"Eleanor Rigby" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles from their 1966 album Revolver. It was also issued on a double A-side single, paired with "Yellow Submarine". Credited to the Lennon–McCartney songwriting partnership, the song is one of only a few over which John Lennon and Paul McCartney later disputed primary authorship.: "One of the rare songs in which authorship is disputed is 'Eleanor Rigby'..." Eyewitness testimony from several independent sources, including George Martin and Pete Shotton, supports McCartney's claim to authorship.: "...[T]here is eyewitness testimony from at least four separate and independent sources, [including Martin, William Burroughs, Donovan and Shotton,] all of whom support McCartney's claim to authorship."
"Eleanor Rigby" continued the transformation of the Beatles from a mainly rock and roll and pop-oriented act to a more experimental, studio-based band. With a double string quartet arrangement by George Martin and lyrics providing a narrative on loneliness, it broke sharply with popular music conventions, both musically and lyrically. The song topped singles charts in Australia, Belgium, Canada, and New Zealand.
Background and inspiration Paul McCartney came up with the melody for "Eleanor Rigby" as he experimented on his piano. Donovan recalled hearing McCartney play an early version of the song on guitar, where the character was named Ola Na Tungee. At this point, the song reflected an Indian musical influence and its lyrics alluded to drug use, with references to "blowing his mind in the dark" and "a pipe full of clay".
The name of the protagonist that McCartney initially chose was not Eleanor Rigby, but Miss Daisy Hawkins. In 1966, McCartney told Sunday Times journalist Hunter Davies how he got the idea for his song:
McCartney said that the idea to call his character "Eleanor" was possibly because of Eleanor Bron, the actress who starred with the Beatles in their 1965 film Help! "Rigby" came from the name of a store in Bristol, Rigby & Evens Ltd. McCartney noticed the store while visiting his girlfriend of the time, actress Jane Asher, during her run in the Bristol Old Vic's production of The Happiest Days of Your Life in January 1966. He recalled in 1984: "I just liked the name. I was looking for a name that sounded natural. 'Eleanor Rigby' sounded natural."
In an October 2021 article in The New Yorker, McCartney wrote that his inspiration for "Eleanor Rigby" was an old lady who lived alone and whom he got to know very well. He would go shopping for her and sit in her kitchen listening to stories and her crystal radio set. McCartney said, "just hearing her stories enriched my soul and influenced the songs I would later write."
Writing collaboration McCartney wrote the melody and first verse alone, after which he presented the song to the Beatles when they were gathered in the music room of John Lennon's home at Kenwood. Lennon, George Harrison, Ringo Starr and Lennon's childhood friend Pete Shotton all listened to McCartney play his song through and contributed ideas. Harrison came up with the "Ah, look at all the lonely people" hook. Starr contributed the line "writing the words of a sermon that no one will hear" and suggested making "Father McCartney" darn his socks, which McCartney liked. It was then that Shotton suggested that McCartney change the name of the priest, in case listeners mistook the fictional character for McCartney's own father.
McCartney could not decide how to end the song, and Shotton suggested that the two lonely people come together too late as Father McKenzie conducts Eleanor Rigby's funeral. At the time, Lennon rejected the idea out of hand, but McCartney said nothing and used the idea, later acknowledging Shotton's help. In Lennon's recollection, the final touches were applied to the lyrics in the recording studio, at which point McCartney sought input from Neil Aspinall and Mal Evans, the Beatles' longstanding road managers.
"Eleanor Rigby" serves as a rare example of Lennon subsequently claiming a more substantial role in the creation of a McCartney composition than is supported by others' recollections. In the early 1970s, Lennon told music journalist Alan Smith that he wrote "about 70 per cent" of the lyrics, and in a letter to Melody Maker complaining about Beatles producer George Martin's comments in a recent interview, he said that "Around 50 per cent of the lyrics were written by me at the studios and at Paul's place." In 1980, he recalled writing almost everything but the first verse. Shotton remembered Lennon's contribution as being "virtually nil", while McCartney said that "John helped me on a few words but I'd put it down 80–20 to me, something like that." According to McCartney, "In My Life" and "Eleanor Rigby" are the only Lennon–McCartney songs where he and Lennon disagreed over their authorship.
In musicologist Walter Everett's view, the lyric writing "likely was a group effort". Historiographer Erin Torkelson Weber says that, from all the available accounts, McCartney was the principal author of the song and only Lennon's post-1970 recollections contradict this. In the same 1980 interview, Lennon expressed his resentment at the way McCartney had sought their bandmates' and friends' creative input, rather than collaborate with Lennon directly. Lennon added, "That's the kind of insensitivity he would have, which upset me in later years." In addition to citing this emotional hurt, Weber suggests that the song's critical acclaim may have motivated Lennon's assertions, as he sought to portray himself as a greater musical genius than McCartney in the years following the Beatles' break-up.
Composition Music The song is a prominent example of mode mixture, specifically between the Aeolian mode, also known as natural minor, and the Dorian mode. Set in E minor, the song is based on the chord progression Em–C, typical of the Aeolian mode and using notes 3, 6, and 7 in this scale. The verse melody is written in Dorian mode, a minor scale with the natural sixth degree. "Eleanor Rigby" opens with a C lydian vocal harmony ("Aah, look at all ..."), before shifting to E-minor (on "lonely people"). The Aeolian C-natural note returns later in the verse on the word "dre-eam" (C–B) as the C chord resolves to the tonic Em, giving an urgency to the melody's mood.
The Dorian mode appears with the C note (6 in the Em scale) at the beginning of the phrase "in the church". The chorus beginning "All the lonely people" involves the viola in a chromatic descent to the 5th; from 7 (D natural on "All the lonely peo-") to 6 (C on "-ple") to 6 (C on "they") to 5 (B on "from"). According to musicologist Dominic Pedler, this adds an "air of inevitability to the flow of the music (and perhaps to the plight of the characters in the song)".
Lyrics
The lyrics represent a departure from McCartney's previous songs, in their avoidance of first- and second-person pronouns and by diverging from the themes of a standard love song. The narrator takes the form of a detached onlooker, akin to a novelist or screenwriter. Beatles biographer Steve Turner says that this new approach reflects the likely influence of Ray Davies of the Kinks, specifically the latter's singles "A Well Respected Man" and "Dedicated Follower of Fashion".
Author Howard Sounes compares the song's narrative to "the isolated broken figures" typical of a Samuel Beckett play, as Rigby dies alone, no mourners attend her funeral, and the priest "seems to have lost his congregation and faith". In Everett's view, McCartney's description of Rigby and McKenzie elevates individuals' loneliness and wasted lives to a universal level in the manner of Lennon's autobiographical "Nowhere Man". Everett adds that McCartney's imagery is "vivid and yet common enough to elicit enormous compassion for these lost souls".
Recording
"Eleanor Rigby" does not have a standard pop backing. None of the Beatles played instruments on it, although Lennon and Harrison did contribute harmony vocals. Like the earlier song "Yesterday", "Eleanor Rigby" employs a classical string ensemble – in this case, an octet of studio musicians, comprising four violins, two violas and two cellos, all performing a score composed by George Martin. When writing the string arrangement, Martin drew inspiration from Bernard Herrmann's work, particularly the latter's score for the 1960 film Psycho.
Whereas "Yesterday" is played legato, "Eleanor Rigby" is played mainly in staccato chords with melodic embellishments. McCartney, reluctant to repeat what he had done on "Yesterday", explicitly expressed that he did not want the strings to sound too cloying. For the most part, the instruments "double up" – that is, they serve as a single string quartet but with two instruments playing each of the four parts. Microphones were placed close to the instruments to produce a more biting and raw sound. Engineer Geoff Emerick was admonished by the string players saying "You're not supposed to do that." Fearing such close proximity to their instruments would expose the slightest deficiencies in their technique, the players kept moving their chairs away from the microphones until Martin got on the talk-back system and scolded: "Stop moving the chairs!" Martin recorded two versions, one with vibrato and one without, the latter of which was used. Lennon recalled in 1980 that "Eleanor Rigby" was "Paul's baby, and I helped with the education of the child. ... The violin backing was Paul's idea. Jane Asher had turned him on to Vivaldi, and it was very good."
The octet was recorded on 28 April 1966, in Studio 2 at EMI Studios. The track was completed in Studio 3 on 29 April and on 6 June. Take 15 was selected as the master. The final overdub, on 6 June, was McCartney's addition of the "Ah, look at all the lonely people" refrain over the song's final chorus. This was requested by Martin, who said he came up with the idea of the line working contrapuntally to the chorus melody.
The original stereo mix had the lead vocal alone in the right channel during the verses, with the strings mixed to one channel, while the mono single and mono LP featured a more balanced mix. For the track's inclusion on Yellow Submarine Songtrack in 1999, a new stereo mix was created that centres McCartney's voice and spreads the string octet across the stereo image.
Release On 5 August 1966, "Eleanor Rigby" was simultaneously released on a double A-side single, paired with "Yellow Submarine", and on the album Revolver. In the LP sequencing, it appeared as the second track, between Harrison's "Taxman" and Lennon's "I'm Only Sleeping". The Beatles thereby broke with their policy of ensuring that album tracks were not issued on their UK singles. According to a report in Melody Maker, the reason for this was to thwart sales of cover recordings of "Eleanor Rigby". Harrison confirmed that they expected "dozens" of artists to have a hit with the song; however, he also said the track would "probably only appeal to Ray Davies types". Writing in the 1970s, music critics Roy Carr and Tony Tyler described the motivation behind the single as a "growing dodge in the ever-innovative music industry", building on UK record companies' policy of reissuing an album's most popular tracks, particularly those that had been culled for release as a single in the US, on a spin-off extended play.