Spending too much time in ariports and hotels ?

Ticket to Rhyde ? Then Day Tripper ?

Not a co-incidence, methinks.

What’s next ? Drive My Car ?

Brian

wwolfe

I once saw/heard Annie Lennox (still in Eurythmics then) sing “Day Tripper” live in concert (We Two are One Tour, 1989). I don’t know if she ever recorded it, though.

Doctor Mod

That being said, I was at first baffled by the 7–then I thought fair enough for a double A-side: 8 for “Day Tripper” and 6 for “We Can . . .” So, then, OK.

Because I’m working on a book (tentatively titled Britannia Waives the Rules) which examines the effect of the “Permissive Society” legislations on British literature and culture (collapsing the distinctions between “high” and “low” art), I found the comments about “smuggling” sex and drug references into the lyrics interesting. It was so very daring then–and absolutely quaint–charmingly so, I think–by today’s standards.

Last week, I ended my queer lit course with the novel Breakfast on Pluto (in which, in one scene, the characters sing “We Can Work It Out”) and spent a whole class session showing video clips–including one of the Beatles stoned out of their minds and miming “Day Tripper”–of 60s British acts in order to contextualize the pop culture fantasies of the protagonist. Most of the class loved it. (A few looked puzzled or distressed.) Strange thing is, a extraordinary number of these twenty-year-olds know many of these songs–they were singing along with them. No one can convince me that, since the sixties at least, pop music isn’t the most influential cultural tradition of the postmodern world.

And yes, this record is an almost paradigmatic example of a certain “Beatleness” that still brings me cheer whenever I hear it.

Doctor Mod

Resurrection Watch: “We Can Work It Out”s include Stevie Wonder’s, Chaka Khan’s, Petula Clark’s and King Missile’s. And “Day Tripper”s include Jimi Hendrix’s, Sergio Mendes & Brasil 66’s, Yellow Magic Orchestra’s, Mae West’s, Sham 69’s, Nancy Sinatra’s, Randy California’s, James Taylor’s and (shudder) Ocean Colour Scene’s and Oasis’s.

Check the lyrics, nothing contradicts this…

(Mark Grout - Anon)

The double-A side lives on in the era of 2 CDs per single: the last one to top the chart was, I think, “Flap Yr Wings”/”My Place” by Nelly.

I reserve the right in Popular to be entirely disproportionate in the attention I give to each side of a double-A!

I like both of these songs about equally, and yes, they do seem poised between what had already come and what was to be - I don’t know if this is where Oasis start with their Beatles influence, or whether that comes later. (I think it does.)

Why two songs though? How did that work as a single? Would radio stations play both songs, back to back, or what?