This made me laugh when I saw it on a forum I frequent. I suppose it could have been a deliberate 'pun' not dissimilar to The Beatles with 'Rubber Soul?' They liked their 'euphemisms' and/or 'puns?'
Rubber Soul (I never realized that Rubber Soul omits 'The Beatles' from the cover until I Googled 'Rubber Soul.)
Rubber Soul was the group's first release not to feature their
name on the cover, an uncommon tactic in 1965. The 'stretched' effect
of the cover photo came about after photographer
Bob Freeman had taken some pictures of the group wearing
suede
leather jackets at Lennon's house. Freeman showed the photos by
projecting them onto an album-sized piece of cardboard to simulate how
they would appear on an album cover. The unusual
Rubber Soul
album cover came to be when the slide card fell slightly backwards,
elongating the projected image of the photograph and stretching it.
Excited by the effect, they shouted, "Ah! Can we have that? Can you do
it like that?", to which Freeman said he could.
[27] The distinctive lettering was created by
Charles Front (father of actress
Rebecca Front), and the original artwork was later auctioned at
Bonhams, accompanied by an authenticating letter from Robert Freeman.
Capitol Records used a different colour saturation for the US
version, causing the orange lettering used by Parlophone Records to show
up as different colours. On some Capitol LPs, the title looks rich
chocolate brown; others, more like gold. On the 1987
compact disc reissue, the letters appear a distinct green, and the 2009 reissue uses the original cover design with the
Parlophone Records logo.
Paul McCartney conceived the album's title after overhearing a musician's description of Mick Jagger's singing style as "plastic soul". Lennon confirmed this in a 1970 interview with Rolling Stone, stating, "That was Paul's title, meaning English soul. Just a pun." McCartney uses a similar phrase, "plastic soul, man, plastic soul ... ," heard at the end of "I'm Down" as released on Anthology 2.
'Day Tripper?' - pasted from Wikipedia Google 'Day Tripper.'
Under the pressure of needing a new single for the Christmas market,
John Lennon wrote much of the music and most of the lyrics, while
Paul McCartney worked on the verses. Lennon later cited Bobby Parker's 1961 song "
Watch Your Step" as his inspiration for the famous guitar riff.
[6][7]
"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, Lennon 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.
In
Many Years From Now, McCartney said that "Day Tripper" was
about drugs, and "a tongue-in-cheek song about someone who was ...
committed only in part to the idea." The line recorded as "she's a big teaser" was originally written as "she's a prick teaser."
According to music critic
Ian MacDonald, the song
- "starts as a twelve-bar blues in E, which makes a feint at turning into a twelve-bar in the relative minor
(i.e. the chorus) before doubling back to the expected B—another joke
from a group which had clearly decided that wit was to be their new
gimmick."
In 1966 McCartney said to
Melody Maker that "Day Tripper" and "
Drive My Car" (recorded three days prior) were "funny songs, songs with jokes in."
'Ticket To Ride?' (From www.songfacts.com.)
According to
A Hard Day's Write
by Steve Turner, many Americans concluded the "ticket" was from British
Railways, and "ride" was the town of Ryde on the Isle of Wight.
McCartney confessed to his biographer Barry Miles that they were partly
right. Paul had a cousin who ran a bar in Ryde and he and John had
visited them there. Paul later mentioned that although the song was
primarily about a girl riding out of the life of the narrator, they were
conscious of the potential for a double meaning.
Don
Short, who traveled with the Beatles in the '60s, recalled that John
coined the phrase "Ticket to Ride" for another meaning - The girls who
worked the streets in Hamburg had to have a clean bill of health and the
authorities would give them a card saying they were clean. Don later
said that although he specifically recalls John telling him that, John
could of been joking - you had to be careful with him like that.
(thanks, Ant - Belleville, Canada, for above 2)
'Penny Lane' (from Wikipedia)
The "shelter in the middle of the roundabout" refers to the old bus
shelter, later developed into a cafe/restaurant with a Beatles theme,
but now derelict and abandoned, despite its popularity as a tourist
attraction. This is also Penny Lane Bus Terminus, where the numbers 46
(Penny Lane to Walton) and 99 (Penny Lane to Old Swan) buses terminated
and is officially on Smithdown Place.
The mysterious lyrics "Four of fish and finger pies" are British slang. "A four of fish" refers to fourpennyworth of
fish and chips,
while "finger pie" is sexual slang of the time, apparently referring to
intimate fondlings between teenagers in the shelter, which was a
familiar meeting place. The combination of "fish and finger" also puns
on
fish fingers.
[24] The lyrics as printed on the compilation album
The Beatles: 1967–1970, however, are "Full of fish and finger pies" which are incorrect
[citation needed]. In the remastered version, the lyrics read as "For a fish and finger pies", which is also incorrect
[citation needed].
“It was childhood reminiscences,” McCartney said in Barry Miles’ ‘
Many Years from Now.’
“There is a bus stop called Penny Lane. There was a barber shop called
Bioletti’s, with head shots of the haircuts you can have in the window,
and I just took it all and arted it up a little bit to make it sound
like he was having a picture exhibition in his window. It was all based
on real things. There was a bank on the corner so I imagined the banker —
it was not a real person — and his slightly dubious habits and the
little children laughing at him, and the pouring rain. The fire station
was a bit of poetic license. There’s a fire station about half a mile
down the road, not actually in Penny Lane, but we needed a third verse
so we took that and I was very pleased with the line ‘It’s a clean
machine.’”
To further emphasize the idea that this was a look back at their
childhood, they added a line straight out of their schoolboy humor, one
that went over the heads of most listeners. “And we put in a joke or
two,” McCartney added in ‘Anthology. “’Four of fish and finger pie.’ The
women would never dare say that, except to themselves. Most people
wouldn’t hear it, but ‘finger pie’ is just a nice little joke for the
Liverpool lads who like a bit of smut.”
Read More: 48 Years Ago: The Beatles Begin Recording ‘Penny Lane’ | http://ultimateclassicrock.com/beatles-penny-lane/?trackback=tsmclip
“It was childhood reminiscences,” McCartney said in Barry Miles’ ‘
Many Years from Now.’
“There is a bus stop called Penny Lane. There was a barber shop called
Bioletti’s, with head shots of the haircuts you can have in the window,
and I just took it all and arted it up a little bit to make it sound
like he was having a picture exhibition in his window. It was all based
on real things. There was a bank on the corner so I imagined the banker —
it was not a real person — and his slightly dubious habits and the
little children laughing at him, and the pouring rain. The fire station
was a bit of poetic license. There’s a fire station about half a mile
down the road, not actually in Penny Lane, but we needed a third verse
so we took that and I was very pleased with the line ‘It’s a clean
machine.’”
To further emphasize the idea that this was a look back at their
childhood, they added a line straight out of their schoolboy humor, one
that went over the heads of most listeners. “And we put in a joke or
two,” McCartney added in ‘Anthology. “’Four of fish and finger pie.’ The
women would never dare say that, except to themselves. Most people
wouldn’t hear it, but ‘finger pie’ is just a nice little joke for the
Liverpool lads who like a bit of smut.”
Read More: 48 Years Ago: The Beatles Begin Recording ‘Penny Lane’ | http://ultimateclassicrock.com/beatles-penny-lane/?trackback=tsmclip
