Lovely Rita

From Wikipedia:

“Lovely Rita” is a song by the English rock band the Beatles from their 1967 album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. It was written mainly by Paul McCartney and credited to Lennon–McCartney. It is about a meter maid and the narrator’s affection for her.

Inspiration

The term “meter-maid”, largely unknown in the UK before the song’s release, is American slang for a female traffic warden. According to some sources, “Lovely Rita” originates from when a female traffic warden named Meta Davies issued a parking ticket to McCartney outside Abbey Road Studios. Instead of becoming angry, he accepted it with good grace and expressed his feelings in song. When asked why he had called her “Rita”, McCartney replied, “Well, she looked like a Rita to me”.

In his comments to biographer Barry Miles, however, McCartney refuted the idea that this episode inspired the song: “It wasn’t based on a real person. I think it was more a question of coincidence … I didn’t think, ‘Wow, that woman gave me a ticket, I’ll write a song about her.’ Never happened like that.” Author John Winn writes that McCartney’s inspiration came from hearing the term “meter maid”, after which he began writing the song when visiting his brother Michael in Liverpool.

According to a contemporary report on the recording of “Lovely Rita”, in Beat Instrumental magazine, the lyrics were completed by McCartney and John Lennon during the session. A reproduction of the manuscript shows only the opening chorus and verse in McCartney’s handwriting; the remaining lyrics appear in Beatles assistant Mal Evans’ handwriting, after he and Neil Aspinall joined the two songwriters in a corner of the studio.

Recording

Recording began on 23 February 1967 with eight takes required to achieve a satisfactory basic track. Using a four-track recorder, this first performance featured George Harrison’s guitar on track 1, Lennon’s guitar on track 2, Ringo Starr’s drums on track 3, and McCartney’s piano set on track 4. After those individual tracks had been combined in a reduction mix, McCartney overdubbed a bass guitar part.

The 24 February session was devoted to adding vocals. According to engineer Geoff Emerick, McCartney had told George Martin, the band’s producer, that he wanted the backing vocals to replicate how the Beach Boys “might approach the song”. The Beatles were visited in the studio that evening by Tony Hicks of the Hollies, American musicians David Crosby and Shawn Phillips, and the brother of Ravi Shankar, Harrison’s sitar teacher. Also present was Leslie Bryce, a photographer from Beatles Monthly. McCartney recorded his lead vocal with the tape speed reduced, so that his voice sounded at a higher pitch when the speed was corrected. Bryce took photos of Lennon, McCartney, Harrison and Crosby grouped around a microphone, and the Beat Instrumental report stated that the backing vocals were recorded that night with Crosby’s participation. Phillips later supported this and said that he too sang backing vocals with the three Beatles. However, Phillips’ recollection is not supported by others, who say the group vocals were instead overdubbed on 7 March.

The session was led by Lennon and recorded with heavy tape echo. Enjoying the lighthearted session, the Beatles also added percussive effects played on comb and paper, serving as handmade kazoos, and vocalised sounds such as moans, sighs and screams. The latter sounds appear over the song’s extended coda. Martin later described the session as “anarchy”, given how little was achieved over the seven hours, and cited it as a precedent for the group’s “undisciplined, sometimes self-indulgent” method of working on Magical Mystery Tour later in 1967.

A second piano, played by Martin and processed electromechanically to wobble in and out of tune, was added for the solo on 21 March. This session was again filled with visitors. Among these were the band Pink Floyd, who were recording in a neighbouring studio and gained entry to the session through their producer, Norman Smith, formerly the Beatles’ recording engineer. Although Pink Floyd were established as one of the leading bands in the London underground scene, they were intimidated to be in the Beatles’ presence. Drummer Nick Mason recalled that they watched the band mixing “Lovely Rita” but they were “God-like figures to us” and any interaction between the two groups was minimal. Pink Floyd later used effects inspired by “Lovely Rita” when recording their instrumental composition “Pow R. Toc H.” from their debut album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn.

The final mono mix was completed that night, and a month later, the stereo mix was done. During mixdown the tape machine ran at 48.75 Hz instead of the standard 50 Hz, affecting the pitch on the released track. With vari-speed having been applied throughout the recording process, the song’s key is around E flat major. According to Martin, “Lovely Rita” and “When I’m Sixty Four” were the songs that would have been cut from Sgt. Pepper had the Beatles not been pressured into issuing “Strawberry Fields Forever” and “Penny Lane” as a non-album single in advance of the album’s release. In the opinion of music critic Richie Unterberger, “Lovely Rita” is “one of the more lighthearted songs on Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and consequently one of the more critically overlooked”.

McCartney live performances and cover versions

McCartney first performed “Lovely Rita” in concert on 4 May 2013, when he opened his Out There! world tour at the Estádio Mineirão in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. […]

There was a story in the paper about ‘Lovely Rita’, the meter maid. She’d just retired as a traffic warden. The phrase ‘meter maid’ was so American that it appealed, and to me a ‘maid’ was always a little sexy thing: ‘Meter maid. Hey, come and check my meter, baby.’ I saw a bit of that, and then I saw that she looked like a ‘military man’. The song got played around with and pulled apart, and I remember wandering around Heswall (where my dad lived and my brother now lives), trying to write the words to it. I pulled them all together and we recorded it.

Paul McCartney – From “The Beatles Anthology” book, 2000

‘Lovely Rita’ was occasioned by me reading that, in America, they call Traffic Wardens ‘Meter Maids’, and I thought, ‘God. That’s so American!’ Also, to me, ‘Maid’ had sexual connotations, like a French maid, or a milkmaid. There’s something good about ‘Maid’, and ‘Meter’ made it a bit more special, like the meter in a cab. ‘The meter is running, meter maid.’ Hearing that amused me. In England you hear those American phrases and they enter our vocabulary. We let them in because we’re amused, it’s not because we love them or want to use them, it’s just because it’s funny. ‘Rita’ was the only name I could think of that would rhyme with it so I started on that, Rita, meter maid, lovely Rita. And I just fantasised on the idea.

Paul McCartney – From “Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now” by Barry Miles, 1997

It was in the spring of 1967 that I ticketed Paul’s car. He was on a meter showing excess, so I gave him a ten-shilling ticket. I had just put it on when he came along and took it off. He looked at it and, as he walked away, turned back and said, ‘Is your name really Meta?’ I told him it was, and we chatted for a few minutes. Then he said, ‘That would be a good idea for a song, do you mind if I use it?’ And that was it. Then, a few months later, I heard ‘Lovely Rita’ on the radio.

Meta Davies – St John’s Wood’s first female ticket officer – From “The Beatles: Off the Record” by Keith Badman, 2008

I remember one night just going for a walk and working on the words as I walked. This was about the time that parking meters were coming in; before that we’d been able to park freely, so people had quite an antagonistic feeling towards these people. I’d been nicked a lot for parking so the fun was to imagine one of them was a bit of a easy lay, ‘Come back to my place, darlin’.’ It somehow made them a figure of fun instead of a figure of terror and it was a way of getting me own back.

It wasn’t based on a real person but, as often happened, it was claimed by a girl called Rita who was a traffic warden who apparently did give me a ticket, so that made the newspapers. I think it was more a question of coincidence: anyone called Rita who gave me a ticket would naturally think, ‘It’s me!’ I didn’t think, Wow, that woman gave me a ticket, I’ll write a song about her — never happened like that.

Paul McCartney – From “Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now” by Barry Miles, 1997

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. 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.’

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. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the secret to successful songwriting is the ability to paint a picture.

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. 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.’

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. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the secret to successful songwriting is the ability to paint a picture.

Paul McCartney – From “The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present“, 2021

What’s ‘Lovely Rita’ all about?

Paul McCartney: 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 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.

After a ‘little like a military man’ there’s a fantastic ‘Whoop Whoop’. How did you do that?

It’s done with a comb and paper. We had it in the bit after and it sounded too corny; it wasn’t quite good enough to have twice, but in a way that’s nice because you listen for it to come round again.

There’s a lot of random in our songs — Strawberry Fields is the name of a Salvation Army School — by the time we’ve taken it through the writing stage, thinking of it, playing it to the others, writing it, and letting them think of bits, recording it once and deciding it’s not quite right and do it again and then find ‘Oh, that’s it, the solo comes here and that goes there’, then bang, you have the jigsaw puzzle. […]

What kind of scene are you thinking of when you say ‘Took her home and nearly made it, sitting on the sofa with a sister or two’?

That’s it: there are a couple of sisters around so that is why I never made it.

I could see a whole scene of naked bodies writhing on the sofa…

If it had been really made…

Paul McCartney – Interview with The Observer, November 1967

From The Usenet Guide to Beatles Recording Variations:

[a] mono 21 Mar 1967.
UK: Parlophone PMC 7026 Sgt Pepper 1967.
US: Capitol MAS 2653 Sgt Pepper 1967.

[b] stereo 17 Apr 1967.
UK: Parlophone PCS 7026 Sgt Pepper 1967.
US: Capitol SMAS 2653 Sgt Pepper 1967.
CD: EMI CDP 7 46442 2 Sgt Pepper 1987.

Talk just before the end is audible, the last syllables “leave it” (or “believe it”?) being quite distinct in mono [a].

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“Lovely Rita” has been played in 89 concerts and 4 soundchecks.

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Going further

The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present

"Lovely Rita" is one of the songs featured in the book "The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present," published in 2021. The book explores Paul McCartney's early Liverpool days, his time with the Beatles, Wings, and his solo career. It pairs the lyrics of 154 of his songs with his first-person commentary on the circumstances of their creation, the inspirations behind them, and his current thoughts on them.

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