Day Tripper

For the transport ticket, see Day Tripper (ticket).

"Day Tripper"
Song
B-side	"We Can Work It Out"

"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 blues 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). Lennon may have arrived at the song's signature riff in an attempt to better The Rolling Stones' "Satisfaction."

"Day Tripper" is also distinguished by being the only Beatles song predominantly written by Lennon with a McCartney lead vocal. The released master contains one of the most noticeable mistakes of any Beatles song, a drop out at 1:58 (1:50 in the version on Past Masters, Volume Two) in which the lead guitar part momentarily disappears; this may have been due to cover tape damage or some other recording mishap.

Covers

"Day Tripper" was covered by the Electric Light Orchestra (on their 1974 live "Long Beach" album) and released as a single in Germany and the Netherlands, covered also by 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 (one version appears on his BBC Sessions), 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. Anne Murray had a minor hit with her version in 1975, reaching #59 on the Billboard charts.

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 John Mayall album Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton, a faster version of the riff is interspersed within the closing section of their cover of "What'd I Say," the 1959 rhythm & blues signature hit by Ray Charles, perhaps drawing attention to the similarity of both tunes. The tune's 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