Thursday, May 13, 2010

Paul McCartney on "Lovely Rita"

"I was bopping about on the piano in Liverpool when someone told me that in America they call parking-meter women meter maids. I thought that was great and it got to 'Rita Meter Maid' and then 'Lovely Rita Meter Maid' and I was thinking vaguely that it should be a hate song: 'You took my car away and I'm so blue today.' And you wouldn't be liking her, but then I thought it would be better to love her and if she was very freaky too, like a military man, with a bag on her shoulder. A foot stomper, but nice.

"The song was imagining if somebody was there taking down my number and I suddenly fell for her, and the kind of person I'd be, to fall for a meter maid, would be a shy office clerk and I'd say, 'May I inquire discreetly when you are free to take some tea with me?' Tea, not pot. It's like saying, 'Come and cut the grass' and then realising that could be pot, or the old teapot could be something about pot. But I don't mind pot and I leave the words in. They're not consciously introduced just to say pot and be clever."

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