The Beatles were just full of surprises. Paul McCartney said The Beatles’ “Drive My Car” contains a joke derived from a common theme in blues music. On the other hand, John Lennon barely had anything to say about the song.
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Paul McCartney on The Beatles’ ‘Drive My Car’ and ‘Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)’
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In the 1997 book Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now, Paul recalled the writing of “Drive My Car.” “It was wonderful because this nice tongue-in-cheek idea came and suddenly there was a girl there, the heroine of the story, and the story developed and had a little sting in the tail like ‘Norwegian Wood’ had, which was ‘I actually haven’t got a car, but when I get one you’ll be a terrific chauffeur,’” he said. “So to me it was LA chicks, ‘You can be my chauffeur,’ and it also meant ‘You can be my lover.’
“‘Drive my car’ was an old blues euphemism for sex, so in the end all is revealed,” he continued. “Black humor crept in and saved the day. It wrote itself then. I find that very often, once you get the good idea, things write themselves. So that was my idea and John and I wrote the words, so I’d go 70-30 on that to me.”
Paul compared the revelation that the narrator of “Drive My Car” didn’t have a car to the implication that the narrator of “Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)” burned down a woman’s home. In both cases, the humor is pretty subtle. Listeners could be familiar with both songs without ever picking up on those gags.
A sexual blues song about a ‘chauffeur’ was popular long before The Beatles came along
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Paul said the word “chauffeur” has sexual connotations in blues music and he wasn’t wrong. The most famous example of this is Memphis Minnie’s 1941 classic “Me and My Chauffeur Blues.” Even though “Me and My Chauffeur Blues” predates “Drive My Car” by an entire generation, it’s a lot more suggestive.
“Me and My Chauffeur Blues” became a standard. It was covered by Big Mama Thornton, the blues singer most famous for recording the original version of “Hound Dog,” which was further popularized by Elvis Presley. Jefferson Airplane also recorded “Me and My Chauffeur Blues” for their self-titled debut album. It’s a far cry from their later hits “White Rabbit” and “Somebody to Love.”
John Lennon admitted he didn’t give ‘Drive My Car’ that much gas
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The book All We Are Saying: The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono features an interview from 1980. In it, John was asked about “Drive My Car.” While John discussed many other Beatles songs at length, he had almost nothing to say about “Drive My Car.” John merely said that “Drive My Car” was Paul’s song first and foremost. While the two rock gods occasionally contradicted each other’s memories, they seemed to agree on the origins of “Drive My Car.”
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“Drive My Car” remains subtly funny and deceptively sexual.
