Day Tripper
"Day Tripper" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles that was released as a double A-side single with "We Can Work It Out" in December 1965. The song was written primarily by John Lennon with some contributions from Paul McCartney and was credited to the Lennon–McCartney partnership. Both songs were recorded during the sessions for the band's Rubber Soul album. The single topped charts in Britain, Ireland, the Netherlands and Norway. In the United States, "Day Tripper" peaked at number five on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and "We Can Work It Out" held the top position.
"Day Tripper" is a rock song based around an electric guitar riff and drawing on the influence of American soul music. The Beatles included it in their concert set-list until their retirement from live performances in late August 1966. The band's use of promotional films to market the single anticipated the modern music video.
In the UK, "Day Tripper" / "We Can Work It Out" was the seventh highest selling single of the 1960s, and the Christmas number one of 1965. As of December 2018, it was the 54th best-selling single of all time in the UK – one of six Beatles singles included in the top sales rankings published by the Official Charts Company.
Background and inspiration
"Day Tripper" was written early in the Rubber Soul sessions when the Beatles were under pressure to produce a new single for the Christmas market. John Lennon wrote the music and most of the lyrics, while Paul McCartney contributed some of the lyrics. Lennon based the song's guitar riff on that from Bobby Parker's "Watch Your Step", which had also been his model for "I Feel Fine" in 1964. In a 1980 interview, Lennon said of "Day Tripper": "That's mine. Including the lick, the guitar break and the whole bit." In the 1997 book Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now, McCartney claims that it was a collaboration but Lennon deserved "the main credit".Lennon described "Day Tripper" as a "drug song" in 1970, and in a 2004 interview McCartney said it was "about acid". The song title is a play on words referring to both a tourist on a day-trip and a "trip" in the sense of a psychedelic experience. Lennon recalled: "Day trippers are people who go on a day trip, right? Usually on a ferryboat or something. But was kind of ... 'you're just a weekend hippie.' Get it?" In Many Years from Now, McCartney says that "Day Tripper" was about sex and drugs; he describes it as "a tongue-in-cheek song about someone who was ... committed only in part to the idea. Whereas we saw ourselves as full-time trippers..."
During the sessions for Rubber Soul, a rift was growing between McCartney and his bandmates as he continued to abstain from taking LSD. After Lennon and George Harrison had first taken the drug in London early in 1965, Ringo Starr had joined them for their second experience, which took place in Los Angeles when the Beatles stopped there during their August 1965 US tour. Given McCartney's continued abstinence, author Ian MacDonald says that the song's lyrics may well have been partly directed at him, a perspective shared by music journalist Keith Cameron.
When writing and recording their new songs, the Beatles drew on their experiences from the recent US tour.Lewisohn, Mark. "High Times". In:. Throughout the summer, soul music had been one of the dominant sounds heard on American radio, particularly singles by acts signed to the Motown and Stax record labels. Author Jon Savage writes that in the British pop scene of late 1965, American soul music was "everywhere", and the Beatles readily embraced the genre in both "Day Tripper" and the Rubber Soul track "Drive My Car". According to MacDonald, Lennon possibly came up with the riff in an effort to improve on the Rolling Stones' 1965 hit single " Satisfaction", which similarly showed the influence of Stax soul.
Composition
Guitar riff
The main compositional feature of "Day Tripper" is its two-bar, single-chord guitar riff. The riff opens and closes the song, and forms the basis of the verses. In addition, the pattern is transposed to the IV chord during the verses and to the V chord for the bridge.In musicologist Alan Pollack's description:
riff has both the overall shape of a non-symmetrical rising arch whose descent does not completely balance out its ascent, yet it makes an impression of upward bound saw-tooth angularity; note particularly the way it drops a full octave in the space of a single eighth note whenever it repeats. Harmonically it outlines a bluesy I9 chord. Rhythmically, it places hard syncopations on the eighth note preceding both the first and third beat of the second measure, while its final three eighth notes provide momentum that effectively leads into the repeat.
Musicologist Walter Everett highlights the riff as an example of the Beatles drawing inspiration from other artists and improving on the source material. He sees the "Day Tripper" riff as a combination of the ostinatos heard on Motown recordings such as the Temptations' "My Girl", Barrett Strong's "Money " and Marvin Gaye's "I'll Be Doggone", while also incorporating a rockabilly element that recalls Roy Orbison's "Oh, Pretty Woman".
Musical structure
The song is in common time throughout and the home key is E major. It opens with the riff played in unison on lead and rhythm guitar, followed by a staggered entrance of bass guitar, tambourine and finally drums. After this extended intro, the song's structure comprises two verses, a bridge that serves as an instrumental break, then a final verse, and the outro.The verse adheres to the twelve-bar blues form for eight bars, with a change to the IV chord followed by the expected return to I. The chorus portion of the verse then departs from the form by moving to the parallel major version of the home key's relative minor. As throughout the song, only major chords are used in this portion: F7 for four bars, and one bar each of A7, G7, C7 and B7.
The bridge remains on the B chord for its entirety and takes the form of a "rave-up". The section begins with repetitions of the main riff and ends with a blues-inflected guitar solo accompanied by wordless harmony singing. A 12-note rising guitar scale sounds on the second beat of each bar, starting with a mid-range B note and climbing over an octave to F. In Everett's view, the intensity of the bridge – the bass pedal, rising scale, guitar solos, cymbal playing, and increased attack on the vocalised "aah"s – conveys the realisation that the singer is being used by the female day-tripper and "express a gradually-arising, yet sudden sensation of, enlightenment".
Vocal line and lyrics
"Day Tripper" follows a strand of Lennon's writing style in which the lyrics put down a woman who claims to be more than what she delivers, a theme commonly found in rhythm and blues and blues songs. In the description of music critic Tim Riley, the song is about "being awakened and jilted all at once", as best conveyed in the singer's declaration that "It took me so long to find out". The line "She's a big teaser" was a code for "She's a prick teaser."The vocal line over the verses contrasts with the flowing and circular quality of the main riff by including downward and abrupt phrasing. Pollack cites this aspect as an example of the composition's manipulation of harmonic rhythm. He also highlights the judicious use of falsetto and change of wording in the final chorus – where the day tripper's "one-way ticket" becomes a reference to her as a "Sunday driver" – as examples of the song's avoidance of "rote consistency" and its ability to continually surprise. In music journalist Paul Du Noyer's view, the song reveals "multiple layers in play". He cites "the triple implication of 'day tripper' as flighty girlfriend, or weekend hop-head, or uncommitted disciple of the new wisdom", adding that the ascending wordless vocalisation in the bridge serves as a "self-reference to that defining Beatle moment" in their 1963 cover of "Twist and Shout".
Recording
The Beatles recorded the song at their first session after completing "Drive My Car". The session took place at EMI Studios in London on 16 October 1965. Unusually for the time, the group allowed visitors into the studio, as Lennon's wife Cynthia and his half-sisters Julia Baird and Jacqui Dykins attended part of the session. The band rehearsed the song for much of the afternoon before taping the basic track. The line-up was Lennon and Harrison on rhythm and lead guitar respectively, McCartney on bass and Starr on drums.Take 3 was selected for overdubs, having been the only take in which the performance did not break down. On the studio tapes from the session, Starr can be heard encouraging his bandmates to "really rock it this time" before take 1. MacDonald describes Starr's drumming over the choruses as "another in-joke", further to the Beatles' channelling of the Stax sound on "Drive My Car", as his reversion to fours on the bass drum recalls Al Jackson's playing with Booker T. & the M.G.'s.
Lennon and McCartney overdubbed lead vocals, with McCartney the more prominent singer in the verses' first and third lines, and Harrison added a harmony vocal over the choruses and the instrumental bridge. Starr overdubbed the tambourine.
Music journalist Rob Chapman views the guitar interplay on "Day Tripper" as an example of the Beatles' "baroque sonata" approach to musical arrangements. Harrison played the bridge's rising scale using a guitar volume-pedal effect, and overdubbed a second lead guitar part over the same section. Everett, Riley and authors Jean-Michel Guesdon and Philippe Margotin say that Harrison played the blues solo, while MacDonald credits Lennon. After completing the song late that evening, the band recorded the basic track for "If I Needed Someone" in a single take.