The Very Unpredictable Influence Behind The Beatles’ “Drive My Car”

Pablo Picasso once said, “Good artists borrow, great artists steal,” and it couldn’t be a more honest quote. Picasso isn’t saying that great artists should plagiarize; instead, he is saying that great artists directly pull influence from others and transform it into something entirely new. When it comes to the most acclaimed musicians of all time, the question isn’t “Who does this?” Rather, it’s “Who doesn’t do it?” Of course, it is hard to definitively say which artists do and don’t, but one group that certainly did was The Beatles.

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Songs in which The Beatles reportedly borrowed include “Come Together”, “I Feel Fine”, “Run For Your Life”, and “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da”. Given the commonality of this practice, there are probably a lot more. You can try to discover those yourself, because in this piece, we are telling you about the unexpected inspiration behind The Beatles’ “Drive My Car”.

Released in 1965, this Beatles song was never released as a single, so it never reached the charts. However, it is still an absolute classic in their catalog. There are many elements that make this a classic, including George Harrison’s guitar line all the way through, which he revealed was taken and recrafted from Otis Redding‘s “Respect”.

Behind the Small Yet Significant Part The Beatles Lifted

If you listen to Otis Redding’s “Respect” and “Drive My Car” very closely, you can tell that the backing guitars are almost identical. Some very fine differences separate them, but to the average ear, they are nearly identical. Harrison wasn’t ashamed of this “theft”, as he once transparently stated how it came to be.

“We laid the track because what Paul would do, if he’d written a song, he’d learn all the parts for Paul and then come to the studio and say (sometimes he was very difficult): ‘Do this,’” said Harrison. “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 — duum-da-da-da-dada-da-dum,” he added via George Harrison on George Harrison: Interviews and Encounters.

So there you have it, the through line that connects these two hit songs from 1965. It might take you a couple of listens to know what George Harrison is mentioning. Although once you hear it, you won’t be able to unhear it.

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