funny songs

"Day Tripper" is a song written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney and released by The Beatles as a "double A-side" single with "We Can Work It Out".

Under the pressure of needing a new single for the Christmas market, Lennon wrote most of the lyrics and the famous guitar break, while McCartney helped on the verses. "Day-tripper" was a typical play on words by John: "Day trippers are people who go on a day trip, right? Usually on a ferryboat or something. But [the song] was kind of ... you're just a weekend hippie. Get it?"

The lyric may, in fact, be partly about Paul's reluctance to experiment with LSD. (John and George had been using it since the summer of 1965, when a London dentist slipped it into their coffee after an evening meal. In August, John confessed that he "just ate it all the time.") On the face of it, however, the song is about a girl who leads the singer on. The line recorded as "she's a big teaser" was originally written as "she's a prick teaser." In this sense, it may equally be about the aloof heroine from "Norwegian Wood." In a 2005 interview McCartney admitted that "Day Tripper" was about drugs.

The song starts as a twelve-bar in E, which makes a feint at turning into a twelve-bar in the relative minor (i.e. the chorus) before doubling back to the expected B—another joke from a group which had clearly decided that wit was to be their new gimmick. Indeed, its sister track, "Drive My Car" was another of two "funny songs, songs with jokes in" (as Paul called them in Melody Maker) recorded for Rubber Soul, having been recorded just three days prior (on October 13th). Entirely dependent on its riff—catchier, if far less subtle than the line used on "Drive My Car"—"Day Tripper" repaid what its companion track had stolen from Otis Redding, who cut his own up-tempo version of the song for Stax Records in 1967. Lennon may have arrived at the riff in an attempt to better The Rolling Stones' "Satisfaction," which Redding also covered in 1966.

Covers

"Day Tripper" has also been covered by Electric Light Orchestra (on their 1974 live "Long Beach" album), Cheap Trick (on their Found All The Parts 10" EP), Sham 69, Daniel Ash (on his album Coming Down), Bad Brains, Ian Hunter, Jimi Hendrix, Sergio Mendes & Brasil '66 (on the Herb Alpert presents Sergio Mendes & Brazil '66 album), Nancy Sinatra, James Taylor, Type O Negative, and Yellow Magic Orchestra.

The famous guitar riff in the song was throroughly re-used in Devo's "The 4th Dimension", on their Shout! album (1984) and by 2 Live Crew on the As Nasty As They Wanna Be album track "Fraternity Record". It was also used, simultaneously with the "Satisfaction" riff, in the song "I Like To Rock" by April Wine. On the 1966 album, John Mayall's Bluesbreakers feat. Eric Clapton, the riff is played at the end of their version of 'What I'd say', the Ray Charles hit, perhaps drawing attention to the similarity of both tunes. The famous guitar riff is also heard as the outro on The Eagles' "Life in the Fast Lane".

References

• Turner, Steve. A Hard Day's Write: The Stories Behind Every Beatles' Song, Harper, New York: 1994, ISBN 0-06-095065-X
• MacDonald, Ian. Revolution in the Head: The Beatles' Records and the Sixties, Great Britain: 1994, ISBN 0-8050-2780-7