There is perhaps no better individual showcase of The Beatles’ infinite variety than the “Yellow Submarine”/“Eleanor Rigby” double A-side record released on August 5 1966. One single was a nonsensical nursery rhyme, the other, an elegiac “ba-rock” threnody about the forgotten elderly, which served as an exemplar of emotionally profound pop songwriting.
Not that “Eleanor Rigby” really is a pop record in the conventional sense — after all, it marked the first time that none of the group played any instruments on a track. Instead, two string quartets (both playing the same melodies to “double” the sound) create a funereal soundscape perfectly suited to the song’s tale of loneliness, anonymity and death. While poignancy had never been far removed from some of The Beatles’ best early compositions (“In My Life”, “Yesterday”, “Help”), in “Eleanor Rigby” the band delivered a tragedy in microcosm.
Sitting at a piano one night, Paul McCartney found that the arrestingly sad and evocative opener of “picks up the rice in a church where a wedding has been” came to him almost spontaneously, as did the notion that they should become part of “a lonely old woman song”.
Before anything else, McCartney needed a name for this character. “Daisy Hawkins” had been a placeholder in an early draft, but it wasn’t until he stumbled across a wine shop called “Rigby and Evens” in Bristol that McCartney found a satisfactorily “natural” name; “Eleanor” meanwhile was derived from Eleanor Bron, a cast member from the film Help! Those of a more psychoanalytic persuasion, however, may argue that the name was dredged up from the depths of his subconscious. For in July 1957, McCartney is known to have visited St Peter’s Churchyard in Woolton, Liverpool, where there is a grave belonging to the “real” Eleanor Rigby.
As for the “fictional” Eleanor Rigby, her story came together while the band were staying at John Lennon’s country home. Although it’s mainly thought of as a McCartney effort, each of the group (and their friend Pete Shotton) contributed significantly to the final lyrics. George Harrison came up with the refrain of “look at all the lonely people”; Ringo Starr is said to have written the haunting line about Father McKenzie “writing the words of a sermon that no one will hear”, and Shotton pitched the idea that the lives of the priest and Rigby should intersect at the end when it’s already too late. Lennon’s own input is less clear — although that didn’t stop him from claiming years later that he wrote “all but the first verse”.
While Lennon was busy trying to arrogate the track’s songwriting credits to himself, a host of artists have tried to make “Eleanor Rigby” their own with their covers.
The song proved especially popular with soul legends, who replaced the plaintive strings with piano and brass melodies with a bluesy groove. Ray Charles gave a memorable rendition on The Dick Cavett Show in 1972; The Four Tops recorded a convincingly pain-stricken version in 1969, and Aretha Franklin released a strangely up-tempo iteration in which she sings as Rigby in the first person.
Prolific coverer Joan Baez took on the song in 1967 in a version that features some incongruously jaunty instrumentations — although her vocals are fittingly sorrowful. Fellow folk singer Bobbie Gentry used her understated, husky voice to good effect in her effort from 1968.
Elsewhere, Booker T & The MG’s and the Jerry Garcia Band both recorded expansive instrumental versions that feel rather cold (if technically impressive) without the stirring lyrics. The same can be said of the nine-minute experimental interpretation of the track by contemporary jazz musician Jacob Collier, which prioritises indulgent virtuosity over emotional depth.
More successful covers include an excellent, suitably sombre bluegrass version by gothic country duo The Handsome Family and an impassioned rock-soul reinvention by rising stars Black Pumas.
That well over 300 artists have covered the track is a testament to the irresistible draw of The Beatles’ original. But the song’s impact extends far beyond music. Eleanor Rigby became a kind of metonymy for all the isolated and destitute; in Liverpool a statue was erected of “her” in commemoration of “all the lonely people”. And in the way it immortalises the overlooked and downtrodden, “Eleanor Rigby” can be seen as a pithy counterpart to Thomas Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”. Though it would perhaps be more analogous if Gray had published that poem alongside some cheery lines about a yellow boat.
What are your memories of ‘Eleanor Rigby’? Let us know in the comments section below.
‘The Life of a Song Volume 2: The fascinating stories behind 50 more of the world’s best-loved songs’, edited by David Cheal and Jan Dalley, is published by Brewer’s.
Music credits: EMI Catalogue; UMC (Universal Music Catalogue); Rhino Atlantic; Vanguard Records; Nashville Catalog; Round Records; Loose Music
Picture credit: Santi Visalli/Getty Images