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
| Dmaj7/F# | Dmaj7/F# | G | G | Dmaj7/F# | Dmaj7/F# |
Du du du…
Verse 2
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
Ventura Highway, in the sunshine.
Where the days are longer the nights are stronger than moonshine.
You’re gonna go, I know, ow-ow-ow…
Chorus 2
‘Cause the free wind is blowin’ through your hair.
And the days surround your daylight there.
Seasons crying no despair.
Alligator lizards in the air, in the air.
Chorus tag 2
||: Dmaj7/F# | Dmaj7/F# | G | G :||
Du du du…
Ventura Highway Chords: Learn the progressions
Before you start playing Ventura Highway, 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 it is almost impossible to play this on one acoustic.
To get going, I would suggest you first learn the intro lick as that’s the signature part, you may need to use a loop pedal if you want to perform this live.
You’ll need TAB to learn Ventura Highway’s intro lick, here’s a link: Ventura Highway – Guitar Lesson with TAB.
By the way, do compare this to David Gray’s Babylon, I suspect he was “inspired”…
Looking at the chords of the verse and bridge we can see how they are almost the same (there’s TAB for how to best distinguish between these sections).
Using Roman Numerals, it’s IV – I/3, the bridge has a G6 instead of a G as we do in the verse.
The chorus goes somewhere new as we hit chords II – III, we know this as only here do we find two minor chords a tone apart, like this:
||: Em (II) | F#m11 (III) :||
Again, you need the TAB for how to strum this in a way that works on just one guitar, follow that link to the TAB lesson and then come back here for this chord chart.
Ventura Highway Chord Chart | PDF + iReal Pro
Should you want to download this chart, here’s a PDF: Ventura Highway Chord Chart PDF.
This chord chart was created using iReal Pro, here’s a link to that file: Ventura Highway iReal Pro. Using this and the iRealPro app, you can change the key although I can’t give you any advice on how to make that work!
America’s signature song – Ventura Highway!
Ventura Highway is America‘s signature song, they’ve even named their website after it, I guess America.com was taken!
Released in 1972, it wasn’t perhaps a worldwide hit but instead a tune that over the years has grown in popularity, I still hear it on the radio, half a century later.
Not just popular with the general public, but other artists have been influenced by it, Prince admitted to naming Purple Rain after a lyric from verse 2 and once you made the connection with David Gray‘s Babylon it’s hard to not hear it!
Having spent a day or two transcribing it, I’m finding it hard to get it out of my head, those guitar lines are so catchy!
Ventura Highway Chords | Related Pages
Ventura Highway | Guitar Lesson + TAB
With this guitar lesson, you can learn to play Ventura Highway by America using TAB and chord analysis.
| G | G | Dmaj7/F# | Dmaj7/F# |
Chewing on a piece of grass walking down the road…
Five similar tunes | Chords + Lyrics
America tunes
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 on the web
About me | Dan Lundholm
This was a guitar lesson about Ventura Highway chords, by Dan Lundholm. Discover more about him and how you can learn guitar with Spytunes.
Most importantly, find out why you should learn guitar through playing tunes, not practising scales, and studying theory in isolation.
