Drive My Car

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Drive My Car is the first track of The Beatles' 1965 album Rubber Soul.

Contents

Writing

The original draft of the song had lyrics mostly by Paul, which featured the line "You Can Buy Me Golden Rings." John didn't like this, and Paul, looking back on this, said "'Rings' is fatal anyway, 'rings' always rhymes with 'things' and I knew it was a bad idea." They did decide that they should keep the tune. It was John who suggested that they change 'gol-den rings' to 'Drive My Car.' The final lyric contained several obvious euphemisms for sex. As Paul said, "'Drive my car' was an old blues euphemism for sex, so in the end all is revealed. Black humour crept in and saved the day. It wrote itself then. I find that very often, once you get the good idea, things write themselves." George suggested the songs arrangement, which he based off Otis Redding's "Respect." George said, "We laid down the track because, what Paul would do, if he had written a song, would be to learn all of the parts himself and then come into the studio and say, ‘Do this.’ He’d never give you the opportunity to come up with something yourself. But, on Drive My Car, I just played the line, which is really like a lick off Respect, you know, the Otis Redding original. I played that line on the guitar and Paul laid that with me on bass. We laid the track down like that."

Recording

It was recorded on October 13, 1965. The session started at 7 PM and ended at 12:15, the first Beatles session to last past midnight. The basic arrangement had McCartney on guitar, Harrison on bass, and Starr on drums. Later, piano, tambourine, cowbell, and lead guitar parts. There were also lead vocals by both John and Paul, as well as backing vocals by Harrison.

Personnel

The Beatles

Production

Available On

Cover Versions

  • Bo Street Runners
  • Breakfast Club (Released as a single, 1988)
  • Junior Campbell
  • The Donnas
  • Bobby McFerrin
  • Jim Moray
  • The Punkles

Sources

Retrieved from "http://www.beatleswiki.org/wiki/Drive_My_Car"
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