"... in the description of the face Eleanor keeps 'in a jar by the door.' I was always a little scared by how often women used cold cream. Growing up, I knew a lot of old ladies—partly through what was called Bob-a-Job Week, when Scouts did chores for a shilling. You’d get a shilling for cleaning out a shed or mowing a lawn. I wanted to write a song that would sum them up.... When I took the song to George [Martin], I said that, for accompaniment, I wanted a series of E-minor chord stabs. In fact, the whole song is really only two chords: C major and E minor. In George’s version of things, he conflates my idea of the stabs and his own inspiration by Bernard Herrmann, who had written the music for the movie 'Psycho.' George wanted to bring some of that drama into the arrangement. And, of course, there’s some kind of madcap connection between Eleanor Rigby, an elderly woman left high and dry, and the mummified mother in 'Psycho.'"
From
"Writing 'Eleanor Rigby'/How one of the Beatles’ greatest songs came to be" by Paul McCartney (The New Yorker).
AND: There's also some kind of madcap connection the mummified mother and your "mum" with her cream used to fend off the wrinkles, wrinkles being very obvious on the mummified mother.
Posts
17 comments:
Cold cream and water is another option for lubricating trombone slides.
Ah, look at all the lonely people
Ah, look at all the lonely people
Eleanor Rigby
Picks up the rice in the church where a wedding has been
Lives in a dream
Waits at the window
Wearing the face that she keeps in a jar by the door
Who is it for?
All the lonely people
Where do they all come from?
All the lonely people
Where do they all belong?
Father McKenzie
Writing the words of a sermon that no one will hear
No one comes near
Look at him working
Darning his socks in the night when there's nobody there
What does he care?
Eleanor Rigby
Died in the church and was buried along with her name
Nobody came
Father McKenzie
Wiping the dirt from his hands as he walks from the grave
No one was saved
The 'Wall Street Journal' occasionally runs articles about famous songs and how they came to be.
They are all very interesting...the creative process.
Usually they have nothing to do with meaning we all attribute to them.
My first book of guitar songs was Rubber Soul. Perfect for a beginner. Then, when it came out, Revolver which I found was almost impossible for me to replicate with my shit for guitar skills and the quantum leap in the Beatles production values. It is fun to pull out ER whenever a cello player happens around. Everybody of a certain age knows most of the words. The youngsters (under 35) always love the song...
Now whenever I hear "Eleanor Rigby" and those stabs of violins, I'll instead be hearing Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho" music. This changes everything.
Maybe I'll just have to listen to Joe Jackson's version. (piano instead of stabbing violins)
I like Nivea's Soothing Post Shave Balm for Sensitive Skin.
Loved Paul McCartney's story.
The forthcoming Peter Jackson movie has flooded YouTube with audio, and video snippets of the Beatles at work. I fully expect to see the movie.
If you've ever tried to put a music band together with everyone pulling in different directions, then you begin to understand how hard the Beatles were working.....together!!
Woke up
Fell outta bed
Put teh cream
Upon my head
The old lady across the street from us, when I was a kid, who lived alone and who used to take our baseballs when they landed in her yard, was named "Eleanor [rhymes with Rigby]. She was elderly, but dyed her hair the same dark brown as the shingles on her large house, and wore very thick makeup, that I guess, if the mirror was covered with Vaseline, might have made her think she looked rosy-cheeked and young.
All through my childhood, we, the urchins of the neighborhood, envisioned a little table by her door with a jar on it, it seemed as real to us as if we had actually seen it,
Oh, she waited at the window all right, waited for one of our balls to land on her perfectly manicured lawn.
Bob-a-job week; I remember that fondly. What I mean to say is: I remember bob-a-job week; how I hated it.
Team Ponds. I always felt I was a Lennon guy anyway.
I am old enough to remember that it was originally written out of Paul's chronic sense of inadequacy. The critics were saying he couldn't write anything substantive, so he wrote Eleanor Rigby. Granted, it's a fine song, but one must ever keep in mind that Paul's primary motivation in everything is his sense of inadequacy. It was on full display decades ago when he did a video of a Beatles song, and within the limits of the technology of the day, replaced each of the other tree Beatles with images of himself. I never forgot that. Must go back to very early childhood.
At first I read that as "My Mom's favorite ice cream was Nivea ..." and thought it was strange but might be worth trying. Quick thinking and a second look saved me from what could have been a horrible mistake.
Is Nivea cold cream? I would have said moisturizer. Didn't it have a very different consistency and makeup than Ponds?
I love him. I wonder if he has backed away from the weed - he seems to have kept all his marbles.
I used to teach this song as a poem to high schoolers. I always thought the jar by the door was makeup of some sort. Eleanor is living a life of desperation for love. Meanwhile, her job as a church custodian (she picks up the rice in a church where a wedding has been) brings her into close proximity to another soul desperate for meaning, companionship: Father MacKenzie. They cross paths every day, working in the same building but never really meet until he preaches her funeral. Two ships that pass in the night.
When my wife and I did a Beatles tour in Liverpool our guide walked us through a church graveyard where one of the marker said “Eleanor Rigby.” He told us Paul declared he did NOT get the name from that tombstone even though he had lived and walked that area many times.
Great song and possibly the best poem of the Beatles oeuvre.
Sooooo … I just read the article and boy am I embarrassed. I did not realize McCartney himself wrote this piece. My conjectures about Eleanor Rigby’s name and the makeup jar and her being a custodian in the same church Father McKenzie pastored were semi confirmed by Paul so at least I was in the ballpark.
My sense in reading the article is that Paul now, late in life, has had a spiritual turn of sorts. He sees the Beatles coming together as semi-predestinated. I’ve detected this same Christian motif in many rockers of the boomer era. David Bowie once recited the Lord’s Prayer in the middle of a concert out of the blue just because. Eric Clapton and Neil Young have been giving me this same vibe. It’s nostalgic, to be sure, but there is a definite Christian component to it. I believe woke culture has stirred the soul of boomers to realize their world was built on Christian culture.
Post a Comment