"Eleanor Rigby," released in August 1966 on the album Revolver , is one of the Beatles . The song reached the top of the UK Singles Chart and peaked at number 11 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the United States, without anyone knowing who the real Eleanor Rigby is.
In the song written by Paul McCartney and John Lennon , we follow the story of the lonely Eleanor Rigby and the mysterious Father McKenzie. According to the song, after her death, Eleanor was buried in the church and no one attended her wake. The only one who appeared and looked after the grave was Father McKenzie.
55 years after the song's release and much speculation surrounding the mystery, Paul McCartney commented on the subject. According to an article published in the New Yorker , the former Beatle based "Eleanor Rigby" on an elderly woman he met in Liverpool, his hometown. "I found out she lived alone, so I would go to her house to chat, which is strange if you think I was just a young Englishman."
The two developed a friendship over time, and the woman's story inspired the song that would become iconic. “I would offer to do her shopping. She would give me a list, and I would bring everything back, and we would sit in her kitchen. I vividly remember that kitchen because it had a crystal radio […] I would visit her to listen to her stories, which enriched my soul and influenced the songs I would write.”
According to McCartney, the song was initially called "Daisy Hawkins," but "it didn't seem right." In past interviews, the former Beatle explained the name "Eleanor Rigby" by saying that he took the first name from actress Eleanor Bron, who appeared in the 1965 Help!,
Tombstones in Liverpool bore the names of musical characters.
To the musician's surprise, there is a gravestone in the Liverpool cemetery for a woman named Eleanor Rigby: "I don't remember seeing the grave, but I may have unconsciously registered it." The gravestone has been the main subject of speculation among Beatles fans in recent years.
The grave was discovered in 1984, and the mystery deepened even further because, near the gravestone of the real-life Eleanor Rigby, there is another gravestone with the name McKenzie, the same as the priest, a character in the song. However, Paul confesses he doesn't remember the gravestone and says that it's most likely that he and John Lennon were subliminally inspired, since they used to pass near the church.
The name McKenzie was initially intended to be McCartney for the priest because, according to him, "it had the right number of syllables." However, something didn't sound right to him. "I wasn't very comfortable with it because it's my father – my father McCartney – so I literally picked up the phone book and changed it from 'McCartney' to 'McKenzie'."
According to Macca's article for the New Yorker, the song "was consciously written to evoke the theme of loneliness, in the hope that we could make listeners empathize."
"Oh, look at all these lonely people!
Oh, look at all these lonely people!"
Eleanor Rigby
collects rice from a church where a wedding has taken place.
She lives in a dream, waiting at the window,
wearing a mask she keeps in a jar by the door.
"Who will it be for?"
