"Ticket to Ride"

Lately, I've been going through some old notes I made and fleshing them out into coherent commentary.  Last July, I listened to the Carpenters' version of "Ticket to Ride" and noticed that "free" in the line "He would never be free when I was around" is sung with a melisma (F Eb D), musically giving a sense of freedom because the word isn't constrained to a single pitch.  I referenced the Beatles' original this morning and found that this feature is present there too.

As I've mentioned before, "Ticket to Ride" is in between A major and Ab major, so I'm a bit unsure of the specific notes, but - skewing towards A major - I think "free" in the Beatles' "She would never be free when I was around" is sung to the notes E D.  The harmony part also has "free" sung to two pitches, but I couldn't determine what they are.

"Ticket to Ride"

Backdated, archival post

[link to original on tumblr]

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About two weeks ago, I learned the little guitar lick after the bridge in "Ticket to Ride," and I re-learned the recurring twelve-string phrase (which I think I used to know but forgot).  I figured I should record it.  One more song for the year and all that.

To me, it sounds like the studio version is in between Ab major and A major, so I used the live version from Anthology 2 as the template for my recording.

My recording is a bit rough, and I didn't actually play that little lick very well, but it's good enough to be recognizable.  Initially, I'd assumed George Harrison played that lick (since he's the lead guitarist), but referencing the studio version, I found that the twelve-string part is panned right and that lick is panned left, so I think it's actually John Lennon playing it.

"Ticket to Ride"

Backdated, archival post

[link to original on tumblr]

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Collection Audit:

I'm listening to the Beatles' The Beatles 1 and working on my transcriptions of their songs for my Beatle-specific project.  I noticed something about the chorus of "Ticket to Ride."  Two of the four lines are "She oughta think twice; she oughta do right by me."  It's very similar to the last line of each verse (and also the title) of Bob Dylan's "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright," except that where Dylan says not to think twice, the Beatles say "she oughta think twice."  The "think twice" and "(al)right" are the two similar elements. 

Apparently, "Ticket to Ride" is more of a John Lennon song than a Paul McCartney song, and since he mentioned that "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" from Help! (the same album that "Ticket to Ride" appears on) is from his "Dylan period," it seems a bit more likely that "Ticket to Ride" had some of that Dylan influence too.