Paul McCartney Explained the Joke Behind The Beatles' 'Drive My Car'
Paul McCartney said The Beatles' "Drive My Car" contains a joke derived from a common theme in blues music. John Lennon barely had anything to say about the song.
The Beatles were just full of surprises. Paul McCartney said The Beatles’ “Drive My Car” (1965) 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.
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.”
Source: Matthew Trzcinski/cheatsheet.com
