On “Eleanor Rigby” as a Product of the Combined Genius of John Lennon and Paul McCartney

In the early months of 1966, whenever Paul McCartney sat down at a piano, wherever it was, he would start tinkering with a song he called “Miss Daisy Hawkins.” From the moment he found its first five syllabic notes, the song seems to have found its themes: loneliness, futility, the end of life. McCartney was twenty-three. Without discussing it, both John Lennon and Paul came back from their break with songs about death, written from a detached, omniscient perspective.

In “Tomorrow Never Knows” John dispenses instruction from the mountaintop. In two minutes, “Eleanor Rigby” captures the entire lives of two individuals in a series of stark images. Musically, both songs are stripped down to a few parts in order to distill and intensify some essence. “Eleanor Rigby” confines itself to a narrow melodic range and the song has minimal harmonic development: like “Tomorrow Never Knows,” it alternates between just two chords.

Set in a minor key, its tightly wound, almost claustrophobic verse plays out over an accompaniment—a string section arranged by George Martin—that sticks close to the tonic, except when the cellos burst into a galloping run up the scale. This section is joined to a refrain in which the singer asks where all the lonely people come from while the cellos play a Bach-style descending line. Paul is joined by John and George for a second refrain—“Ah, look at all the lonely people”—in which the melody soars up before tailing off. In the final section, the two refrains come together in contrapuntal harmony. The mood throughout is tense and austere.

Source: lithub.com/Ian Leslie

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