During The Beatles’ 1966 tour of the United States, it was put to John Lennon and Paul McCartney that Time magazine had reported their song ‘Day Tripper’ to be about a prostitute, and ‘Norwegian Wood’ about a lesbian.
When asked what their intentions behind the songs were, McCartney quipped in response, “We were just trying to write songs about prostitutes and lesbians, that’s all.”
But is ‘Day Tripper’ really about a prostitute? Not if you believe the proper explanation both Lennon and McCartney later gave. Or the song’s lyrics for that matter.
Besides, The Beatles had already released a song whose title was a sly turn of phrase referencing prostitutes earlier in 1965, the year ‘Day Tripper’ was recorded. Their single ‘Ticket to Ride’ was named after the term the band members coined for doctor’s notes that prostitutes in Hamburg would show them to prove they were free from sexually transmitted infections.
“Prick teaser” or part-time hippie?
The song’s lyrics appear to use “day tripper” as a euphemism for a woman who refuses to give in completely to its narrator’s sexual or romantic advances. They mention that the woman took them “half the way there” and “only played one-night stands”. The chorus expresses frustration that it took the narrator “so long to find out” that things weren’t going to go any further with the woman.
A cheeky sexual term was also snuck into the song to avoid censorship by conservative radio stations. The official version of the lyrics suggests the phrase “big teaser” is used at the beginning of the second verse. But, according to The Beatles’ friend and biographer Barry Miles, the actual phrase originally written by Lennon was “prick teaser,” alluding to masturbation.
Yet both Lennon and McCartney would later clarify that the sexual overtones in the lyrics were actually a diversion from its real meaning. Around the time the song was written, Lennon had started taking the psychoactive drug LSD. The common term for the drug’s effects among users at the time was “tripping”. And so, the “tripper” part of the song title in fact refers to someone using LSD.
The term “day tripper”, as explained by McCartney, is a play on words based on the idea of a weekend day trip. It was meant to denigrate people getting into the psychedelic drug scene but not fully committing to “tripping”. People who would dabble in LSD just for a day to say they had taken acid, without losing themselves to the drug completely.
McCartney would confirm this reading of the song again in 2004, telling Today simply, “that’s one about acid (LSD).” Ironically, he himself hadn’t taken acid at the time ‘Day Tripper’ was recorded, and later only tried the drug twice with Lennon’s encouragement. Did this make him one of the part-time hippies they were singing about?
