Who was Lovely Rita?

The mystery behind that ‘Meter Maid’

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Lovely Rita meter maid/Nothing can come between us

There are two origin stories — three if you count a composite version.

Agreed facts

Even in 1967, parking spaces in central London were at a premium. Paul McCartney often parked his distinctive Mini Cooper in illegal spots while dashing about town.

One afternoon, his luck ran out. Returning to his vehicle near Portland Square, McCartney found a young woman standing next to it:

Filling in a ticket in her little white book,/In a cap, she looked much older

And the bag across her shoulder/Made her look a little like a military man

McCartney responded with good humour when the traffic warden handed the Beatle a parking ticket. After a brief, friendly exchange, they both went on with their days.

Everyone agrees that this happened. The question is whether this was before or after Paul wrote the song.

Version 1. “ A Meter maid named Meta?

In *The Revolution in the Head,* Ian MacDonald names the lovely ‘meter maid’ as Meta Davies.

Meta Davies — London’s first female traffic warden

This appears correct as Meta, then the only female traffic warden/parking attendant working in London, and her patch included the area close to Abbey Road. Meta’s recollection is that

…in the spring of 1967, I ticketed Paul’s car/ I’d just put it on the windscreen when Paul came along and took it off. He looked at it and read my signature.‘Oh, is your name really Meta? That would be a good name for a song. Would you mind if I use it?’

Then, a few months later, I heard ‘Lovely Rita’ on the radio.

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Memories may be a little blurred here. One problem is that though the term ‘meter maid’ originated in the US in the 1950s, it was not widely known in the UK. Paul later commented:

{ I read} that in America, they call traffic wardens ‘meter maids. I thought, God, that’s so American! There’s something good about ‘maid,’ and ‘meter’ made it a bit more official, like the meter in a cab; the meter is running, meter maid. Hearing that amused me. Taken from Many Years From Now, Barry Miles

Version 2: ‘I invented Rita!’

Paul McCartney has refuted attempts to link the song to Meta or any other real person. “I didn’t know her name,” he insists. ‘I just thought she looked like a Rita.’

In 1984, he reaffirmed that he regularly invented characters in his songs:

“It was claimed by a girl called Rita, who was a traffic warden who apparently did give me a ticket, but 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.”

Then how did it happen? asks one Doctor S. Freud, a first-time caller from Vienna. And what was the deal with the ‘sister or two’ and the sofa?

Version 3: A subconscious link

In Many Years From Now, Barry Miles suggests that “the combination of Meta (Davies) and ‘meter’ may have provided an unconscious spark of an idea. There is also the possibility that the song was already written and Paul was just being friendly.”

This would help explain the factual errors that appear in both accounts. The song was recorded in February, so ‘early spring’ would mean it was already written.

Paul, for his part, refers to Rita rather than Meta — suggesting that he has ‘subconsciously’ merged them.

A girl called Meta, who looked like Rita, was standing by my car and a parking meter…

It sounds like a wisely discarded early draft of the lyric. Plus, strictly speaking, the name Meta would usually be pronounced to rhyme with letter. Perhaps that could have been used in another song on Pepper.

Meta’s getting better all the time.

Or perhaps not.