13 Songs – 2

Drive my car – The Beatles

Growing up in England, during the sixties, was pretty fucking cool. I mean yes, the second world war was barely 20 years ago, the class system in the UK was still fully in place and Chelsea had yet to win anything other than the League Cup but, things were changing. Racial and sexual equality was moving in the right direction, homosexuality was decriminalised in 1967 and we still had The Beatles. I mean we had the bloody Beatles. John, Paul, George & Ringo! 

My blurred, formica dazzled memories of that decade are helped along by the sound of the group that transcended everything else. I’m pretty sure I saw their ‘All you need is love’ broadcast, whilst staying at my grandparents (both of whom had been born during the reign of Queen Victoria). I had definitely heard ‘Lucy in the sky with diamonds’ and ‘Yellow Submarine’, songs that seemed perpetually on air. However, it is ‘Drive My Car’ that drags me back to the mid-sixties. Featuring as it did on Rubber Soul, it was released on 3^rd December 1965. I was only 3 and yet, the songs seemed so achingly familiar the first time I consciously heard it in mid/late 70’s, I am convinced that some form of primitive osmosis had occurred.

Now, of course it isn’t the best Beatles song of all time. It isn’t even the best Beatles track on side one of Rubber Soul: Both ‘Norwegian Wood’ and ‘Nowhere Man’ completely outstrip ‘Drive my car’ but there is something so inherently of it’s time that places this song front and centre whenever I think of The Beatles. 

Even now when I hear it, I can distinctly see George at the wheel, black jacket, smiling and the car (with the other fabs on board), careering round Sloane Square, straight into the heart of the Sussex countryside and then round Piccadilly. A girl in a white plastic raincoat about to sit on the red leather seats of the black convertible. A kaleidoscope of background images spin by, from David Bailey, John Stephens, Francoise Hardy, at the Scotch of St James, Hampstead Heath at dawn, Antibes at dusk and Paris at midnight – Beep-beep, beep-beep yeah! 

Asked a girl what she wanted to be
She said, "Baby, can't you see?
I wanna be famous, a star of the screen"
But you can do something in between

Baby, you can drive my car
Yes, I'm gonna be a star
Baby, you can drive my car
And maybe I'll love you

I told that girl that my prospects were good
And she said, "Baby, it's understood
Working for peanuts is all very fine
But I can show you a better time"

Baby, you can drive my car
Yes, I'm gonna be a star
Baby, you can drive my car
And maybe I'll love you

Beep-beep, beep-beep, yeah

Baby, you can drive my car
Yes, I'm gonna be a star
Baby, you can drive my car
And maybe I'll love you

I told that girl I can start right away
When she said, "Listen, babe, I got somethin' to say
I got no car and it's breaking my heart
But I've found a driver and that's a start"

Baby, you can drive my car
Yes, I'm gonna be a star
Baby, you can drive my car
And maybe I'll love you"

Beep-beep, beep-beep, yeah
Beep-beep, beep-beep, yeah
Beep-beep, beep-beep, yeah
Beep-beep, beep-beep, yeah

 

Songwriters: John Lennon / Paul McCartney

Drive My Car lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC