John Lennon was only 24 when he started mourning a life he hadn't even finished living yet. It’s wild if you think about it. Most kids that age are worried about rent or what’s happening on Friday night, but John was sitting on a bus, heading to his house in Weybridge, feeling the weight of every street corner he’d ever turned in Liverpool. He started scratching out lines about the places I remember by The Beatles—or, more accurately, the places John remembered before they became a global brand.
"In My Life" isn't just a song. It’s a ghost map.
When people talk about the places I remember by The Beatles, they usually default to the "In My Life" lyrics. It’s that haunting, baroque-pop masterpiece from the Rubber Soul album. But the story of how that song moved from a literal list of bus stops to a universal anthem for anyone who’s ever lost a friend is messy. It’s full of ego, fading memories, and a very specific geography of post-war Liverpool.
Honestly, the original draft was a bit of a slog. It was a long, rambling poem. It mentioned Penny Lane. It mentioned Church Road. It mentioned the clock tower. It was too literal. It felt like a travelogue rather than a heartbeat. John eventually realized that listing names was boring. He stripped the specifics away, leaving us with the "some are gone and some remain" sentiment that makes grown men cry in their cars sixty years later.
The Liverpool Map: Where the Memories Actually Live
If you go to Liverpool today, you can find the literal places I remember by The Beatles. But back in 1965, these weren't tourist traps with gift shops. They were just... home.
Take Penny Lane, for example. Before it was a Paul McCartney hit, it was a bus terminus where John would change buses to get to his aunt Mimi’s house. In the early drafts of "In My Life," Penny Lane was right there in the lyrics. It’s fascinating how the Beatles' creative process worked—they would mine their childhoods for the same raw material, but John would turn it into a melancholic meditation on mortality, while Paul would turn it into a vivid, cinematic character study.
Then there’s St. Peter’s Church. This is arguably the most important "place" in the history of modern music. It’s where John and Paul first met at a garden fete. If that church isn't there, the Beatles don't happen. Period. When John sings about places having "their moments," he’s indirectly nodding to that specific afternoon in Woolton.
Most people don't realize that the "places" weren't all happy. Liverpool in the 40s and 50s was grim. It was a city recovering from being bombed into oblivion during the Blitz. The "places" were often bombed-out shells of buildings where kids played. That’s the grit beneath the melody.
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The Mystery of the Clock Tower
In the discarded lyrics of "In My Life," John mentions a clock tower. Musicologists like Mark Lewisohn—basically the gold standard for Beatles history—have spent an absurd amount of time trying to pin down which one he meant. Was it the one at the Pier Head? Or a local landmark in Woolton?
It doesn't really matter. The point is that for John, these locations were anchors. When the world went crazy with Beatlemania, he looked backward to find his footing. He was terrified of losing his identity in the vacuum of fame.
Who Really Wrote the Music? The Great Lennon-McCartney Feud
The Beatles were usually pretty clear about who wrote what. If John sang it, he usually wrote it, and vice versa. But "In My Life" is a rare, prickly exception.
John claimed Paul wrote the "middle-eight" and the bridge. Paul, however, remembers it differently. In his biography Many Years From Now, Paul says he sat down at John's Mellotron and wrote the entire melody from start to finish, inspired by Smokey Robinson and the Miracles.
"I recall writing the whole melody," Paul said.
John said, "His contribution to the lines was the harmony and the middle-eight."
They can't both be right.
Kenneth Womack, a massive Beatles scholar, suggests that the truth is probably somewhere in the middle, but the data-driven approach is even weirder. A few years ago, Harvard statisticians actually used a "bag of words" algorithm and frequency analysis to determine who wrote the song. Their conclusion? The musical patterns lean heavily toward John. But music isn't math. The "places I remember" feel like John’s soul, but the elegance of the melody has Paul’s fingerprints all over it.
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George Martin’s Secret Weapon
We also have to talk about the "Bach" solo. That sped-up piano that sounds like a harpsichord? That wasn't a Beatle. It was George Martin.
John wanted something "Baroque." George Martin couldn't play the solo fast enough to match the tempo of the song, so he recorded it at half-speed and then sped up the tape. It gave the track this weird, timeless, slightly artificial quality. It fits. If you’re singing about memories, having a solo that sounds like a distorted music box from the 1700s is a stroke of genius.
Why "Some Are Gone and Some Remain" Hits Differently Now
The lyrics "All these places have their moments / With lovers and friends I still can recall / Some are dead and some are living" were written when John was barely an adult.
But then life happened.
Stuart Sutcliffe, the original bassist and John’s best friend, died of a brain hemorrhage in 1962. He is the "dead" friend John was likely thinking of. Then, in 1980, John himself became part of the "some are gone" category.
It’s hard to listen to the song now without a layer of meta-grief. When the Beatles released Now and Then recently—the "last" Beatles song—everyone went back to "In My Life." Why? Because it’s the DNA of their entire legacy. It’s the realization that the places I remember by The Beatles aren't just coordinates on a map of England. They are states of mind.
The Real People Behind the Lyrics
- Stuart Sutcliffe: The "lost" Beatle. His death haunted John for the rest of his life.
- Pete Shotton: John’s childhood best friend who stayed in Liverpool. He represents the "some are living" part of the equation.
- Julia Lennon: John's mother. She was killed by a car right outside the "places" he spent his youth. Her absence is the silent chord in the song.
Searching for the Places: A Modern Fan’s Reality
If you’re planning to visit the places I remember by The Beatles, don’t expect a quiet pilgrimage. It’s an industry.
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You’ll see the "Magical Mystery Tour" bus painted in bright yellow and blue. It’s a bit tacky. But if you get off the bus and walk down the suburban streets of Woolton, away from the tourists, you get it. The scale is so small. These were just regular kids from a working-class port city.
The "places" are surprisingly ordinary.
Mimi’s house, "Mendips," is a neat, semi-detached home.
The Strawberry Field gate (the original ones are in a museum now, the ones on-site are replicas) is just a gate to a former children's home.
The power of the music is that it took these mundane, grey, drizzly spots and turned them into something sacred. It gave a generation of people permission to be nostalgic for their own boring hometowns.
What Most People Get Wrong About the Song
People think "In My Life" is a love song for a woman.
It isn't. Not really.
It’s a love song for the past. It’s an admission that no matter how much you love your current partner, your history—the people who knew you before you were "someone"—will always hold a part of you that no one else can touch. John was basically telling Cynthia (his wife at the time) or Yoko (later) that "In my life, I love you more," but the verses spend all their time talking about everyone else.
It’s a song of conflict. It’s the struggle between who you were and who you are.
Actionable Steps for the Modern Beatles Fan
If you want to truly connect with the history of the places I remember by The Beatles, don't just stream the hits. You have to dig into the geography.
- Listen to the "In My Life" Demo: Find the early takes on the Anthology or the Rubber Soul Super Deluxe editions. You can hear the struggle in John's voice as he tries to find the melody. It’s much more tentative and human.
- Read "The Beatles: All These Years" by Mark Lewisohn: If you want the actual, factual history of these Liverpool locations without the myths, this is the only book that matters. It stops in 1962, but it covers the "places" in obsessive detail.
- Use Google Earth, Honestly: You don't have to fly to the UK. Look up "251 Menlove Avenue" and "20 Forthlin Road." See how close they lived to each other. See the bus routes. It makes the lyrics feel a lot more "real" and a lot less like a legend.
- Watch the "Now and Then" Music Video: It uses archival footage of these places. It’s a bit of a tear-jerker, but it bridges the gap between the 1965 "places I remember" and the 2020s reality.
The legacy of these places isn't in the bricks or the street signs. It’s in the fact that we still care. We still look for our own versions of those streets. We all have a list of people and spots that "have their moments," and as long as people keep growing old and looking back, this song is going to stay relevant. It’s a universal map for the human heart, drawn by a guy who was just trying to remember his way home on a bus in 1965.