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 here; but then 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 free to take some tea with me?" Tea. Not pot. It's like saying, "Come and cut the grass" and then realising that it could be pot, or the old teapot cold be something about pot. But I don't mind pot and I leave the words in. They're not consiously introduced just to say pot and be clever.
John Lennon (in 1980) - "That's Paul writing a pop song. He makes 'em up like a novelist. You hear lots of McCartney-influenced songs on the radio now. These stories about boring people doing boring things-- being postmen and secretaries and writing home. I'm not interested in writing third-party songs. I like to write about me, 'cuz I know me."
Paul McCartney (in 1984) - "Yeah, that was mine. It was based on the American meter maid. And I got the idea to just... you know, so many of my things, like 'When I'm Sixty-Four' and those, they're tongue in cheek! But they get taken for real! And similarly with 'Lovely Rita' --the idea of a parking-meter attendant's being sexy was tongue in cheek at the time."
