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? 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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