The Beatles Lyrics

by Hunter Davies

  ‘The drugs are to prevent the rest of the world crowding in on you,’ said John. ‘They don’t make you write any better. I never wrote any better stuff because I was on acid or not on acid.’

  Rubber Soul can be seen as a transitional stage in the dynamics of the group. John has been the leader ever since the beginning, and on their recent albums he had written most of the songs and taken the lead in most decisions. But with Rubber Soul Paul began providing more songs, and they were a rather different sort of song, shifting the direction of the group. Could it have been all those nasty drugs that John later admitted he was eating like sweets, slowing him down, making him less bothered? Or was it down to problems with Cynthia and his marriage?

  George has two numbers on the new album, as on the previous one, which indicates how much he was growing: ‘Songwriting until then had been a bit frightening for me. John and Paul had been writing songs since they were three years old… They’d had a lot of practice. They’d written most of their bad songs before we’d even come into the recording studios… I had to come from nowhere and start writing.’ George considered Rubber Soul to be their best album: ‘It’s my favourite, even at the time. We certainly knew we were making a good album. We were suddenly hearing sounds that we weren’t able to hear before, everything was blossoming at the time, including us, because we were still growing.’

  Just before the release of Rubber Soul, Francis Wyndham interviewed Paul for a long-forgotten publication called London Life. It was one of the first serious interviews, devoted to the work rather than the hairstyles. Paul talks about Robert Graves and Francis Bacon, and mentions that John is reading a book about the Christian view of pain and pleasure–revealing their wide-ranging interest in the arts generally. He says the new album–which nobody had yet heard–will contain funny stuff, and mentions ‘Norwegian Wood’. He also says that he and John would like to write a whole song on one note: ‘Melodic songs are quite easy to write–to write a good song on just one note is really very hard.’ He also admits that they borrow sounds and riffs from other people: ‘We are the world’s biggest pinchers.’

  The interview finishes with Paul talking about the future: ‘The songwriting thing looks the only thing you could do at 60. I wouldn’t mind being a white-haired old man writing songs–but I’d hate to be a white-haired old Beatle at the Empire Stadium playing for people.’

  Day Tripper

  On the same day Rubber Soul came out, a new single was released–their first double A side. Traditionally, the track on side A was the better song, the one with the most commercial potential, destined to get airplay and go to number one, while the B side was often just a filler. When the Beatles designated both John’s ‘Day Tripper’ and Paul’s ‘We Can Work It Out’ A sides, it was partly because everyone agreed both songs were strong, but perhaps also because Paul did not want his contribution to be downgraded.

  ‘Day Tripper’ begins with the enormously long double-tracked guitar riff, which had thousands of youths all over the world standing in front of the mirror pretending to play it–then you hear Paul singing ‘Got a good reason’. It’s an unusual, sideways, elliptical way into a song, but I still don’t understand the first line–why had he a good reason to take the easy way out–or how? Did he take advantage of her availability and quickly move on, or chuck her because she was just a tease?

  After the first two lines, it gets a bit clearer, though there are still ambiguities. Sexually, she was a prick teaser–which is the phrase John wanted to use but realized the suits would not allow it and it became ‘big teaser’. He tried to please her, but found out she only played one-night stands. The inference here is that she had the upper hand–and he got the run-around. Then there are the druggie overtones–that she was into drugs, but only part-time, as a sort of fashion statement. In his Playboy interview John made it clear that this was his meaning: ‘Day trippers are people who go on a day trip, right. Usually on a ferry boat or something. But it was kind of–you know, you’re a weekend hippie. Get it?’

  So he was mocking the Sunday hippies, who just pretended to be in the swim, right on, far out, man, people who have flowers in their hair on Sunday then go back to their nine-to-five jobs on Mondays

  John dismissed it as just as anther rock’n’roll song, saying it was turned out in a hurry because they needed a single for Xmas, but the play on words is good, as is the imagery.

  Some of the lines on the manuscript, in John’s hand, have faded, but they are mainly the repeat lines. He appears to have begun one line with ‘I tried to please her’ then deleted the I at the beginning. He has also put ‘Sunday Driver’ in brackets for some reason, perhaps because it was going to be sung by someone else in the background.

  ‘Day Tripper’ single, December 1965, in John’s hand, with some lines repeated.

  Got a good reason, for taking the easy way out

  Got a good reason, for taking the easy way out, now

  She was a day… tripper, one way ticket, yeah!

  It took me so… long to find out, and I found out

  She’s a big teaser, she took me half the way there

  She’s a big teaser, she took me half the way there, now

  Tried to please her, she only played one night stands

  Tried to please her, she only played one night stands, now

  She was a day… tripper, Sunday driver, yeah!

  It took me so… long to find out, and I found out

  Day tripper

  Day tripper, yeah!

  We Can Work It Out

  This is a fascinating taste of what was to come later with ‘A Day in the Life’–separate lyrics, written by each of them, then put together and made to work like a dialogue.

  Paul wrote his part while visiting his father at ‘Rembrandt’, the house on the Wirral that Paul had bought for him. The subject is a difference of opinion with his girl, but he is trying to be positive, saying they can work it out. Nevertheless it is clearly a serious problem dividing them, one which will risk their love being gone for ever, so he wants her to see it his way.

  It was inspired by a real-life situation: Jane Asher had announced that she was going to join the Bristol Old Vic theatre company, so would be moving out of London, for the time being, leaving Paul to face the prospect of staying at the Asher family home without her–just when he was about to embark on the long hard slog of putting together a new album.

  Being of the post-war age–and from a Northern working-class background–Paul was probably not best pleased that his girl was intent on carving out a career, especially if it meant putting her pleasure and convenience before his. Which is odd, as his own mother held down a responsible job as a midwife. Later on, when he’d grown up and settled down as a happily married man with daughters, he would become much more in tune with our modern-day feminist attitudes.

  In some ways, he was just being selfish, not thinking of her career. He was accustomed to meeting girls who were more than content to be rock-star chicks, to be arm candy at the night clubs, or stay at home–which of course Jane was not. Coming from a professional, middle-class background, she was determined to have her own career and not be an appendage.

  John comes in with his middle eight and is more abrasive, both in his singing voice and his lyrics, saying that life is too short for all this fussing and fighting, warning that he will only ask her one more time. Then we return to Paul, with his sweeter voice and more reasoning, reasonable arguments.

  The music swirls around the two attitudes and the two voices, ending with a sort of fairground harmonium, a sudden waltz tempo, even a tambourine in there somewhere, as if life is a rondel, a roundabout.

  They worked hard for twelve hours in the studio to get ‘We Can Work It Out’ to sound exactly the way they wanted, adding more textures and effects than they had ever done in the past. It shows–and it paid off. It proved to be the more successful side of the single, despite the double A-side labelling of the disc.

  Drive My Ca
r

  This was the first track on the album, the one that grabs and jolts everything into action, getting us away to a good start. But what does it mean? I could remember the words–at least, I thought I did, but on listening again, I realized I’d got the story all wrong. I’d thought the singer, Paul, was asking a girl to drive his car–a sexual euphemism perhaps. In fact, it’s the girl who’s inviting the boy to be her chauffeur, and maybe then she will love him. Role reversal–very modern, really.

  The girl is a wannabe movie star, and when she’s famous, he can drive her. He says he has a job, working for peanuts, but his ‘prospects are good’. A nice line, sounds typical of Paul, using a period phrase, perhaps thinking of his father’s job.

  Then the final joke is revealed: she hasn’t got a car. Beep beep yeah!

  They clearly enjoyed shouting out the beep beeps, amusing themselves, and we were meant to be amused as well.

  As is often the way with fun things, apparently tossed off with no effort, in reality it involved a long hard slog, taking them till well past midnight. Paul arrived with the tune but some corny words: ‘You can buy me golden rings’, which they had used before, and John rightly dismissed the lyric.

  ‘We struggled for hours,’ said Paul in the Anthology book. ‘I think we struggled too long. Then it suddenly came. “Drive my Car”–and it became more ambiguous which we liked. Suddenly we were in LA cars, chauffeurs, open-top Cadillacs and it was a whole other thing.’

  Perhaps it also conjured up memories of tough bitches, celebrity-mad Hollywood girls on the make, the sort they had recently met in LA, desperate to get into the movies, determined to call the shots, the sort they would never have come across in Liverpool.

  Asked a girl what she wanted to be

  She said baby, can’t you see?

  I wanna be famous, a star of the screen

  But you can do something in between

  Baby you can drive my car

  Yes I’m gonna be a star

  Baby you can drive my car

  And maybe I’ll love you

  ‘Drive My Car’, the first song on Rubber Soul, December 1965, in Paul’s hand.

  I told that girl that my prospects were good

  she said baby, it’s understood

  Working for peanuts is all very fine

  But I can show you a better time

  I told that girl I can start right away

  When she said listen babe I got something to say

  I got no car and it’s breaking my heart

  But I’ve found a driver and that’s a start

  Baby you can drive my car

  Yes I’m gonna be a star

  Baby you can drive my car

  And maybe I’ll love you

  Beep beep’m beep beep yeah

  Beep beep’m beep beep yeah

  Norwegian Wood

  I clearly remember ‘Norwegian Wood’, word for word, because we gossiped endlessly about who it might be that John had an affair with–or at least a one-night stand. The rumours included a well-known female journalist (I have since asked her, more than once, and she always denies it with a smile). It could have been a certain famous actress he met on a film set, as there were strong rumours at the time, or the wife of a top photographer. Or it could simply have been an amalgam of several women, for he was still happily married to Cynthia, as far as the world could see, and therefore needed to cover his tracks.

  ‘ “Norwegian Wood” was about an affair I was having,’ so John did confess later. ‘I was very careful and paranoid because I didn’t want my wife to know. I was trying to be sophisticated in writing about an affair but in such a smokescreen way you couldn’t tell. I can’t remember any specific woman it had to do with, I was writing from experience–girls, flats, things like that.’

  It’s mainly John’s creation; he began it on a skiing holiday, but when he brought it into the studio it was still called ‘This Bird Has Flown’ and it didn’t have much of an ending. It’s probably the first of their songs where the lyrics are as important if not more important than the tune. There is no chorus, for a start, no repeat of any of the lines or verses, so you are meant to concentrate on the story being told.

  It concerns a man going to a girl’s flat, they drink, she shows him her room, which is done in Norwegian wood, asks him to stay, then says it’s time for bed. Then she says she has to be up in the morning, though he hasn’t to be. He sleeps in the bath–so he says, though it’s hard to believe that happened in real life, so we take it as a joke, a way of not offending Cynthia.

  That was apparently as far as he’d got when Paul helped complete the lyrics by suggesting that he lit a fire using the Norwegian wood: ‘Isn’t it good, Norwegian wood.’

  Pine walls were very fashionable in the sixties–we had several rooms done in that way, long since stripped out–so a fashionable young woman about town would have been drawn to that style of decor. The joke about sleeping in the bath might have harked back to John’s early days in a Liverpool flat, where he made visitors sleep in the bath and also burned the furniture in the fire.

  A few days before Rubber Soul was released, Paul told the New Musical Express: ‘We’ve written some funny songs–with jokes in them. We think that comedy numbers are the next thing–after protest songs.’

  The jokes he had in mind were presumably the pay-off to ‘Drive My Car’ and the burning of the Norwegian wood. His dig at protest songs was because the Beatles, including John, were deliberately unpolitical at this stage, keeping clear of any movements or groups. Paul for example had yet to become a veggie, and enjoyed a hearty fry-up most mornings.

  As with many Beatles songs, over the years many people have claimed to have had an influence. In the Lennon Letters (which I edited in 2012) there was a letter from John to a woman called Linda Ness. I recently heard more details of her–that she was half Norwegian, a young girl (not a girlfriend) who lived near John when young, and used to have tea at Mimi’s. John kept in touch with her for some years and she gave him a wooden totem, made in Norway. She has recently put forward the theory that it might, possibly, have been the origin of the Norwegian wood, how it came into John’s head. I doubt it, but a nice try.

  The music is notable for the lack of drums, with John almost singing a solo, like Paul on ‘Yesterday’.

  Of course the big musical innovation was the use of the sitar for the first time on any Beatles record. George had become fascinated by the instrument when he heard one during the filming of Help!–there was a restaurant scene featuring some Indian musicians and George had a chance to muck around with their instruments. Afterwards he bought a cheap sitar and started to teach himself, though at this stage he had not progressed very far. Far enough, however, to impress John and Paul, who were eager for new sounds, and they persuaded George Martin to include it.

  You Won’t See Me

  Another of Paul’s songs inspired by Jane, written while he was still living at her London home. She had gone off to appear in Great Expectations at the Theatre Royal Bristol–leaving Paul full of self-pity. The song doesn’t come to much of a conclusion, just repeats the same thing: she won’t listen, her line is engaged when he calls her up, he can’t go on. The title is good though, as you can take it literally or metaphorically.

  The music has been mocked by the music experts, pointing out that it owes some of its chords to a Four Tops song that was then in the hit parade: ‘It’s The Same Old Song’. They haven’t been keen on the soppy la-la refrain in the middle and at the end either. Personally, I rather like it, the music and the lyrics. It balances some of the previous self-pitying, as if Paul is now mocking himself for moaning, while at the same time genuinely upset.

  Nowhere Man

  A similar theme, but this time it’s John. His is much better with cleverer lyrics, so it’s a shame they put them one after the other on the album, making comparisons inevitable. They should have split them. They even contain a similar play on the verb ‘see’.

&n
bsp; The song came to John almost fully formed. After struggling without success to come up with a new song, he’d retired, fed up and miserable, as he told me in 1967: ‘I’d actually stopped trying to think of something. Nothing would come. I was cheesed off and went for a lie down, having given up. Then I thought of myself as Nowhere Man–sitting in his nowhere land.’

  As soon as he consciously let go, the song just seemed to come to him, summing up what he felt about himself and his life at the time: out of love with Cynthia, not knowing where he was, who he was, what to do with the rest of his life. Isn’t he a bit like me and you?

  There is undeniably a touch of the dirge about it, especially the rhythm and the words. Music purists have deemed it disappointing, but I think it is haunting and beautiful. It’s the first Lennon–McCartney song, taking them in chronological order, not about love. There is no suggestion of a girl–boy relationship, that is not the reason he feels he’s in a nowhere world. It’s just him.