When McCartney first played the song to his neighbor Donovan, the first line of lyrics was: “Ola Na Tungee/ Blowing his mind in the dark/ With a pipe full of clay”. McCartney tinkered with the line until he found an acceptable alternative: “…picks up the rice in the church where a wedding has been.”
It was only then that he realized that the song would be about lonely people. He invented an aging spinster and a priest and described how their lives intersect at their funeral.
Eleanor Rigby and the gravestone
How McCartney came across his protagonist’s name was never made clear. According to McCartney, he took the first name of Eleanor Bron, the lead actress in Help!, and the last name from a company sign he saw in Bristol: Rigby & Evans Ltd., Wine and Spirit Shippers. Meanwhile, Lionel Bart, the composer of the musical “Oliver!”, claims that he was walking with McCartney through a London cemetery when they read “Eleanor Bygraves” on a gravestone. McCartney claimed that he wanted to use this name for a new song.
Paradoxically, in the 1980s, the gravestone of “Eleanor Rigby” was found in St. Peter’s Cemetery in Woolton – just a few steps away from where Lennon and McCartney met after a performance by Lennon’s Quarry Men had. “It must either be a blatant coincidence,” says McCartney, “or it must have been lying dormant somewhere in my subconscious.”
After McCartney finished the tune in Jane Asher’s apartment, he gathered Lennon, Harrison, Starr and Lennon’s childhood friend Pete Shotton to polish the unfinished lyrics. Everyone involved can remember some of the results: that the priest was initially called “Father McCartney” until they came across “McKenzie” in the phone book; that Starr contributed the line “darning his socks in the night” – and that it was Shotton’s idea to end the text with a funeral where the protagonists’ paths cross.
Which Beatle did “Eleanor Rigby” come from?
Beyond that, there are seriously different accounts of how the song came about. “The first line was his,” Lennon told journalist David Sheff in 1980, “and the rest was mostly mine. It was Paul’s baby, but I helped raise the child.” McCartney, on the other hand, is sure that “John helped with a few words, but it was 80:20 on my crap.”
None of the Beatles are featured instrumentally on the recording. McCartney sings lead vocals while Lennon and Harrison provide harmony vocals. The music comes from two string quartets arranged by George Martin. “Paul wasn’t initially enthusiastic about the suggestion,” says sound engineer Geoff Emerick. “He believed the sound would be repulsive and inappropriate.”
More about the Beatles
When he finally agreed, he insisted that the strings had to have “bite.” Emerick then tried to capture exactly the sound that occurs when the bow is placed on the string. Instead of recording the octet with just one microphone, he placed one directly on each instrument – achieving a presence previously unheard of in recording technology, whether classical or rock. “The musicians hated that I got so close with the microphone because they were afraid that their individual mistakes would be heard.”
Maturation into a serious musician
The meditation on aging and loneliness was to be an important turning point for the songwriter McCartney. In later years he said that when he was writing “Eleanor Rigby” he thought about what his music would sound like once the Beatles chapter was closed. “This could be a viable option,” he recalled. “I saw myself in a herringbone jacket with the leather patches on the elbow and a pipe. I would be a serious composer, no longer a pop writer. “