British rocker John Waite wasn’t trying to write a Number One hit on the day in 1984 when he came up with “Missing You.” He was just free-associating over a backing track, probably thinking of a recent marital separation, and the rest was pop history.

“They were mixing the album and I went off to write one more song,” he recalled this week. “We randomly pressed a track we’d been working on and I said ‘Give me a shot at that.’ And then ‘Missing You’ just came out, I got the verse and chorus in one piece. If you don’t prepare, just close your eyes and step into the music, that’s a wonderful place. It’s like a woman: You can’t disrespect it, or it will stop talking to you. That’s really what the muse is.”

That single marked a turning point for Waite, after years as a journeyman rocker with the Babys and solo. It made him a certified rock star, with TV appearances and magazine covers  — and he found out that wasn’t to his taste. “I thought of fame as something like a side of fries, something that goes along with success. The phone keeps ringing and it’s always someone wanting to get hold of you, or get their picture taken with you, or to sleep with you. I’d show up where I was supposed to, then I’d leave quietly through the back entrance. I was still very shy and my solution to all that was to buy a secluded home in Westchester. So I disappeared to get out of the maelstrom of all that attention.”

These days he still does arena tours, including an opening slot with Foreigner and Styx last year, but prefers smaller shows like City Winery this Saturday (for afternoon and evening shows), where he can go deeper into his catalogue. “Doing those opening slots, you get 50 minutes so you have to go in and kill. On a headline I can do some of the darker songs that I like as much as the hits. You’re lucky if you get one big song and I have nine, including a few with the Babys. You have to play those, but it’s a good problem to have.”

Two of those hits, “When I See You Smile” and “Best of What I Got” come from Bad English, the supergroup he formed in 1987 with a few members of Journey. The band ended badly, and he only goes dead quiet when their name is brought up. “Personality wise, well, I was the odd man out big time. Maybe once you’ve been solo it’s just impossible to compromise.”

Waite makes no secret of his disdain for the current state of pop. “I’m pretty leery about it right now. When I was growing up it was something raw, on the edge. If you watch old films of Gene Vincent — now that was the real stuff. Now you have kids going to these schools of rock, coming out like they own a motorcycle when they’ve never had one.”

This probably explains why he hasn’t made a studio album in 13 years. “I’d like to make another record, but that’s such a revealing thing to do and I’m not really in a pop mood. But you never know — I’m the kind of guy who will tell you I’ll never record again, and then I’d be in the studio next week.”