"Ticket to Ride" is a song by The Beatles from their 1965
album,
Help!. It was recorded 15 February 1965 at Abbey Road
Studios and released two months later. In 2004, this song was
ranked number 384 on
Rolling Stonemagazine's list of the 500 greatest songs
of all time.
The song was written primarily by John Lennon (credited to
Lennon/McCartney), with Paul McCartney's contributions in
dispute. Lennon said that McCartney's contribution was limited
to "the way Ringo played the drums". McCartney said that was an
incomplete response, and that "we sat down and wrote it
together... give him 60 percent of it... we sat down together
and worked on that for a full three-hour songwriting session."
Lennon said the double-time ending section (with the lyric "My
baby don't care") was one of his "favourite bits" in the song.
This song was also the first song by the band in which
McCartney was featured on lead guitar.
Lennon proudly claimed that it was the first heavy metal
song given the droning bassline, repeating drums, and loaded
guitar lines.
The song also features an unrelated coda in a form of a
tempo change.
While the song lyrics describe a girl "riding out of the
life of the narrator", the inspiration of the title phrase is
unclear. McCartney said it was "a British Railways ticket to
the town of Ryde on the Isle of Wight", and Lennon said it
described cards indicating a clean bill of health carried by
Hamburg prostitutes in the 1960s. The Beatles played in Hamburg
early in their musical career, and "ride/riding" was slang for
having sex.
"Ticket to Ride" was released as a single on 9 April 1965 in
the UK and 19 April in the US with "Yes It Is" as its B-side,
topping the Hot 100 for a week in the US and the UK Singles
Chart for three weeks in the UK. The American single's label
declared that the song was from the United Artists release
Eight Arms to Hold You. This was the original title of
The Beatles' second movie; the title changed to
Help!after the single was initially released. The song
was also included on the
Help!album released on 6 August in the UK and on 13
August in the US.
The song was the third of six number one singles in a row on
the American charts, a record at the time. The singles were "I
Feel Fine", "Eight Days a Week", "Ticket to Ride", "Help!",
"Yesterday", and "We Can Work It Out". The record was equaled
by The Bee Gees in the 1970s
Music critics Richie Unterberger of allmusic and Ian
MacDonald both describe "Ticket to Ride" as an important
milestone in the evolution of the musical style of the Beatles.
Unterberger said, "the rhythm parts on 'Ticket to Ride' were
harder and heavier than they had been on any previous Beatles
outing, particularly in Ringo Starr's stormy stutters and
rolls." MacDonald described it as "psychologically deeper than
anything The Beatles had recorded before ... extraordinary for
its time — massive with chiming electric guitars, weighty
rhythm, and rumbling floor tom-toms. Macdonald also notes that
the track uses the Indian basis of drone which might have
influenced the Kinks' "See My Friends".
MacDonald wrote that Lennon played a Jetglo Rickenbacker 325
twelve-string guitar, and that George Harrison was "probably"
playing his 12-string Rickenbacker 360/12 guitar.
In 1969, it was released by The Carpenters on their album,
Offering/Ticket to Ride, and it became a minor hit. The
song stalled at number #54 on the Billboard Hot 100 for three
weeks and #19 on the adult contemporary. The Carpenters
recorded the song as a slower ballad. They released their debut
album of the same name.
Many artists have covered "Ticket to Ride", including
Vanilla Fudge (1967), The 5th Dimension (1967 on
The Magic Garden), The Punkles, Kids Incorporated
(1993), and Atomic Kitten (2007).
An orchestral version of the song is barely audible in the
fadeout at the very end of the Pink Floyd album
The Dark Side of the Moon. Initially this phenomenon was
considered a mistake in remastering. However it is audible on
high quality vinyl pressings from the time before the CD era as
well. The Beatles and Pink Floyd both recorded at Abbey Road
Studios.
The song is referenced in "Artificial Energy", by The Byrds,
the opening track of
The Notorious Byrd Brothersfrom 1968.
The title of this song is referenced to in the Red Dwarf
episode Tikka to Ride, in accordance with the theme of curry on
which the storyline focuses.
In a
Doctor Whoepisode titled "The Executioners," the Doctor
and his companions Ian Chesterton, Barbara Wright, and Vicki
watch the Beatles perform "Ticket To Ride" on the Doctor's
recently acquired time/space visualiser. The clip shown is
about 15 seconds long and was of a mime performance they gave
on
Top of the Popsvery recent to the recording of the
Doctor Whoepisode and is the only footage of this
performance known to exist. The episode transmitted on 22 May
1965 on BBC1 and was watched by 10 million viewers. This story
was released on VHS in 1993, and on DVD in the UK as part of a
box set with The Space Museum on 3 March 2010.