"Day Tripper" remains a controversial pop/rock song in terms of the
lyrics
that have multiple connotations attached to it. The legend goes that the song was written and composed under pressure from the record company that needed a new single to cash in during the Christmas time. Lennon wrote most of thelyrics
and the famous Day Tripper guitar riff, while McCartney helped doing the verses. "Day Tripper" was a typical fooling around with the words by John Lennon who described, "Day Trippers are people who go on a day trip, right? Usually on a ferryboat or something. But [the song] was kind of ... you're just a weekend hippie. Get it?" No clear-cut meaning here about the song but it has also been associated with Paul's reluctance to experiment with LSD, which John and George had been using since the summer of 1965. John even admitted in August of 1965 that he "just ate it all the time." Apparently, the song Day Tripper is about a girl who turns the singer on and she does not want to commit to a relationship. The line recorded as "she's a big teaser" was originally written, as "she's a prick teaser." Perhaps to confuse the issue, in an interview in 2005, Paul McCartney admitted that "Day Tripper" was about drugs. If that is correct, John Lennon's
lyrics
were his first explicit reference to LSD in a Beatles song. The Beatles were always considered to be squeaky clean before coming to America; and they quickly discovered the pleasures of marijuana. According to the most popular rumors about this initiation, Bob Dylan's name has been mentioned as the man who introduced it to the Beatles.
