Title:	Eleanor Rigby
Credits:	John Lennon - Paul McCartney
Recorded:	28th April 1966, Abbey Road 2; 29th April, 6th June 1966, Abbey Road 3.
Line-up:	McCartney vocal; Lennon harmony vocal; Harrison harmony vocal; Tony Gilbert, Sidney Sax, John Sharpe, Jurgen Hess violins; Stephen Shingles, John Underwood John Underwood violas; Derek Simpson, Norman Jones cellos
Producers:	George Martin
Engineer:	Geoff Emerick
Locations:	Revolver - track 2
UK Release:	5th August 1966 (LP: Revolver)
US Release:	8th August 1966 (LP: Revolver)

Death is a subject normally avoided in pop music. Where acknowledged, it is either sanitised with heavenly choirs or treated as a black joke (e.g., The Shangri-Las' camp 1965 classic 'Leader of the Pack'). Consequently the downbeat demise of a lonely spinster in Eleanor Rigby - not to mention the brutal image of the priest wiping the dirt from his hands as he walks from the grave'- came as quite a shock to pop listeners in 1966. Taken together with George Martin's wintry string octet arrangement, the impact was transfixing.

In fact, the song's grim final verse was settled on only after much head scratching and at the last minute. According to McCartney, Eleanor Rigby began as a plain tune with a melancholy descending phrase and the image of a spinster, Miss Daisy Hawkins, sweeping up the rice in a church after a marriage. Meeting Jane Asher in Bristol, where she was working in rep, McCartney allegedly got the name Rigby from a clothes shop, adding 'Eleanor' from Eleanor Bron, the actress who had played the female lead in Help! Against this is the fact that the Rigbys were a well-known local family in Liverpool, of whom one, Eleanor (1895-1939), lies buried in the churchyard of St Peter's in Woolton, close to McCartney's home suburb of Allerton. ('Lionel Bart has a third version, claiming the character started out as Eleanor Bygraves - 'and asked them to change it'.

Armed with only the first verse, McCartney headed for Lennon's house at Weybridge where, during an informal evening with friends, he and the other Beatles pieced the rest of the song together. Starting as Father McCartney, the priest in the second verse soon became the more neutral Father MacKenzie, a name found by consulting a telephone directory. Starr suggested the idea of him 'darning his socks in the night'. The refrain 'Ah look at all the lonely people' seems to have been designed by committee, possibly later in the studio (where some say the last verse was decided); others maintain that the song was completed during the same evening. (Lennon, who subsequently claimed 'about 70 per cent' of the lyric, apparently tried to quash the idea of its two characters 'meeting' at the end.) ('According to McCartney - and Pete Shotton - he contributed almost nothing.)

Given its chaotic genesis, ELEANOR RIGBY is extraordinarily cogent and concentrated. The face that the heroine 'keeps in a jar by the door' (to mask the despair inadmissible by English middle-class etiquette) remains the single most memorable image in The Beatles' output (1). Yet the lyric's tele-visual vividness (Took at him working') is never gratuitous, being consistently at the service of the song's relentless despondency. Eleanor Rigby dies alone because unable to tell anyone how she felt. MacKenzie's sermon won't be heard - not that he cares very much about his parishioners - because religious faith has perished along with communal spirit ('No one was saved'). Often represented as purveyors of escapist fantasy, The Beatles were, at their best, more poignantly realistic about their society than any other popular artists of their time (2).

The monochrome pessimism of the lyric is paralleled in the naked simplicity of the music: a plain E Dorian melody over what amounts to two chords. Arranged by Martin from a rough idea by McCartney (3), the string accompaniment was recorded along with a guide vocal in a standard threehour session, the final vocals being added later. Issued as a single (coupled with Yellow Submarine), ELEANOR RIGBY held the UK No. 1 spot for four weeks during August and September. (The comparatively hollow Paperback Writer lasted only two weeks at the top.) In militantly optimistic America, however, the combination fared less well, YELLOW SUBMARINE's light relief proving more popular. Neither reached the top of the chart.

(1) The novelist A. S. Byatt, for whom this lyric displays 'the minimalist perfection of a Beckett story', points out that, had Eleanor's 'face' been kept in a jar by a mirror, it would suggest the less disturbing idea of make-up. Instead, the image implies that behind her door, inside her house, Miss Rigby 'is faceless, is nothing'. (Talk on BBC Radio 3, 11 th May 1993.)  - back -

(2) Explaining why The Beatles took up meditation in 1967, McCartney (Green, Days in the Life, p. 160) refers to the Church's failure to account for the suffering in the world. Where Christianity prescribes faith and prayer, Hindu philosophy answers the question directly (see [681, note), while meditation supposedly alters the individual's entire experience of reality. A key figure in conveying Oriental religious concepts to the West was the German writer Hermann Hesse, whose novels Demian (1919), Siddhartha (1922), Steppenwoll (1927), and The Glass Bead Game (1943) became cult reading during the late Sixties. - back -

(3) MCCartney suggested something in the style of Vivaldi, to whose music he had recently been introduced by Jane Asher. Martin, though, based his arrangement on Bernard Herrmarm's score for Frangois Truffaul's Fahrenheit 451, then being screened in London. -back-

Recording information:

The Beatles recorded 'Eleanor Rigby' on April 28, the double string quartet was recorded in 14 takes (1 - 14) with a tape reduction into take 15. The next day, April 29, Paul McCartney overdubbed his lead vocals, and John Lennon and George Harrison added "ahh, look at all the lonely people" refrains. Three mono mixes were created from take 15, however none was ever used. One last McCartney vocal was overdubbed June 6, and a new mono mix was created June 22. The stereo mix was also created June 22. According to McCoy and McGeary, the stereo version contains a mixing error. The beginning of the first half of the first word (Elean...) in the first verse is double-tracked before shifting to the right.

Paul recorded a new version of this song between November 5, 1982 and May 8, 1983 for the film "Give My Regards To Broad Street." This track was released on the soundtrack album in both the US and the UK on October 22, 1984. The CD version of this recording runs 4'08" while the LP version is only 2'07".

Paul later performed this song at several concerts during his 1989 - 1990 world tour including Stockholm's Johanneshovs Isstadion (September 30), Milan (October 26), Rotterdam (November 8), Los Angeles (November 23 and 27), New York (December 15), Berkeley (March 31 and April 1), Glasgow (June 23) and Washington, DC (July 4). All of these performances have been bootlegged. Paul's performance of this song at his concert at the Centrum in Worcester, Massachusetts on February 8, 1990 was released on his album "Tripping The Live Fantastic" in both the US and the UK on November 5, 1990.

Paul performed this song on March 23, 1995 with the Brodsky Quartet at London's St. James Palace. This performance has been bootlegged and can be found on "A Royal Performance: Paul McCartney, Elvis Costello And Friends" (CD).