Ventura Highway chords by America

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Ventura Highway | Chords + Lyrics

Intro

||: G | G | Dmaj7/F# | Dmaj7/F# :||

Verse 1

||: G | G | Dmaj7/F# | Dmaj7/F# :||
Chewing on a piece of grass walking down the road.
Tell me, how long you gonna stay here, Joe?
Some people say this town don’t look good in snow.
You don’t care, I know.

Bridge 1

| G6 | G6 | Dmaj9/F# | Dmaj9/F# |
Ventura Highway, in the sunshine.
| G6 | G6 | Dmaj9/F# | Dmaj9/F# |
Where the days are longer the nights are stronger than moonshine.
| G6 | G6 | Dmaj9/F# | Dmaj9/F# | F#m11 | F#m11 |
You’re gonna go, I know, ow-ow-ow…

Chorus 1

||: Em | F#m11 :||
‘Cause the free wind is blowing through your hair.
And the days surround your daylight there.
Seasons crying no despair.
| Em | F#m11 | F#m11 | G | G |
Alligator lizards in the air, in the air.

Chorus tag 1

Verse 2

||: G | G | Dmaj7/F# | Dmaj7/F# :||
Wishin’ on a falling star, watchin’ for the early train.
Sorry boy, but I’ve been hit by purple rain.
Aw, come on Joe, you can always change your name.
Thanks alot son, just the same.

Bridge 2

Chorus 2

||: Em | F#m11 :||
‘Cause the free wind is blowin’ through your hair.
And the days surround your daylight there.
Seasons crying no despair.
| Em | F#m11 | F#m11 | G | G |
Alligator lizards in the air, in the air.

Chorus tag 2

||: Dmaj7/F# | Dmaj7/F# | G | G :||
Du du du…

Ventura Highway chords, progressions, and TAB

Before you start, you need to tune the guitar slightly sharp or it’ll sound weird playing along with the original recording. Use my free online guitar tuner, and set it to 446 Hz.

Just like with America‘s other huge tune, A Horse With No Name, we are dealing with several layered guitars here. So much so that it may be impossible to play this on one acoustic.

Below, there are TAB for each section. Learn this and play along with the original recording. Once you can do it, feel free to modify the sections to your liking.

Starting with the intro, here’s the original lick of guitar 1:

The verse is pretty intense, you could play this during the intro as well if someone else plays that awesome lick.

The bridge introduced a G6 and also extends that D chord even further, to a Dmaj9/F#. We finish on an F#m11, I would play this, extremely intense strumming pattern.

The chorus calms down as we now play 8th notes when strumming Ventura Highway’s chords, like this:

The final section, which I’ve called the chorus tag is like the intro, just starting with Dmaj7, instead of G.

Use the TAB, chords, and lyrics above to work out what to play.

On a final note, David Gray clearly played along to Ventura Highway by America once or twice before he composed his tune Babylon.

In my book, this falls under inspiration, not stealing. The difference is that David put enough time into developing Babylon that it doesn’t sound like a rip-off. Songwriting is a craft, not a waiting game for inspiration to strike.

Ventura Highway chords | Related pages

Five similar tunes

When you can play Ventura Highway's chords, try these five tunes from the song book.

America

Named America so people wouldn’t think they put on a fake accent, the band formed in London during the late 60s.

Their best tunes include A Horse With No Name, Ventura Highway, and Sister Golden Hair.

America tunes.

America on the web