“Lovely Rita” / The Beatles
After the sweet devotion of “When I’m Sixty-Four,” time for a little bawdiness, with a rock ‘n’ roll beat. “Lovely Rita” is a happy-go-lucky song about a guy trying to pick up a cute traffic officer – just another McCartney novel-in-song. But as usual, plenty of unsettling things lie under that deceptively simple surface.
The intro has a psychedelic texture, like “Fixing A Hole” – that dreamy sliding “ah-ahhh-aahh” (listen for it again on “A Day In the Life”) followed by woozy double-tracked backing vocals chanting “Lovely Rita meter maid.” But when Paul’s lead vocal bursts in, it’s a good-time rock shuffle, pure and simple. Or is it? Listen to all the odd sounds tucked in – the sarcastic zing after “Nothing can come between us” (George did that on slide guitar), the snide scrap of military march after “Made her look a little like a military man” (a little comb-and-paper orchestra John set up), the honky-tonk piano in the break. And at the end, the pounding piano is overlaid with heavy breathing, as if moving towards orgasm; the chords keep modulating uncertainly – they nearly make it – then John snaps “I’m leaving” and a door slams. In a way, this song is Paul’s version of “Norwegian Wood” – an affair with a surreal anticlimax.
In 1967 it was startling to see a woman in a traditional man’s job – and no way is Rita feminine, not with that military-style shoulder bag. She’s a brash New Woman. He asks her to tea and she promptly makes it dinner instead, then she pays the bill. (That didn’t happen often in 1967.) He requests a second date; she cuts to the chase and takes him straight home. Good deal for him, right?
But then things take a weird turn – when he gets to her place, anticipating some boisterous sex, he finds himself “sitting on the sofa with a sister or two.” (I love all those staccato words crammed into this line). At first I thought her family was intruding, but soon I guessed she was a feminist with equally liberated roommates – women’s lib was a big topic in 1967, as much so as the generation gap of “She’s Leaving Home.” And from there I began to assume she was a lesbian or even a transvestite (that mannish uniform, the braying laugh at dinner) – or have I been listening too much to the Kinks’ “Lola”? Believe me, I wanted every song Paul McCartney ever sang to be about me, but I never identified with this Rita chick.
I may be over-analyzing, but all these details baffled me when I was a kid. There’s something so compelling about this little scenario, you want to get inside and figure out what’s going on. And for all his declarations – “nothing can come between us,” “where would I be without you,” and the sublimely silly “when it gets dark I tow your heart away” – I don’t hear this as a sincere Paul love song. I hear normal healthy lust, and a guy getting in over his head, in a world where nothing is as it seems. Which makes it a perfect fit for Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Face it, they were tripping.
ReplyDeleteI have always thought the same things about this song. After he says "Sitting on the sofa with a sister or two", there comes that funny little noise, which suggests some comical scene. Very well made song.
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