• Writer: John Lennon and Paul McCartney
• Producer: George Martin
• Recorded: February 15th, 1965 at Abbey Road studios in London
• Released: April 14th, 1965
• Players:
  John Lennon — vocals, guitar, tambourine
  Paul McCartney — bass, guitar, vocals
  George Harrison — vocals, guitar
  Ringo Starr — drums
• Album: Help! (Capitol, 1965)
• Also On:
  The Beatles 1962-1966 (Capitol, 1973)
  The Beatles At The Hollywood Bowl (Capitol, 1977)
  Reel Music (Capitol, 1982)
  20 Greatest Hits (Capitol, 1982)
  Live At The BBC (Apple, 1994)
  Anthology 2 (Apple, 1996)
  1 (Apple/Capitol, 2000)
• “Ticket To Ride” is used in the skiing sequence in the film Help! The scene was one of the most spontaneous and ad-libbed in the film, since the Beatles were amateur skiers and fell down quite a bit.
• The group performed the song on The Ed Sullivan Show on September 12th, 1965, and throughout their 1965 concert tours of Europe and North America.
• John Lennon called the song “one of the earliest heavy metal records made.”
• Though billed as a Lennon-McCartney song, Lennon said it was actually written entirely by Lennon. But he did note that “Paul (McCartney)’s contribution was the way Ringo (Starr) played the drums.” McCartney says Lennon wrote about 60 percent of it.
• “Ticket To Ride” spent nine weeks in the Billboard Top 40, hitting Number One for one week. It topped the chart for five weeks in the U.K.
• Beatles collectors are always on the lookout for the original pressing of the “Ticket To Ride” single, which bore the legend “from the United Artists screenplay Eight Arms To Hold You.” The movie was, of course, re-titled Help!
• The Help! album, which featured seven Beatles songs from the movie along with six orchestral pieces from the soundtrack, had advance orders of more than a million copies — a first for the record industry.
• Released in August 1965, the album hit Number One on the Billboard 200 chart less than a month later and stayed there for nine weeks.

FAST FORWARD:

• The Beatles announced their breakup in the spring of 1970, although the group had already broken up earlier that year.
• Lennon was shot and killed in front of his New York City apartment building by deranged fan Mark David Chapman on December 8th, 1980.
• In 1987, Lennon and singer-bassist McCartney became the first non-American composers inducted into the Songwriters Hall Of Fame.
• The Beatles were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988. McCartney did not attend because of prolonged litigation with his former bandmates.
• Lennon, McCartney, and guitarist George Harrison have also been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as solo artists.
• Harrison died on November 28th, 2001 after a long battle with cancer.

The latest release from the Beatles is the soundtrack to the Las Vegas Cirque Du Soleil show LOVE, which features remixed music from the band’s catalogue.