Newly unearthed Beatles recording showcases Day Tripper without its iconic guitar riff
It’s one of the most iconic guitar riffs of all time, but a new previously unheard recording has revealed exactly what The Beatles’ Day Tripper sounded like before John Lennon and Paul McCartney game up with the iconic intro guitar part.
READ MORE: Fender Custom Shop releases a “painstaking” recreation of George Harrison’s Bass VI
As part of the build-up to the release of the new Special Edition of Rubber Soul, which is coming out in October, a new ‘work tape’ of Lennon and McCartney working on Day Tripper in a more embryonic form has been released – and it’s a real treasure trove for Beatles fans and guitar fans in general.
The tape, which was recorded during a writing session undertaken at Lennon’s home Kenwood, in the lead up to what would become Rubber Soul, paints a fascinating picture of how such a timeless song can come together.
In amongst the bonhomie and joking you can hear between Lennon and McCartney, you can see that Day Tripper is mostly there – it has the melody, the harmonised vocal lines between the pair, and the basic song structure.
It’s clear, even in this more acoustic-driven, folky form, that it’s an incredible song. What it doesn’t have, however, is a killer riff to make it truly legendary.
That riff, those 11 notes, would come together in the studio later, with Lennon taking credit for coming up with it – though he later reflected that the song was crafted in the studio “under pressure” and felt that, “It was very hard going, that, and it sounds it.”
It seems likely that George Harrison played the iconic riff in the studio – most likely on his Gibson ES-345 or a 1963 Gretsch Tennessean – though Lennon in typically blunt style, claimed responsibility for writing it, even if he was somewhat blase about its brilliance. “That’s mine. Including the lick, the guitar break and the whole bit. It’s just a rock ‘n’ roll song,” he told interviewer David Sheff shortly before his death.
But it was a lot more than “just a rock ‘n’ roll song” for millions of guitarists and musicians. Day Tripper’s riff is important not just because it is a profoundly great guitar part – it’s significant for what it represented for the band and for music in general.
Because the concept of a ‘guitar riff’ in the manner we now regard it was something relatively new in the world of rock ‘n’ roll. The Kinks’ You Really Got Me had only arrived in 1964 and by 1965 the riff was taking over pop music – from (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction to For Your Love by The Yardbirds.
Over in the States, a place where the Beatles were always more interested in drawing musical inspiration from, Motown was putting riffs at the centre of things in a different but no less impactful way with the likes of My Girl and The Tracks of My Tears.
While the Beatles had many memorable guitar parts before, and had dabbled in the relatively new concept of a ‘guitar riff’ previously – notably on Ticket To Ride earlier in 1965 – Day Tripper was arguably the first time that the band had made a truly riff-driven song, and in typical Beatles style, it was one that raised the bar.
By the end of the decade, guitar riffs would be everywhere in popular music – Purple Haze, Smoke On The Water, Sunshine Of Your Love – and across the Beatles later work as well.
Without Day Tripper, it’s hard to imagine we’d have had some of The Beatles’ most iconic guitar moments – from Taxman to Yer Blues, from Revolver to And Your Bird Can Sing. By the end, The Beatles were crafting some of the most iconic and enduring guitar riffs the world would ever know – and it all started with Day Tripper.
This impact means that it remains a constant inspiration for guitar players so many decades later, and it’s something McCartney acknowledges himself. “You still often hear it played when you walk into guitar shops,” he wrote in his book, The Lyrics. “It’s one of those songs that revolves around the riff. Some songs are hung onto a chord progression. Others, like this, are driven by the riff, and it does that.”
All of the above makes it all the more fascinating to hear Day Tripper in its nascent form – still a great song of course, but one that showcases the enduring and vital power of a brilliant guitar riff to elevate a song into something truly special.
The Beatle’s Rubber Soul Special Edition is out on 2 October, and is available to preorder now.
The post Newly unearthed Beatles recording showcases Day Tripper without its iconic guitar riff appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
Source: www.guitar-bass.net
