John Lennon was only twenty-four when he sat down with a pen and a piece of hotel stationery to write the lyrics that would eventually become "In My Life." It’s a weirdly mature song for a guy who, at the time, was mostly known for shaking his mop-top hair and screaming over thousands of fainting teenagers. Most people recognize the opening harpsichord-style solo—which, fun fact, is actually a piano played at half-speed by George Martin—but the heart of the track lies in that opening line: "There are places I remember." Except, that wasn't how it started.
Lennon originally wrote a much longer, way more literal poem. It was basically a bus route through Liverpool. He name-checked Penny Lane, Church Road, the Clock Tower, and the Abbey Cinema. It was clunky. Honestly, it was a bit of a mess.
But then he stopped. He realized that a laundry list of locations didn't actually capture the feeling of nostalgia. He scrapped the specific addresses and went for the universal. By pivoting from a map of a city to a map of the human heart, he created a song that feels like it belongs to everyone. Even if you've never stepped foot in North West England, those places I remember become your childhood bedroom, your first apartment, or that coffee shop that isn't there anymore.
The Liverpool Geography Behind the Lyrics
If you go to Liverpool today, you can actually trace the "places I remember" that John was staring at in his mind's eye. It’s not just poetic license. He was specifically thinking about the number 5 bus route.
He mentions "some have gone and some remain." This wasn't just a flowery sentiment about the passage of time. Post-war Liverpool was changing fast in the sixties. Buildings that had survived the Blitz were being torn down for modern developments. The Abbey Cinema, which John loved, eventually became a supermarket (and was recently threatened with total demolition before being saved as a listed building).
When he says "some are dead and some are living," he was getting heavy. He was thinking about Stu Sutcliffe, the "fifth Beatle" who died of a brain haemorrhage in Hamburg just a few years earlier. He was thinking about his mother, Julia, who was struck by a car when John was a teenager. It’s this grit—the real loss behind the melody—that keeps the song from being sugary sweet. It's actually kind of dark if you sit with it long enough.
The Lennon-McCartney Credit Dispute
You can't talk about these lyrics without hitting the biggest controversy in Beatles history: who actually wrote the music?
John said he wrote the whole thing and Paul just helped with the middle eight. Paul remembers it differently. In his biography Many Years From Now, Paul claims he took John’s lyrics, sat at a Mellotron, and wrote the entire melody from scratch, inspired by Smokey Robinson and the Miracles.
It’s a stalemate.
🔗 Read more: Shrek 1 Full Movie Free: What Most People Get Wrong About Streaming It
What’s interesting is that even mathematicians have tried to solve this. In 2018, a group of researchers from Harvard and Dalhousie University used a "bag-of-words" statistical model to analyze the musical patterns. Their conclusion? The music has a 18.9% probability of being written by McCartney. It statistically screams Lennon. But then again, data can't measure the way two friends collaborate in a room, so we’ll probably never know the absolute truth.
Why the Brain Fixates on Places We Remember
There is a scientific reason why this song wrecks us every time it comes on the radio. It’s called the "reminiscence bump."
Psychologists have found that adults over the age of thirty tend to have an incredibly high volume of vivid memories from the ages of fifteen to twenty-five. This is when our identities are forming. It’s when we’re experiencing "firsts." John was right in the thick of that bump when he wrote the song.
When you hear "there places I remember," your brain isn't just processing audio frequencies. It’s triggering the hippocampus. You aren't just thinking about a place; you’re re-experiencing the neurochemical state you were in when you were there. That’s why nostalgia feels like a physical ache sometimes. It's a glitch in the way we perceive time.
The George Martin Magic Touch
We have to talk about the "Baroque" sound. The song felt like it needed something classical, but John couldn't figure out what. He told George Martin to "put something Baroque-sounding in there."
Martin tried to play a Bach-style solo on the piano, but the song's tempo was too fast for his fingers to hit those complex trills perfectly. His solution was pure genius. He recorded the piano solo with the tape running at half-speed. When they played it back at normal speed, it was an octave higher and twice as fast.
It gave the piano a bright, harpsichord-like "tinkly" quality. It sounds precise. Mechanical. Almost like a clock ticking, which fits the theme of time passing perfectly. It was a technical hack that ended up defining the song's aesthetic.
Misconceptions About the "In My Life" Meaning
A lot of people play this at weddings. It makes sense on the surface. "In my life, I love you more." It’s romantic.
But if you look closer, the song is actually about the limitations of love. It’s about the fact that no matter how much you love someone now, you can’t erase the people and places that came before them. It’s an admission that our hearts are crowded.
- It acknowledges that past loves still have "their moments."
- It admits that those memories "lose their meaning" when compared to a new love, but they don't disappear.
- It's a song about the tension between the past and the present.
That’s a much more complex, adult version of love than your standard "I’ll love you forever" pop song. It’s honest. It’s kinda messy.
The Legacy of the 1965 Rubber Soul Sessions
The album Rubber Soul was a turning point. Before this, the Beatles were writing songs about holding hands and "She Loves You, Yeah Yeah Yeah." After this? They were writing about memory, drug use, and failing marriages.
"There places I remember" was the anchor for this transition. It proved that pop music could be literature. Bob Dylan famously heard the album and realized the Beatles were no longer just "teenyboppers." They were peers.
The influence of this specific track shows up in everything from Oasis to Radiohead. Any time a songwriter gets introspective and looks back at their hometown with a mix of affection and sadness, they are walking through the door Lennon opened in 1965.
Mapping Your Own "Places I Remember"
If you want to actually apply the "Lennon method" to your own life or even just understand the song better, you have to look at your own geography.
Start by thinking about the physical anchors of your childhood. Not the big events, but the "insignificant" spots. The bus stop. The cracked sidewalk. The specific smell of a relative's kitchen.
Lennon realized that the details are the only things that stay real. The big emotions fade, but the image of a "clock tower" stays sharp. That's the secret to why the song works. It uses concrete nouns to describe abstract feelings.
Moving Forward With the Past
We spend a lot of time trying to live in the "now." Everyone tells you to be present. But "In My Life" suggests that our past is always present anyway. You don't have to choose between where you’ve been and where you are.
Those places you remember aren't baggage. They’re the foundation.
If you're feeling stuck or disconnected, try doing what Lennon did. Sit down and write out your "bus route." Don't worry about being poetic. Just name the streets. Name the shops. Name the people who aren't around anymore.
You’ll find that "there places I remember" isn't just a song lyric; it’s a way of grounding yourself in a world that moves way too fast.
Actionable Steps to Reconnect with Your Own History:
- Identify your "Anchor Locations": Pick three physical spots from your youth that no longer exist or have changed significantly. Write down one specific sensory detail for each (the sound of the door, the temperature of the air).
- Audit your nostalgia: Recognize that it's okay for "some have gone and some remain." Accepting the loss of a place is part of appreciating its impact on your current self.
- Listen with New Ears: Re-listen to the Rubber Soul version of the track. Focus specifically on the bass line by Paul—it’s deceptively simple but provides the "walk" that keeps the song moving forward while the lyrics look back.
- Visit Digitally: Use Google Street View to look at an old neighborhood. Notice what has changed. Instead of feeling sad about the supermarket that replaced your cinema, acknowledge the "living" version of the place in your memory as equally valid.
The song doesn't end on a sad note. It ends with an affirmation of current love. The past is the prologue, not the whole story. Use your memories to inform your present, but don't let them become a cage. John Lennon wrote those words when he was 24, looking back at a life that had barely started, yet he understood that we are all just a collection of the places we've been.