Beatles – Good Day Sunshine

It’s hard to be unhappy when you hear this song. McCartney said the song was influenced by The Lovin’s Spoonful’s song Daydream. I can hear that but I can’t help but think the song was also influenced a little by The Kinks. I could hear Ray Davies singing this song.

Beatles - Good Day Sunshine

Original handwritten lyrics to Good Day Sunshine

McCartney did admit to hearing not only Lovin Spoonful but the Kink’s Sunny Afternoon. Most of these British bands would play off each other and the fans were the benefactors to this. John Sebastian would not know about this until 1984 (quote down below) Paul mentioned it in an interview.

Ray Davies did in fact rave about this song in Disc and Music Echo magazine…a very popular British popular music magazine in the 60s and early 70s. The song has a bounce to it and also an older sound…even in 1966 when it was released.

The song was on the album Revolver. That album I think personally is their artistic best…not my number 1 favorite but one of the greatest albums ever made. When they hit America in 1964 all of their albums progressed ahead and weren’t the same. They never remade an album…they were always looking to improve and change. You could see the progression of this from Help! to Rubber Soul to Revolver. After Revolver came their most famous album Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. With Revolver, listeners heard more sophisticated sounds and techniques adopted by the Beatles. This song was not released as a single…but it could have been.

The album peaked at #1 on the Billboard 100, Canada, The UK, and probably Mars as well.

An interesting piece of info on this song. Now all of you non-musicians may not care about this part but George Harrison played bass on this song…so please indulge me. George was right-handed so he could not play Paul’s left-handed basses. He ended up renting one out to play at the session.

I thought I knew most of the instruments they played but this I didn’t know. He played a 1965 Burns Nu-Sonic bass guitar. There is a reason I never heard of this bass guitar. The Nu-Sonics were one of the first instruments discontinued by Baldwin after they bought the Burns company in September 1965. They disappeared from the catalog by the fall of ’66 so the total production run for all versions was only about two years.

Beatles - Good Day Sunshine Bass

Here is a picture of George playing the Nu-Sonic Bass Guitar. 

Paul McCartney: “Once again, I was out at John’s house in Weybridge. I’d driven myself there from my home in London in my beautiful sierra-blue Aston Martin, ejector seat and all. I love to drive, and an hour’s drive is a good time to think of things; if you’ve got half an idea, you can flesh it out on the way. I would often arrive at John’s place with a fully formed idea. Sometimes I would have to wait, if John was late getting up; he was a lazy bastard, whereas I was a very enthusiastic young man. Mind you, if I did have to wait there was a little swimming pool I could sit beside.”

“Around that time there was quite a spate of summer songs. ‘Daydream’ and ‘Summer In The City’ by The Lovin’ Spoonful, The Kinks’ ‘Sunny Afternoon’…We wanted to write something sunny. Both John and I had grown up while the music hall tradition was still very vibrant, so it was always in the back of our minds. There are lots of songs about the sun, and they make you happy: ‘The Sun Has Got His Hat On’ or ‘On The Sunny Side Of The Street.’ It was now time for us to do ours. So we’ve got love and sun, what more do we want?”

Paul McCartney: “Wrote that out at John’s one day…the sun was shining, influenced by The Lovin’ Spoonful. It was really very much a nod to The Lovin’ Spoonful’s ‘Daydream,’ the same traditional, almost trad-jazz feel. That was our favorite record of theirs. ‘Good Day Sunshine’ was me trying to write something similar to ‘Daydream.’ John and I wrote it together at Kenwood, but it was basically mine, and he helped me with it.”

John Sebastian: “One of the wonderful things The Beatles had going for them is that they were so original that when they did cop an idea from somebody else it never occurred to you, I thought there were one or two of their songs which were Spoonfuloid but it wasn’t until Paul mentioned it in a Playboy interview (in 1984) that I specifically realized we’d inspired ‘Good Day Sunshine.’”

Good Day Sunshine

Good day sunshine
Good day sunshine
Good day sunshine

I need to laugh, and when the sun is out
I’ve got something I can laugh about
I feel good, in a special way
I’m in love and it’s a sunny day

Good day sunshine
Good day sunshine
Good day sunshine

We take a walk, the sun is shining down
Burns my feet as they touch the ground

Good day sunshine
Good day sunshine
Good day sunshine

And then we lie, beneath a shady tree
I love her and she’s loving me
She feels good, she knows she’s looking fine
I’m so proud to know that she is mine

Good day sunshine
Good day sunshine
Good day sunshine
Good day sunshine
Good day sunshine
Good day sunshine
Good day sunshine

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Author: Badfinger (Max)

Power Pop fan, Baseball, Beatles, Alternative music, old movies, and tv show fan. Also anything to do with pop culture in the 60s and 70s... I'm also a songwriter, bass and guitar player. Not the slightest bit interested in politics at all.

44 thoughts on “Beatles – Good Day Sunshine”

    1. George also played bass on She Said She Said… If Paul had to play the piano and they didn’t want to overdub…George would play bass….sometimes Lennon. Thanks for reading Randy!

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  4. Great writeup. Who knew George played bass on a record (I suspect they could all play guitar, bass & piano but that doesn’t mean they did so when recording). You’re right, it does sound a little like a Kinks song. An excellent song…yet only second best Beatles one about the sun!

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    1. You got me thinking…they had 4 songs with Sun in their title I think…John, Paul, and George wrote one each. John’s Sun King on Abbey Road…and another Paul song…I’ll Follow The Sun.
      I think that is all…as far as in the title.
      This is a good mid-sixties pop song.

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      1. you had your thinking cap on! I actually had forgotten about ‘I’ll Follow the sun’, that os a pretty good one too! I was thinking of ‘Here comes the Sun’ of course, and yep, ‘Sun King’ is decent as well.

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      2. After those 4 I didn’t trust my judgement so I googled it…looks like that was it! I’ll Follow The Sun was the hardest one to think of.

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      2. Thats not bad…for an extinct bass that is close to one of a kind. One year in production. You would think George would not have to rent the damn thing…

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  6. Cant’ help but smile for this song. Dave Morey, a DJ on KFOG in San Francisco, when listing tracks from a set, would always insert a parenthetical (yay) when he mentioned the Beatles. You made me curious, so I looked up the Nu-Sonic bass. The Burns website contains the same picture you used and says Harrison also played it on “Rain”. You can still buy one for £849.

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    1. Yea it is a really cool looking bass and they sound very good. Thats not bad…around $1100.
      This song puts me in a good mood when I hear it or adds to it.

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  9. Some time in 1966-67 my Father brought home a big box and said “look at this Paul, it’s called a tape recorder”. It had those two big spools that were linked by thick brown revolving tape and I was fascinated watching them go round. The song he played me was Good Day Sunshine. I listened to it again and again.

    Funny thing is I don’t know how or why my father had the recording. He hated pop music and especially John Lennon (they came from the same area so I think he vaguely knew of him).

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    1. That…is so awesome. I have to wonder how the heck he had that. I’ve had a reel to reel a long time ago but it’s been years. This song remimds me of the Kinks…had to be an influence as well as the Lovin’s Spoonful.

      I’ve talked to a guy that grew up in Liverpool around that time. He said that no one called him John…it was always “Lennon”…that Lennon was always getting into trouble. He seemed to mellow out once he got into his mid thirties.

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    2. I got a reel-to-reel tape recorder for Christmas at about that time. My mom told me not to send in the warranty card. The tape recorder came via my uncle who got stuff from a guy he’d meet in a bar – stuff that “fell off a truck”.

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    3. That’s such a cool memory. My dad had one of those also but I don’t remember his playing any music on it. He did use it to recite silly poetry though. Thanks for bringing that memory back to me.

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      1. Glad you all liked my memory!

        The only song on the tape was Good Day Sunshine. as I said, I don’t know how it got on to the tape. Maybe a friend of my Dad’s gave it to him. I suspect so.

        Dad was eleven years older than Lennon. He grew up “across the water” in Birkenhead, but back then communities were quite insular and everyone knew (or knew of) everyone else, especially those who had a reputation, like Lennon.

        A thing my Dad had in common with Ringo Starr and Tom Jones is that all three were hospitalised for a long period before they were ten years old, all with pneumonia I believe. Thankfully all survived!

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      1. Yeah, ‘Good Day Sunshine,’ there is that upbeat feel to it. I know/feel this is going to grind your gears, but to my ear ‘Maxwells Silver Hammer’ has all the jaunty hallmarks of Music Hall, minus the lyrics of course!

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      2. Thinking about it… I agree with you about Maxwell… I never thought about it that way.
        The Kinks covered that area well.

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  11. I see Here Comes the Sun was written a few years later, but Sunshine of Your Love was written around the same time. Wassup with all of these sunny songs? Did The Beach Boys start the domino? Just curious. You’re right, you can’t be sad while listening to this song, just like you can’t write a sad banjo tune (paraphrase of Steve Martin way back in his SNL days.)

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    1. I don’t know why he just rented it. Abbey Road probably rented it when he said he needed one…but yea…just buy it. he played well on this and he played on She Said She Said…

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    1. I didn’t know George played bass on that either! I knew he did on She Said She Said…
      Isn’t that a cool bass!
      I loved your post today Christian…one of my favorite Beatle songs.

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