Lovely Rita

The most common tale is that on Wednesday, 9 November 1966 at 5 am, McCartney, while working on the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album, stormed out of a recording session after an argument with the other Beatles and rode off in his Austin-Healey, which he subsequently crashed.[5]

The story was largely pieced together by fans from the lyrics of several Beatles songs. The most common narrative includes the following pieces of evidence: "He didn't notice that the lights had changed" ("A Day in the Life") because he was busy watching the pretty girl on the pavement (the eponymous meter maid of "Lovely Rita") after narrowly missing her dressed in blue (she's said to be the blur on the back of Abbey Road) jaywalking ("Blue Jay Way"). He then crashed into a lamp-post (a car crash sound is heard in "Revolution 9" and "A Day in the Life"). He was pronounced dead on a "Wednesday morning at 5 o'clock as the day begins" ("She's Leaving Home"), and nobody found out this because the news was withheld: "Wednesday morning papers didn't come" ("Lady Madonna"). A funeral procession was held days later (as supposedly implied in the Abbey Road album cover). Adding fuel to the legend is the ending of "Strawberry Fields Forever." Some believed John said "I buried Paul" in a slow deep voice over the final refrain. He later refuted that, stating that he said "cranberry sauce."

According to believers, McCartney was replaced with the winner of a McCartney look-alike contest. The name of this look-alike has been recorded as William Shears Campbell, Billy Shears (the name of the fictitious leader of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band), William Sheppard (based on the inspiration for the song "The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill"), or some combination of the names.

There is no evidence of any sort of car crash in which McCartney was involved, although during the first week of January 1967, McCartney's custom-made Mini Cooper was wrecked by a friend on the M1 Motorway outside London. McCartney was involved in a moped crash on December 26, 1965, which resulted in a chipped tooth and the scar on his lip that can be seen on promotional videos for the "Paperback Writer"/"Rain" single, made shortly after the crash, in May 1966. According to McCartney, his desire to hide the scar on his lip was the impetus to grow a moustache; at about the same time the other three Beatles grew moustaches as well—in time for Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

so here is what i found on that hoax for the ppl that have lloked into this paul is dead thing so i hope u take the time to read this so u can relize THAT IT WAS A HOAX AND IT WAS A LONG TIME AGO...ty

I LOVE THIS SONG OFF "SGT. PEPPERS LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND"-BUT DONT ASK XOXOLAUREN-SHE THINKS SHE KNOWS ABOUT THE BEATLES!!

I love how paul sings his vowels in "little white BOOK" and "LOVELY Rita". his voice is just classic.

This song is amazing. Both my sister and I are named after Beatles Songs. Lovely Reta and Martha my Dear, ha ha.

Coincidentally, this song was written shortly after the UK first began to employ Meter Maids.

i love this song..

This song was based on another article Paul McCartney read in a newspaper. The article talked about a metermaid who was retiring. They called her "Lovely Rita" at one point in the article, since the picture of Rita in the article looked a lot like a man. The rest of the song is made up around the Rita character.

when i first got into the beatles, i didn't really fancy this song much. But when i really listened to it, it's a great song! I love it !

I thought they got the name Rita from Paul's dog. Just what I heard, I could be wrong, but I really seem to remember a pic of his dog, Rita, and that the song was named after the dog.

this is one of my favorite beatles songs, i love the piano solo