Back in 2005, Guitar Player sat down for an extensive interview with Paul McCartney, then fresh off the release of Chaos and Creation in the Backyard, an album that saw him break new artistic ground with the help of producer Nigel Godrich (best known for his decades-long partnership with Radiohead).
In addition to the insightful chat with the one-time Beatle, GP talked shop with Macca’s longtime six-string partners, Brian Ray and Rusty Anderson.
Asked if McCartney ever gave him insight into the inner workings of his world-changing creative relationship with John Lennon, Ray replied in the affirmative, revealing in the process just how absurdly prolific and natural their songwriting method was.
“I asked Paul if he wrote to a title, or a little melody, or a riff or something, and he said, ‘No. It was always lyrics, music, melody, and guitars all at once,’” Ray said.
Further elaborating on the speed at which the duo were able to produce (“You have to remember that the Beatles did a record every six months,” Ray emphasized), the guitarist said, “Paul said that in the more than 300 songs he and John wrote, he could only remember one time where they got stuck, and that was when they were writing ‘Drive My Car.’ They thought the title wasn’t working, but they liked the song. So they took a break, had some tea, and changed it.”
So, what exactly changed about the brilliant Rubber Soul opener during that time? That, Ray insisted, would remain a secret.
“I won’t tell you the lyric they tossed, because that’s Paul’s right to do that. I don’t want to be the guy who tells everybody what ‘Drive My Car’ was originally written as. And, you know, even with the rewrite they still finished the song at the end of the day!”
As hardcore Beatles fans know by now, the original lyrics Paul came up with were “You can buy me golden rings.” McCartney had already employed a similar trope using “diamond rings” in 1964’s “Can’t Buy Me Love” and “If You’ve Got Trouble,” a 1965 Help!-era track the group had recorded but discarded (it appears on the Anthology 2 compilation). For that matter, Lennon had used it in 1964’s “I Feel Fine.”
As McCartney told Barry Miles in Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now, “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 is always fatal.”
McCartney said that he presented it to Lennon, who was struggled to come up with a replacement. “So we had a break, maybe had a cigarette or a cup of tea, then we came back to it, and somehow it became ‘drive my car’ instead of ‘golden rings,’” he explained.
Considering Miles’ book was published in 1997 — a good seven years before Ray spoke to Guitar Player interview — he could have safely told us the story after all.
Over his two decades with McCartney — and many years before that as a go-to session player — Ray has built up a formidable reputation in his own right, even teaming up with Gibson in 2019 for a rare signature SG Junior electric guitar (another, more recent, recipient of a signature SG Junior being punk-pop star Yungblud.)
