3/9/2024 0 Comments Ticket to ride the songNot only is there an unusual number of ninth chords in the song, but the bare interval is also found within the opening ostinato figure as well as in the repetitious vocal line which takes the song out at the end. In the dissonance department, Major ninths and seconds appear as though a leitmotif. This relatively bland harmonic diet is spiced up by the liberal use of free melodic dissonance and a certain suspense factor created by the exceedingly slow harmonic rhythm. No other more exotic chords show up nor is there any hint of modulation. The special kicks here are to be found in the arrangement, especially in its exploitation of texture, rhythm, and harmonic dissonance.Īlthough the tune does not make a primarily bluesy impression, both the flat seventh and minor third scale degrees do bear some melodic emphasis in the verse and bridge, respectively.įive of the seven chords that naturally occur in the home key as well as the flat-VII chord are used. The form is an ordinary two-bridge model with only one verse in the middle and no instrumental section. US-release: 19th April 1965 (A Single / "Yes It Is")Īfter the folksy originals and nostalgic covers of the "Beatles For Sale" album, "Ticket To Ride" brings with it a measure of tight toughness that is most welcome to those wondering wether this erstwhile sharp edge of the group's attitude and style had fled following the "Hard Day's Night" album. UK-release: 9th April 1965 (A Single / "Yes It Is") Recorded: 15th February 1965, Abbey Road 2 But on the songs where they did break it - at least on the ones that hit #1 - I don’t think they ever sounded quite this great.Form: Intro | Verse | Verse | Bridge | Verse | Bridge |ĬD: "Help!", Track 7 (Parlophone CDP7 46439-2) It’s the sound of a band starting to bend pop music, not quite ready to break it yet. It’s a toe-dip, a dabble, in the waters of the infinite. (“Ticket To Ride” did, after all, appear on the same album where the Beatles covered Buck Owens.) “Ticket To Ride” was the first Beatles single that broke the three-minute mark - but it only broke it by 10 seconds. It sounds like the acid-rock wig-outs that would show up atop the charts soon enough, but it also sounds like a honky-tonk throwdown. As the song ends, the band lurches suddenly into a double-time rave-up - as if to prove that they can still supercharge your soul, or to mentally force themselves out of the song’s depression-fog. Lennon is contemplating an uncertain future, and the sounds that he’s bringing are adult, as well.īut they’re not too adult. There’s a line - “she said that living with me was bringing her down” - that suggests cohabitation. Lennon is not singing about teenage heartbreak. And it sounds grown-up and mature, in ways that no previous Beatles song had done. Throughout the song, Lennon tries to reconcile the idea that the girl is leaving, that there’s nothing he can do. But by the time McCartney joins in on harmony, he’s wailing at the heavens. Lennon opens it up by wailing, “I think I’m gonna be sad / I think it’s todaaaaaay.” At the beginning of that line, he’s calm, sober, almost matter-of-fact. “Ticket To Ride” is a song about heartbreak. “Ticket To Ride” resonated the way it did because the band figured out how to plug these impulses into one hell of a pop song. But the Beatles didn’t hit #1 just by indulging their most experimental impulses. These things should’ve made brains explode when the Beatles suddenly brought them to the radio. There’s Ringo Starr’s awkwardly perfect stop-start drumming, which sends electric shocks pulsing all through the song. There’s the low-end drone of the bass, which foreshadowed the Beatles’ interest in Indian ragas. There’s George Harrison’s glistening Rickenbacher riff - a starry-eyed jangle that helped make the world safe for the Byrds and for the psychedelic folk-rock hordes that would follow. There are sounds on “Ticket To Ride” that had never made it anywhere near the top of the charts before. But what makes “Ticket To Ride” sing is its lightness - the way it’s always dancing away from you. That music was heavy because it dragged you down into its sodden, wrathful headspace. The real early heavy metal bands - including Vanilla Fudge, who released their cover of “Ticket To Ride” two years after the Beatles’ original came out - turned blues progressions into something leaden and overwhelming. And Lennon once called “Ticket To Ride” “one of the earliest heavy metal records made.” He was wrong, and he was wrong for interesting reasons. John Lennon wrote most of “Ticket To Ride,” though Paul McCartney has taken credit for a decent chunk of it.
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