One of the running themes on this site is that I don’t have to enjoy something to see it as a good work on its own. It just be something I don’t want to watch, play, read, or listen to. “Eleanor Rigby”, off the 1966 Revolver album, is one of those songs. Yes, even the Beatles aren’t perfect. Heresy, I know, but apparently the song may have a bit of it’s own heresy, which I’ll happily blame on John Lennon. We’ll get there.
I know this song a bit better than I’d like, which may add to my lack of interest. I had to sing it for chorus class. We probably butchered this song because it wasn’t designed for a chorus. Paul McCartney sings most of it on his own, with the others doing background for the…chorus. Look, you know what I mean! Point is we were a bunch of high schools looking for a credit whose voices ranked from mediocre to still not getting the golden buzzer. Nobody’s asking for an encore.
However, it’s the depressing nature of this song that doesn’t interest me. It’s not trying to preach about how horrible you are like “Feed The World“, but it’s not exactly the feel good song of 1966, is it?
The song actually is about two people, the titular Eleanor and the vicar, Father McKenzie. (He was going to call him Father McCartney but didn’t want to freak his dad out or something, so Paul grabbed a phonebook and found a better last name.) At first listen I had the thought that Eleanor was picking up the rice to eat or to just be nice and clean up. American Songwriter clued me in on the actual intent.
When McCartney first introduces us to Eleanor she is living in a “dream” world of her own, picking up rice from a wedding that was thrown over the happy couple. With the opening lines, he quickly lets the listener know that the closest Eleanor comes to getting married herself is tidying up after everyone has left.
Later it’s revealed that Eleanor died, leaving no one to carry on her name. McCartney adds a bit of irony towards the end of the song by having the song’s two characters cross paths a little too late. If the two had met earlier they might have become friends with something in common, but it was too late. Eleanor died leaving Father McKenzie to “meet” her while officiating the funeral. He also implies that McKenzie’s sermon “saved” no one given that nobody attended.
Songfacts, however, has a different take on nobody being saved, and it’s not one I considered. I like American Songwriter‘s take better, but given the people involved, Songfacts may actually be closer to correct.
After Eleanor Rigby is buried, we learn that “no one was saved,” indicating that her soul did not elevate to heaven as promised by the church. This could be seen as a swipe at Christianity and the concept of being saved by Jesus. The song was released in August 1966 just weeks after the furor over John Lennon’s remarks, “Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue about that; I’m right and I will be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus now.”
You can see why I’m not a John Lennon fan, though both sides I’m using are only theorizing the connection. He still said stuff like this and the opening line of “Imagine”, a song I will thankfully not have to touch because it isn’t a story. It’s just Lennon preaching (irony?) at the audience about how everyone would be at peace if they thought like him. It’s another song that’s well made but I actually hate. “Eleanor Rigby” is a song I’m not into because I don’t need more depression, but I don’t hate it. It’s kind of like the reverse of “Penny Lane” if you think about it. “Eleanor Rigby” is about the sad lives of two people (tied to a church I’m now forced to notice) while the people on the street seem mostly content. I should probably do that song and see the backstage history of it.
Oh, and John? You were wrong. Christianity is still here and you aren’t. It took a terrible act, mind you, but the group broke up before that act and Lennon went full anti-religion. I’m not going to speculate on his soul’s current location because I don’t know for sure. I had a joke that feels in poor taste, so let’s move on.
Songfacts also suggested a meaning for the “face in a jar”, being cold cream to make her look younger. Both sites agree that both Eleanor and McKenzie only meet at the burial, despite her presumably cleaning up the rice at his church, the same one she died in as was buried near. It seems this church isn’t really visited all that often, which I’m also willing to blame on Lennon but I don’t know how involved he was. While he and McCartney were often writing partners for Beatles’ music, the inspiration was all McCartney’s. From American Songwriter again
Paul McCartney recounted the song’s origin and meaning in a 2018 interview with GQ, saying “Over the years, I’ve met a couple of others, and maybe their loneliness made me empathize with them. But I thought it was a great character, so I started this song about the lonely old lady who picks up the rice in the church, who never really gets the dreams in her life. Then I added in the priest, the vicar, Father McKenzie. And so, there were just the two characters. It was like writing a short story, and it was basically on these old ladies that I had known as a kid.”
Songfacts brought this from another interview:
In Observer Music Monthly, November 2008, McCartney said: “These lonely old ladies were something I knew about growing up, and that was what ‘Eleanor Rigby’ was about – the fact that she died and nobody really noticed. I knew this went on.”
The name came from one of the actresses in the Beatles movie Help!, Eleanor Bron, who played Ahme. He thought the name “Rigby” went well with the first name, and learned years later that at the church were Paul and John met there was a headstone for one Eleanor Rigby. Paul suggested it might have been in his subconscious, but it wouldn’t be the weirdest coincidence I’ve seen since starting this site. Songfacts also had this notation:
In 2008 a document came to light that showed that McCartney may have had an alternative source for the Eleanor Rigby name. In the early 1990s a lady named Annie Mawson had a job teaching music to children with learning difficulties. Annie managed to teach a severely autistic boy to play “Yellow Submarine” on the piano, which won him a Duke of Edinburgh Silver Award. She wrote to the former Beatle telling him what joy he’d brought. Months later, Annie received a brown envelope bearing a “Paul McCartney World Tour” stamp. Inside was enclosed a page from an accounts log kept by the Corporation of Liverpool, which records the wages paid in 1911 to a scullery maid working for the Liverpool City Hospital, who signed her name “E. Rigby.” There was no accompanying letter of explanation. Annie said in an interview that when she saw the name Rigby, “I realized why I’d been sent it. I feel that when you’re holding it you’re holding a bit of history.”
When the slip went up for auction later that year, McCartney told the Associated Press: “Eleanor Rigby is a totally fictitious character that I made up. If someone wants to spend money buying a document to prove a fictitious character exists, that’s fine with me.”
As for the reverend’s part in the story:
McCartney spoke about this section of the song in a November 2020 piece for Rolling Stone saying, “Father McKenzie is ‘darning his socks in the night.’ You know, he’s a religious man, so I could’ve said, you know, ‘preparing his Bible,’ which would have been more obvious. But ‘darning his socks’ kind of says more about him. So you get into this lovely fantasy.”
There’s also a suggestion that the reasons nobody would hear his sermons is that they either fell on deaf ears or no ears, that his church goers didn’t pay attention (and this is pre-smartphone) or that nobody came. Possibly both is true and he had few visitors to his sermons and they were coming out of obligation, not an actual search for spiritual truth and guidance.
Would they have been friends had they met when both was alive? We don’t know how old Eleanor was or in what shape of health she was in, but considering her inspiration was old ladies McCartney knew as a boy we can guess. They definitely could have benefited from knowing each other. We’ll never know, and that’s why this song is depressing. That’s the point, and it’s a good song for it. It’s just not one I can relax to.
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