![]() ![]() The fact that the author has placed his stand-in at a tabloid paper rather than at a tony one says something. Thus, the fictional son is to some degree autobiographical. The protagonist of the song wants to be a paperback writer, and he has written a paperback novel in which one of the main characters also wants to be a paperback writer. The answer, I believe, lies with the son. Even if we just shrug and say, “they wrote whatever felt right,” we still must ask, well, why does “Daily Mail” feel right here? The question, in “Paperback Writer” as in any poem, is *why* did that particular phrase come to mind? What effect does it have on the song? I mean, it would not have taken any more time or effort to write “his son is working for the Sunday Times,” but that would have altered the meaning. That being said, I have never found the argument “that’s the first thing that came to mind” to hold much water. ![]() Certainly there are many other valid ways of enjoying the Beatles, and I do not pretend that my interpretations are the only ones possible. I studied poetry in college and after, and so I enjoy examining Beatles lyrics-not for their meaning, but for the effect they have. I’m new on this site, so maybe I should state my prejudices up front. He does, after all, make an earlier blunder in referring to “a novel by a man named Lear” - not realizing that Lear never wrote novels, and naively assuming that an editor would not have heard of one of England’s most famous authors. (Heck, a million interpretations are possible.) The author of the letter could just be ignorant / foolish, and not recognize that stepping down from the Mail to paperbacks would be an incongruous move. I guess a third interpretation is possible. But, if the son is working at a high-brow paper and rejects it for a career in pop culture, then that’s an anti-authoritarian comment. If the son is working at a trashy newspaper but aspires to write trashy novels, then it’s a comment on the limited vision of the author, and perhaps on trashiness in culture in general. It makes a difference to the meaning of the song. What kind of newspaper is/was The Daily Mail? Was it a trashy tabloid, equivalent in the States to The National Enquirer or The Star? Or was it respectable journalism, more along the lines of the NY Times or Washington Post? Paul was happy to lend a hand in laying out the paper and there was one evening when Paul, together with the Beat poet Harry Fainlight, took time out before dinner to draw a half-page psychedelic ad for Indica Books in order to meet the printer’s deadline the following morning. He even used it himself: the original manuscript of ‘Paperback Writer’, which was written in the form of a letter, ends with ‘Yours sincerely, Ian Iachimoe’. It was the sound of his own name played backwards on a tape recorder. This was the ‘secret’ name that Paul suggested his friends use when writing to him to make their letters stand out from all the fan mail. Paul helped out financially, and was thanked by being given a credit in the staff box under the name of ‘Ian Iachimoe’. Paul was correct in thinking that interviews with musicians would enable IT to get record-company ads, but the paper was still broke and often unable to pay the printer or its staff. Then I had the idea to do the harmonies and we arranged that in the studio. I had no music, but it’s just a little bluesy song, not a lot of melody. John and I sat down and finished it all up, but it was tilted towards me, the original idea was mine. And John, as I recall, just sat there and said, ‘Oh, that’s it,’ ‘Uhuh,’ ‘Yeah.’ I remember him, his amused smile, saying, ‘Yes, that’s it, that’ll do.’ Quite a nice moment: ‘Hmm, I’ve done right! I’ve done well!’ And then we went upstairs and put the melody to it. I arrived at Weybridge and told John I had this idea of trying to write off to a publishers to become a paperback writer, and I said, ‘I think it should be written like a letter.’ I took a bit of paper out and I said it should be something like ‘Dear Sir or Madam, as the case may be…’ and I proceeded to write it just like a letter in front of him, occasionally rhyming it. Penguin paperbacks was what I really thought of, the archetypal paperback. I’d had a thought for a song and somehow it was to do with the Daily Mail so there might have been an article in the Mail that morning about people writing paperbacks. You knew, the minute you got there, cup of tea and you’d sit and write, so it was always good if you had a theme. ![]()
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