‘Ticket to Ride’: The first Beatles song to feature Paul McCartney on lead guitar
He might have been best known as the bass guitarist with The Beatles, but Paul McCartney was probably the most talented multi-instrumentalist within the group. Turning his hand to guitar, piano, and even deputising on drums in Ringo Starr’s absence on some studio recordings, Macca’s talents were integral to the band, and while his melodic basslines often brought tracks to life, he would offer the occasional flourish on other instruments with equal levels of panache.
The bass guitar wasn’t even his primary instrument, and he only assumed the position as chief of the four-string following the tragic passing of pre-fame Beatle Stuart Sutcliffe in 1962. Volunteering himself as the replacement rather than drawing the (disputably) short straw, McCartney spent the remainder of his time with the Fab Four, applying himself to the rhythm section.
However, in his role as one of the band’s principal songwriters, he continued to write songs on guitar and piano throughout due to the technical constraints of writing on the bass. Surprisingly, however, he wouldn’t actually make an appearance on the instrument on a Beatles record until ‘I’ll Follow the Sun’ was released on their fourth album, Beatles For Sale. At the time, he and the rest of the band were wary of alternating the strictly imposed roles within the group, but the further into the band’s discography you delve, the more common the swapping becomes.
By the time they came to recording Help!, the band were frequently allowing McCartney to hop onto the guitar, not to dethrone George Harrison and John Lennon or reprieve them of their duties, but to offer his own flair to the songs that he had written for the band in the first place. It was on this record that he assumed the role of lead guitarist on a number of tracks for the first time, with ‘The Night Before’ and ‘Another Girl’ both having McCartney on lead vocals and lead guitar.
However, while ‘Ticket to Ride’ is a Lennon-McCartney composition largely attributed to Lennon, McCartney makes a turn on lead guitar in the song’s outro, jamming along with Harrison as he offers a countermelody on the 12-string guitar. In no way is this an example of McCartney trying to outshine or step on Harrison’s toes, but it’s instead an embellishment that bolsters the song’s freakout climax. The band were clearly stepping up their arrangements on Help!, and ‘Ticket to Ride’ is a prime example of the Beatles in exceptional form.
While not performing alone on lead guitar, ‘Ticket to Ride’, which was recorded on February 15th 1965, marks the first occasion where McCartney played lead guitar on a Beatles track, while ‘Another Girl’ was recorded over two days during the same sessions and features McCartney as the sole lead guitarist.
Over the course of the band, McCartney would play guitar on several more Beatles songs, but 10 of them feature his lead guitar playing. While not all of them are his compositions, with tracks such as ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ and ‘Being For The Benefit of Mr. Kite’ being two examples of Lennon’s songs where McCartney took the lead, other songs of his own such as ‘Helter Skelter’ and ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’ see him shed the bass and shred the guitar with just as much flair as Lennon or Harrison. Some might call this showing off, but the truth is that McCartney was just supremely talented at everything he did.
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