This one Beatles song contains “the secret” to their success, according to Paul McCartney
Despite the madness of Beatlemania, the sudden riches that the Fab Four were graced with, and untold fame, the music The Beatles produced always remained the music of the people.
They might have endlessly experimented and stretched pop way beyond four chords on four instruments, and about two discreet platitudes, but the foundation of their work was always fiercely entrenched in the everyday. We’ve all seen an Eleanor Rigby browsing the Marrowfat peas at Tesco. We’ve all wished it was yesterday once more, particularly the day after a derby day defeat in football. And we’ve all, at one point or another, thought we were the Eggman.
From the smiling fellow in the park depicted in ‘The Fool on the Hill’ to the odd story of the gravestone marked Eleanor Rigby in Paul McCartney’s hometown that he claims he must have subconsciously absorbed, there is always a sense that they were merely gazing out at the world around them.
Hell, even though I was joking about the Eggman addition, even that was based on their Geordie pal Eric Burdon. Perhaps this is why their songs have proved so transcendent ever since: the songs are woven into the fabric of society by virtue of the fact that it was society at large, and the songwriter’s place within it, that birthed them in the first place.
In fact, McCartney believes that using a figurative window as your canvas is how you achieve a great song. “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the secret to successful songwriting is the ability to paint a picture,” he says in his recent book, The Lyrics: 1956 To The Present.
The ‘picture’ of a perfect song is just three-dimensional. They have depth and backstories beyond the observable surface. They are vignettes of life that we listen to for five minutes, and get a sense of for years. And the inspiration for these perfect songs is always just passing by your window.
One song in the Beatles’ back catalogue exemplifies this, according to Paul McCartney. “Nobody liked parking attendants, or meter maids, as they were known in that benighted era. So, to write a song about being in love with a meter maid – someone nobody else liked – was amusing in itself,” McCartney writes regarding ‘Lovely Rita’.
He cunningly continues, “There was one particular meter maid in Portland Place on whom I based Rita. She was slightly military-looking. I know it’s a terrible thing to say, but those meter maids were never good-looking. You never heard anybody say, ‘God, that’s one stunning parking attendant’.”
So, in order to expand the details beyond this quirky concept, he simply sat around, looked out, and waited for a while. “In any case, I caught a glimpse of Rita opposite the Chinese embassy in Portland Place. She was filling in a ticket in her little white book,” he recalled, and from that simple sight a song that is still remembered and revered half a century later began falling into place.
As Macca makes clear, “The cap, the bag across her shoulder. It’s sheer observation, like painting en plein air,” he concludes – en plein air being the practice of setting up an easel outdoors and painting the scene beyond it. You don’t have to paint with realism, but relating to humanity in some sort of way, whether mystic and intangible or patently ‘Penny Lane’, is perhaps why a fair chunk of he world remain a step beyond ‘fond’ of the Fab Four.
It’s all there in ‘Lovely Rita’, a masterpiece that began life as a simple sketch. Then, in a fashion that only The Beatles have mastered, this deeply human song – about real people doing real things amid the unfurling human comedy – was placed amid the mad instrumentation and production of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in one of the most experimental pop albums ever. And nothing felt out of place. In fact, it felt far closer to reality than anything drearily dreamt up by Alan Bennett.
