10 Greatest Covers Of Beatles Songs
6. Otis Redding - Day Tripper
The Beatles’ early rockers - of which “Day Tripper” is one of the finest - are bouncy, energetic, and massively catchy. What they don’t tend to be is especially raucous or explosive. In the hands of Otis Redding, this all changes sharpish.
Redding had a fondness for British Invasion bands, taking on the Stones’ “Satisfaction” to equally great effect. With “Day Tripper”, he puts to one side the precise Lennon/McCartney harmonies and the coiled spring of Harrison’s guitar riff. Instead, he barks and cavorts over scorching Memphis horns, taking the implicit saucy undertones of the Beatles track and making it all but explicit, in more ways than one.
It’s the sound of two disparate genres working together. Redding takes the expert craftsmanship of The Beatles and stomps all over the blueprint, taking the song at his own pace, stopping, starting, going up and down and all over the place.
The two versions of the track achieve roughly the same thing - a propulsive, massively danceable tune - but the approaches are totally different, one detail oriented and straight ahead, the other swinging and wild. Both, though, are performed tightly by artists at the top of their respective games.