Eleanor Rigby

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Eleanor Rigby
The Beatles
publication 5th August 1966
length 2 min 6 s
Genre (s) pop
Author (s) Lennon / McCartney
album revolver
Cover version
look here

Eleanor Rigby is a Beatles song , the original version of which was composed in 1966 for the album Revolver . The song was composed primarily by Paul McCartney , although - like most Beatles compositions - it is copyrighted by Lennon / McCartney .

background

Paul McCartney wrote the piece on the piano in the music room of the parents' house of his then girlfriend Jane Asher .

“I composed this on the piano by simply improvising on an E minor chord; then I left it as improvisation and put a melody over it, just danced over it. It has almost Indian rhythms. "

- Paul McCartney quoted from: Barry Miles : Paul McCartney. Many years from now , p. 324

Donovan recalled that McCartney had used the lines “Ola Na Tungee blowing his mind in the dark, with a pipe full of clay. Noone can say. " used. McCartney didn't know what the piece was about until he composed the line “Picks up the rice in a church where a wedding has been”. He wondered why anyone should pick up rice in a church. His line of thought led to the decision to write a song about lonely people.

Eleanor Rigby sculpture in Liverpool

McCartney tried hard to come up with a real-sounding name for the main character of the song. He eventually combined the name of a store he had seen in Bristol in January 1966 with the first name of actress Eleanor Bron , who starred in the Beatles feature film Hi-Hi Help! had played.

“I got the name Rigby from a shop in Bristol. I was wandering round Bristol one day and saw a shop called Rigby. And I think Eleanor was from Eleanor Bron, the actress we worked with in the film Help! But I just liked the name. I was looking for a name that sounded natural. Eleanor Rigby sounded natural. "

“I got the name Rigby from a shop in Bristol. I was walking around Bristol one day and saw a shop called Rigby. I think Eleanor goes back to the actress Eleanor Bron, with whom we played in the film Help! had worked together. I was looking for a name that sounded natural. Eleanor Rigby sounded natural. "

- Paul McCartney, Playboy , 1984

With this basic idea and the melody McCartney drove to John Lennon's house in Weybridge to finish the lyrics. Also in attendance were George Harrison and Ringo Starr, as well as a childhood friend and former member of the Quarrymen, Pete Shotton . Ideas were gathered together, such as the priest daring his socks. The priest was originally called "Father McCartney" because the number of syllables made it a good match. However, the decision was made to find a more harmless name and looked for a suitable replacement in the telephone book. The choice fell on the surname "McKenzie".

Gravestone of Eleanor Rigby in the graveyard of St. Peter Parish Church

John Lennon claimed in two interviews - one in 1972 for the music magazine Hit Parader , the other in 1980 with David Sheff for Playboy - that he had a greater share in the lyrics of Eleanor Rigby than McCartney. He disagreed and put Lennon's share at around 20 percent. Pete Shotton, who was present at Lennon's house when the missing parts of the text were worked out, supported McCartney's account and even wrote in his book John Lennon in My Life that Lennon "contributed practically nothing" to this Lennon-McCartney classic.

In the 1980s, the tombstone of an Eleanor Rigby was discovered in the cemetery of St. Peter Parish Church in the Woolton district of Liverpool . McCartney and Lennon often spent time in this cemetery during their teenage years, which is near their first meeting in 1957. McCartney found that it could either have been total coincidence or the product of his subconscious ( cryptomnesia ), although he would be more inclined to the latter. The real Eleanor Rigby was born in 1895 and lived in Liverpool, possibly the suburb of Woolton, married to Thomas Woods. She died on October 10, 1939 at the age of 44. Whether or not she was McCartney's inspiration for the song's title, today Eleanor Rigby's grave is a focal point for Beatles fans visiting Liverpool. As a sign of the connection between the lyrics and the real Eleanor Rigby, the tombstone can be seen in the music video for the song Free as a Bird . In June 1990, McCartney donated a 1911 document to the Sunbeams Music Trust, signed by Eleanor Rigby, then 16. The document was sold at auction in November 2008 for £ 115,000  . The document came from a Liverpool City Hospital salary register. E. Rigby is listed as a kitchen maid on that directory.

admission

On April 28, 1966, the string instruments were recorded in Studio 2 of London's Abbey Road Studios under the direction of George Martin . Four violins , two violas and two cellos were used, the arrangement was made by George Martin. Tony Gilbert and Sidney Sax, John Sharpe and Jürgen Hess played the violins. Stephen Shingles and John Underwood played the violas and Derek Simpson and Norman Jones were the cellists. In order to achieve a very special sound, the sound engineer Geoff Emerick placed the microphones very close to the instruments during the recordings.

McCartney's singing voice was recorded on April 29, 1966. John Lennon and George Harrison sang the harmonies. On June 6, 1966, McCartney replaced his vocals with a new recording. Ringo Starr was not involved in the recordings.

single

The 2:06 minute long song was released as a single in Great Britain on August 5, 1966 with Yellow Submarine . It was the first time that the Beatles released a single at the same time as the album from which it was decoupled. The two songs were declared as A-side and entered the British charts at number 2 on August 10, 1966. The following week the single reached number 1 and stayed there for four weeks. There were 250,000 pre-orders for the single. At the end of 1966, 455,000 singles had been sold in the UK. In the US , the single was released on August 8, 1966. It sold 1.2 million times in the first four weeks. In the US charts, which also include radio broadcasts for chart placement, Yellow Submarine was the more popular title and reached number 2, while Eleanor Rigby came in at number 11 as the best placement.

At the 1967 Grammy Awards , Paul McCartney received the award for "Best Contemporary (Rock & Roll) Solo Vocal Performance" in the song.

Cover versions (selection)

Various artists have covered the song :

Other performers who added the piece to their repertoire included the Four Tops , Rare Earth , Aretha Franklin , Kim Weston , Talib Kweli and Our Last Night .

Trivia

literature

  • Brian Roylance (Red.): The Beatles anthology . First edition in German, Ullstein Verlag, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-550-07132-9 (German translation; English original title: The Beatles anthology )
  • Mark Lewisohn (Author), Paul McCartney (Introduction): The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions: The Official Story of the Abbey Road Years 1962–1970 . Reprint, EMI Records, London 2006, ISBN 0-600-61207-4 (English)
  • Barry Miles : Paul McCartney: many years from now . Rowohlt-Taschenbuch-Verl., Reinbek 1999, ISBN 3-499-60892-8 (German translation; English original title: Paul McCartney: many years from now )
  • Steve Turner: A Hard Day's Write. The Beatles. The story for every song . New, ext. Ed., Rockbuch-Verl., Schlüchtern 2002, ISBN 3-927638-10-2 (German translation; English original title: A hard day's write )
  • Brandon Toropov: Who Was Eleanor Rigby: And 908 More Questions and Answers About the Beatles . Paperback, HarperCollins, London 1996, ISBN 0-06-273442-3 (English)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Barry Miles : Paul McCartney. Many years from now . Rowohlt, Reinbek 1999, p. 324
  2. ↑ Barry Miles: Paul McCartney. Many years from now. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1999, p. 326 f.
  3. ^ The Beatles: The Beatles Anthology , San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2000, ISBN 0-8118-2684-8 , p. 208.
  4. ↑ www.sunbeamsmusic.org: Eleanor Rigby Document . Retrieved July 22, 2015.
  5. ↑ www.reuters.com: Document with clues to Beatles enigma up for sale. Retrieved July 22, 2015.
  6. ^ Mark Lewisohn: The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions , 1988
  7. ^ Neville Stannard: The Long & Winding Road: A History of the Beatles on Record , 1982
  8. ↑ David Browne, Jon Dolan, Patrick Doyle, Kory Grow, Will Hermes, David Marchese, Christopher Weingarten, Douglas Wolk: The 50 Greatest Bob Marley Songs. rollingstone.com, February 5, 2020, accessed August 5, 2020 .