THINK ‘ELEANOR RIGBY’ MEETS HITCHCOCK’S REAR WINDOW. For, much as I hate to admit it, there is indeed a voyeuristic aspect to this song. Like many writers, I really am a bit of a voyeur; if there’s a lit window and there’s someone in it, I will watch them. Hands up, guilty. It’s a very, very natural thing.

In a strange way, I may be interested in this subject matter because I get stared at quite a lot myself. It’s because I have a recognisable face. It happens on the underground, on the subway, which I take when I can. You don’t think people are looking at you until a little bit later, and you realise they were. Of course, I’m also looking back at them too. So I get to experience this from both sides.

There’s a decorum, an unwritten rule that you don’t say anything. But you do recognise distinct personality types. Some people will come right up to you with, ‘Hey, how you doing, man?’ You get the fist bumps and everything. Then there are some people who don’t talk at all. The people I talk to are the ones who don’t say anything. For example, I’m on the mat in the gym, and there’s loads of people around. There’s a guy who’s doing stuff with a pole and I’m fascinated by what he’s doing. I say, ‘Oh, that’s pretty amazing,’ and then we get talking and he says, ‘I remember you’ve got horses.’ And he starts talking about horses. But it can really be anything that we’ll talk about – even dipping into the contents of their raincoat. It’s always interesting to hear these stories, which, in a roundabout way, can sometimes make their way into a lyric.

So, people do notice me and I am kind of aware of it, but that unwritten rule means you don’t talk to each other about any of that obvious stuff. And you certainly don’t take photos or ask for autographs. If they do, I often tell them I’m enjoying a private moment, and pretty much everyone gets that.

I mentioned ‘Eleanor Rigby’. But while both that song and this one focus on the same idea – trying to capture the everyday of this character’s life – the language here is more formal, less impressionistic. Eleanor Rigby ‘lives in a dream’, and that’s reflected in lines like ‘Wearing the face that she keeps in a jar by the door’. The protagonist here works in an office, though, and the lyrics are almost like a list, like her itinerary for the day. The person I’m gazing at here just happens to be a version of Linda living alone in New York before I met her, although The Sound of Five was a British radio show that people would write to about their problems. So, there’s a transatlantic quality to it too. But I like to think I’m the ‘man of her dreams’, who shows up. So, it’s rather appropriate that I recorded this in New York with Phil Ramone. Phil was a great producer who had made a lot of records I admired. He’d worked with Paul Simon and Billy Joel.

Regent’s Park, London, 1968

This was just after The Beatles broke up, and I was trying to establish myself as a solo artist with a new repertoire. If it was going to work like the Beatles repertoire had worked, I had to have a hit. One in two songs had to be a hit. So, this was a conscious effort to write a hit, and Phil was very helpful. We knew that if we had a hit, it would cement our relationship and we would keep working together, which we did with the RAM album. It would prove that we were both good – he as a producer and I as a singer-songwriter. Releasing my first solo song after the breakup felt like a big moment. Thrilling, though tinged with sadness. It also felt like I had something to prove, and that kind of challenge is always exciting. The song went to number two in the UK singles chart and number five in the US Billboard Hot 100, so it did pretty well.

Of course, this was still a time when there was a bit of tension between John and me, and this sometimes filtered into our songwriting. John made fun of this song in one of his own, ‘How Do You Sleep?’

The only thing you done was yesterday

And since you’ve gone you’re just another day

One of his little piss takes.