, one of a number of businesses along the street and
in Liverpool to take their cue from The Beatles. The city has also in
recent decades sought to encourage the lane as an alternative business
and commerce district.
The lane was named for James Penny, an 18th Century slave trader and
anti-abolitionist. When the City of Liverpool started changing civic
place names with unsavory origins, Penny Lane was spared because of the
Fab Four connection.
The song represents what was the ever-growing sophistication of
McCartney’s pop songwriting, especially with its key shift, and has no
guitar on it. Producer George Martin arranged orchestration on the
recording, which includes the mid-song B-flat piccolo trumpet solo by
Dave Mason – not the rock musician but a classical player Paul had seen
on TV who also plays on “A Day In The Life,” “Magical Mystery Tour” and
“All You Need Is Love.” It was the first Beatles single to be sold in a
picture sleeve in the U.K.
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