87. Fixing a Hole

Maybe the definitive song on the definitive album of psychedelic rock

Fixing a Hole isn’t my favorite song from Sgt. Pepper, but I think it has a reasonable case for being the defining track from the album. The one that provides an encapsulation of the whole project both thematically and musically.¹

One of the most striking things about Pepper is that many of its songs are pretty straightforwardly about some very normal things that people do (home repair, watching TV, taking a drive, running into a parking attendant), and are inspired by some very normal objects you might encounter (a child’s drawing, a story in the news, a poster). It’s all basically just…a day in the life (which could just as easily be the title of Good Morning, Good Morning). These are things that would previously have been regarded as too boring to have ever been the subject of a pop song, but whose very everydayness makes them fascinating in context.

Because it’s not just about doing those things; it’s also about where your mind can go when you do them. And no song embodies this better than Fixing a Hole.

Listening to it, I often find myself struggling to describe exactly what feels so strange. Is it the meter? The cadence of the beat? The chords (which mostly shuttle between the major and minor keys of F)? The wandering bass line, which constantly pops up in surprising places? The harpsichord intro? The hauntingly beautiful and very odd harmonies? I really can’t say. I just know that I feel slightly uneasy when I hear it, like I’m an interloper in someone else’s dream.

Certainly, a major contributor is that highly swung, lightly-tapping beat, which gives the whole thing a sort of jazzy buoyancy that both sustains and deconstructs the melodic lines. But maybe the most shocking element is the guitar solo, which buzzsaws through the rest of the song in this strangely off-kilter way, like someone who’s had a few too many drinks doing the jitterbug through the middle of a dinner party.

Paul has said that it was essentially a song about ignoring “all those pissy people who told you, ‘Don’t daydream, don’t do this, don’t do that.’ It seemed to me that that was all wrong and that it was now time to fix all that. Mending was my meaning. Wanting to be free enough to let my mind wander.”²

This is a very countercultural ethos. Home repair is the essence of square when done for the wrong reasons—to maintain the perfect household image, for the sake of appearance—but can be transcendental when done for the right reasons and in the right way. Taking the time for things that weren’t important yesterday is an appeal to the idea that consumer culture pushes meaning on us, demands that we work and produce and consume and go, go, go. This song is about refusing those expectations and simply Being in the space that you’re in, letting go of the fantasy of control. And, as Devin McKinney notes, allowing the mind to wander “where it will go, not where it is told to go.”³

This idea that you can devote yourself to the mundane in order to free yourself from the constraints of the intentional mind is essentially meditative. But it’s a very countercultural sort of meditation, one which is less about freeing the spirit from the shackles of subjectivity and more about catalyzing subjectivity in a new sort of way. You unlock the doors of perception so that you can more fully see yourself.

And when you do see yourself, you come to understand that ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ really aren’t the thing. It’s not about being right or wrong. It’s about being where you belong.

1. Obviously, A Day in the Life has a better case for this, but like with many of their greatest songs, it’s just a little too good to represent anything other than itselff.

2. Many Years From Now, p. 314-315

3. Magic Circles: The Beatles in Dream and History, 2003, p. 187.