AFTER THE BREAKUP OF THE BEATLES, I WOULD OFTEN JUST sit around a lot. Sometimes I sat in the kitchen while the kids were playing. Maybe they were drawing. Maybe they were doing bits and pieces of homework.

In this case, I came across the chords and I just felt optimistic, and I liked the idea of a song saying that help is coming and there’s a bright light on the horizon. I’ve got absolutely no evidence for this, but I like to believe it. It helps to lift my spirits, to move me forward, and hopefully it might help other people move forward too.

One of the strengths of songs is that, if you’re really lucky, they reach people. And I’m often conscious that there might be a lot of people out there who aren’t having a great time, or are just worried, and could really use some good luck. And so, if I can be a reassuring voice, then I think that’s very important. I think a lot of music I listened to as a kid, or even the music of my dad’s generation, was uplifting. A song could make you feel better. Uplifting music is very valuable, so I like the idea of creating that, and I think that’s been a lot of what I do. But this song was just very simple, almost like a nursery rhyme: ‘When you’re wide awake / Say it for goodness sake / It’s gonna be a great day’.

The fact that the lyrics are very close to the Beatles song ‘It Won’t Be Long’ has been pointed out, but I remember once talking to John about something we were writing, and there was a situation like that. I can’t remember what the line was, but let’s say it was from a Dylan song, and I was pretty much stealing it for my song. John said, ‘Well, no, it’s not stealing. It’s a quote.’ And that made me feel better.

This was the last song on the Flaming Pie album. It was added at the end, a bit like my song ‘Her Majesty’ showing up at the end of Abbey Road. I think it’s kind of good, when you have a collection of songs that have clearly been thought out, to then finish with something that’s a little throwaway. It reminds us that not everything is thought out, and it can put you in a good mood for the rest of the night.

In understanding how lyrics come about, you have to appreciate the stage of life of the writer. Today, I might write totally differently, but when you have little kids, as I did at this time, you’re often composing ditties like ‘Her Majesty’ or ‘Hey Diddle’ or something like this.

You’re just not sitting there always trying to be too meaningful. I used to do these little songs just to amuse the kids. But the truth is I still write for kids. Maybe it means I’ve never fully grown up, but I’ve got one that’s called ‘The Bouncy Song’, and one, I confess, called ‘Running Around the Room’, which is another family classic. Then we have one that goes, ‘Fishes, fishes, fishes swimming in the sea’. There are quite a few of them from when the kids were growing up – songs I didn’t release. So, I suppose this is in that tradition; it’s a little song that says a lot.

With Stella and Mary. Scotland, 1977

John and I used to write our songs in pretty much three hours. It wasn’t that we set a strict time limit; it was just that by three hours, we’d had enough, and we learnt that by then we could polish it off. That two to three hours is a kind of natural period. It’s why most classes or seminars and most recording sessions are two to three hours. After that your brain goes a bit.

This time period carried over to our family life. If I knew Linda was downstairs doing something – a photo session or a cookery programme – then I would abscond and try to write something, with part of the thought being to surprise her, to give her a little gift at the end of those two hours and be able to say, ‘Guess what I was doing!’

Even now, I’m still disappearing into little rooms. It’s about finding a quiet place to think, creating private space for one to imagine. You don’t particularly want to let anyone in on that process, though. So if there’s someone in the next room, within earshot, doing the dishes and they’ve got half an ear on me, and after I’ve reappeared they say, ‘That sounded nice,’ I’ll think, ‘You weren’t supposed to hear it. But it’s okay, now that it’s done.’