The Beatles Day Tripper

The Beatles Day Tripper

Under the pressure of needing a new single for the Christmas market, John Lennon wrote most of the lyrics and the famous guitar hook, while Paul McCartney helped with the verses. "Day Tripper" was a typical play on words by Lennon: "Day trippers are people who go on a day trip, right? Usually on a ferryboat or something. But [the song] was kind of . . . you're just a weekend hippie. Get it?" In the same interview Lennon said, "That's mine. Including the lick, the guitar break and the whole bit." In his 1970 interview with Rolling Stone, however, he used "Day Tripper" as one example of their collaboration, where one partner had the main idea but the other took up the cause and completed it. For his part, McCartney claimed it was very much a collaboration based on Lennon's original idea.