The Beatles Lyric That Subtly Commemorated a Lennon-McCartney Road Trip
The Beatles released “Ticket to Ride” as the first single from their 1965 movie/album Help!, and the song continued their unstoppable run of success. It topped the charts in the U.S., the UK, and several other ports of call.
You might not realize, however, the song could easily have been called “Ticket to Ryde” had John Lennon and Paul McCartney revealed the initial inspiration that got the ball rolling. The song’s lyrics then deviated from that source to depict a tale of heartbreak and woe.
That’s the “Ticket”
For many years, it was assumed John Lennon wrote the bulk of “Ticket to Ride.” Lennon gave thorough interviews both right after The Beatles broke up in 1970 and right before his death in 1980, in which he dissected the provenance of many of the band’s songs. He claimed in both to have penned the song.
But it’s important to remember that Lennon was rifling through those questions rapid-fire, which didn’t leave him a lot of room for nuance. In later years, Paul McCartney stepped forward and suggested that while Lennon might have had the original idea for songs like “Ticket to Ride,” Macca was very much in the mix contributing words and music.
In his interviews, Lennon explained he had intended “Ticket to Ride” to be a bit heavier in a musical sense than what the band had been doing at that time. That heaviness seems to have been shorn away somewhat as the song was recorded, although you can hear remnants of it in Ringo Starr’s battering drum pattern.
Many urban legends popped up over the years concerning what The Beatles meant by saying that the girl in the song had a “Ticket to Ride.” McCartney set everyone straight when talking about the song in his book The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present:
Source: Jim Beviglia/americansongwriter.com
