Drive My Car – The Beatles

If Paul had written a song, he’d learn all the parts and then come in the studio and say ‘Do this.’ He’d never give you the opportunity to come out with something. But on ‘Drive My Car’ I just played the line, which is really like a lick off ‘Respect,’ you know, the Otis Redding version. And I played the line on the guitar and Paul laid that with me on the bass. We laid that track down like that. We played the lead part later on top of it.

ポールは自分の曲だと全部のパートを自分で考えていてスタジオに来ると僕らに「こうやって」って言うだけ。他の人間に何かを提案させる余地なんか与えなかったものさ。でも「ドライブ・マイ・カー」のリフは僕が考えて弾いたんだ。Respectみたいなヤツをね。僕がギターで弾いたフレーズをポールがベースでなぞったのさ。リードギターは後からふたりで弾いて重ねたよ。

His song, with contributions from me.

彼の曲だ。僕も手伝ったよ。

This is one of the songs where John and I came nearest to having a dry session. The lyrics I brought in were something to do with golden rings, which are always fatal (to songwriting). ‘Rings’ is fatal anyway, ‘rings’ always rhymes with things and I knew it was a bad idea. I came in and I said, ‘These aren’t good lyrics but it’s a good tune.’ Well, we tried, and John couldn’t think of anything, and we tried, and eventually it was, ‘Oh let’s leave it, let’s get off this one.’ ‘No, no. We can do it, we can do it.’ So we had a break… then we came back to it, and somehow it became ‘drive-my-car’ instead of ‘gol-den-rings,’ and then it was wonderful– because this nice tongue-in-cheek idea came.

この曲はジョンと僕がやったセッションの中では厄介な類のものだった。僕はさんざん使い古された「金の指輪」みたいなものをまた書いちゃったんだ。よくないフレーズだってことはよくわかってた。だからジョンのところに行って「詩はダメだけど曲が気に入ってる」って言った。で、取り掛かったんだけどジョンもことさら何か思いつくようでもなくて「そのままにしとこうよ」「いやいや、なとかできる、なんとかできる」って感じになって…で、ちょっと休んで再開した時にGod-den-RingsがDrive My Carになってね。そしたら急に素晴らしいものになったよ。