Throughout the madness of Beatlemania, the absurdity of the sudden riches that the four working-class lads from Liverpool were graced with, and fame like the world has never seen before, the music of The Beatles always remained the music of the people. They might have endlessly experimented and stretched pop music way beyond four chords on four instruments, but the scope of their songs, their foundation, was always fiercely entrenched in the everyday.
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. Perhaps this is why they 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 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 songs are three-dimensional—they have depth and backstories beyond the observable surface. And these are always readily available outside your window.
One song in the Beatles’ back catalogue exemplifies this. “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 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, 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.
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 is one of the most experimental pop albums ever.
