Cover versions came thick and fast. Nancy Sinatra was first out of the blocks with a brassy version that reversed genders, repeating some of the tricks \u2014\u00a0for example,\u00a0a slippery descending bass break \u2014 that arranger Billy Strange and producer Lee Hazlewood had used on Sinatra\u2019s \u201cThese Boots Are Made for Walkin\u2019\u201d. Also in 1966, on Complete & Unbelievable \u2014 The Otis Redding Dictionary of Soul, the great singer took The Beatles\u2019 vocal lines for a soulful walk. Mae West committed to tape one of the worst ever massacres of a Beatles song on the execrable Way Out West.<\/p>\n
The genius of the \u201cDay Tripper\u201d riff is that it sounds good on almost any instrument: on sax and double bass for clever German duo Tok Tok Tok; barked out on brass for Geno Washington; and on piano for Sergio Mendes, who makes it sound like a Latin instrumental classic, with its hint of a Afro-Cuban montuno. Cuban percussionist and bandleader Mongo Santamar\u00eda cut at least two instrumental Latin versions. Yellow Magic Orchestra, one of many electronic acts championed by Rusty Egan, the \u201csonic architect\u201d of the Blitz club (currently celebrated at London\u2019s Design Museum), demonstrated how trippy the riff sounded on synthesisers (1979). Hamburg\u2019s Punkles gave \u201cDay Tripper\u201d a convincing retrofit on Pistol, their album of punkified Beatles covers.<\/p>\n
Also in Hamburg, musician and Beatles tour guide Stefanie Hempel, an authority on the group\u2019s history, told me that \u201c1965 was the great Beatles \u2018riff\u2019 year, with \u2018I Feel Fine\u2019, \u2018Ticket to Ride\u2019, etc, showing that they can also be the best \u2018hard\u2019 rock band if they want to.\u201d<\/p>\n
She points out the influence of Dylan on The Beatles at that time: \u201cLeave the path of kitschy love songs, write in riddles, double meanings. Write about \u2018emancipated\u2019 women and put them down at the same time. They were always like sponges, soaking up everything.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some \u201cDay Tripper\u201d cover versions downplay the melodious riff. Jazz pianist Ramsey Lewis keeps it low in the mix on his groovy version (1966). James Taylor, on his album Flag (1979), teased listeners by hardly playing it at all, riding out the song with a stomping cocktail of percussion, sawing strings and falsetto vocals: Prince meets Talking Heads.<\/p>\n
For sheer originality, it\u2019s hard to beat Jos\u00e9 Feliciano\u2019s passionate version of \u201cDay Tripper\u201d. Recorded live at the London Palladium in 1969, with flamenco-style acoustic guitar, double bass and percussion, it reaches an intensity that transforms the detached, satirical mood of the original into something ecstatic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cover versions came thick and fast. Nancy Sinatra was first out of the blocks with a brassy version…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":303207,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[96,128,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-303206","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-music","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=303206"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303206\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/303207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=303206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=303206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=303206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}