MACCA's Birthday!

[rjm]

Paul is 72 today. Happy birthday.

Now to a question. The one song I always - well, hated, was "Eleanor Rigby." Morbid. Pointless.

What do you think?

Paul McCartney - Eleanor Rigby - In Performance A…:

..

rjm

Sent via mobile

[drjohncarpenter]

Paul is 71 today. Happy birthday.

Now to a question. The one song I always - well, hated, was "Eleanor Rigby." Morbid. Pointless.

What do you think?

Paul McCartney - Eleanor Rigby - In Performance A…:

..

"Eleanor Rigby" is an amazing recording, especially when you consider that Paul was just 23 when he recorded it with the Beatles.

Happy Birthday James Paul McCartney! Hope to see you in August at Candlestick Park!!

[luckyjackson1]

Thanks for reminding, Robin!

Happy Birthday Paul!

I also think "Eleanor Rigby" is a marvellous recording, so very unusual. Even like the pure instrumental track.

Yes, morbid it is but not pointless at all. A bit depressing though...

[rjm]

Somebody explain it to me, so as to convince of the point.

rjm

Sent via mobile

[The Pirate]

Somebody explain it to me, so as to convince of the point.

Why? If you don't like it, you don't like it, what can anybody tell you that's suddenly going to make you listen to it and think "Oh yes, I was wrong all those other two hundred times."

I had this same argument once myself, when I told somebody that I couldn't stand a particular LP. He was convinced that all he had to do was tell me about the artist's struggle to make the record, and the circumstances in which the songs were written, and I'd suddenly 'get it'. In the end I had to say to him, "Look mate, it's a load of crap, end of story. Finding out that his parents were murdered when he was a child and that he was brought up by a pack of wolves isn't going to make me love your poxy favourite album. Get over it."

Eleanor Rigby is one of the greatest records ever made, but if you don't see that now then you probably never will. I have the same problem with 99% of everything that Van Morrison ever recorded, and I could listen to Astral Weeks from now til I die and not change my mind. Apparently I'm the one who is missing out, but I think I can live with that.

[rjm]

But I am curious.

I remember listening to it as a teenager with much less refined tastes, and thinking "what is this for, anyway? To say that he is happy and feels pity for "all the lonely people?" And then asks "where do they all belong?" There's no reasonable answer for that. They belong wherever they choose to belong. Where do they all come from? I learned that in grade school: same as everyone else. Why are they lonely? Paul should ask someone who is lonely. Lotta different reasons.

So you have two utterly lonely people, who come together serendipitously at her funeral, such as it was. "Nobody came." Well, the Father did.

So, a lonely preacher throws dirt on the grave of someone no one cared about. And there are dark strings.

I had no idea what his point was, and still don't. If you love it, there must be some reason. I would like to know what that reason is.

It always made me very depressed, and I didn't get the point of making listeners depressed. I mean, just for the sake of it.

So, if anyone could explain why they like it, I would like that.

rjm
P.S. -- There is a statue of "her" on a bench in Liverpool. So, is she the "unknown soldier of loneliness"? Is that it?

Sent via mobile

[drjohncarpenter]

It's a perfectly composed, beautifully played and arranged song of sadness about the human existence.

Or something.

[Mister Moon]

Happy Birthday, Paul Ramone !!!

I just love those early photos of the band :

600817.jpg

17 August 1960 - Wednesday
The Indra
64 Grosse Freiheit
Hamburg, Germany

These are the first photos taken of "THE BEATLES".
George says these were taken the first night of their first trip to Hamburg.
They played at The Indra 17 August - 3 October 1960

***************************

Please, check out this amazing website :

http://www.beatlesource.com/index.html

[mike edwards66]

So, if anyone could explain why they like it, I would like that.

I like the original because Paul sang it in scouse, which he doesn't nowadays. This is a british thing, which americans won't pick up on.

[drjohncarpenter]

I like the original because Paul sang it in scouse, which he doesn't nowadays. This is a british thing, which americans won't pick up on.

Wot?

Eleanor Rigby picks up the rice in the church where a wedding has BEAN.

[mike edwards66]

I like the original because Paul sang it in scouse, which he doesn't nowadays. This is a british thing, which americans won't pick up on.

Wot?

Eleanor Rigby picks up the rice in the church where a wedding has BEAN.

It's true buddy, trust me. To me he now sounds mid-atlantic, nothing wrong with that, he just does.

[luckyjackson1]

Gosh, that dude was so young when he wrote and composed that song. Must've been the use of drugs or something.

[mike edwards66]

I like the original because Paul sang it in scouse, which he doesn't nowadays. This is a british thing, which americans won't pick up on.

Wot?

Eleanor Rigby picks up the rice in the church where a wedding has BEAN.

Understandably, your ears are not attuned to the finer nuances of scouse. When he sings Father Mckenzie, he could be a yank.

[mysterytrainrideson]

But I am curious.

I remember listening to it as a teenager with much less refined tastes, and thinking "what is this for, anyway? To say that he is happy and feels pity for "all the lonely people?" And then asks "where do they all belong?" There's no reasonable answer for that. They belong wherever they choose to belong. Where do they all come from? I learned that in grade school: same as everyone else. Why are they lonely? Paul should ask someone who is lonely. Lotta different reasons.

So you have two utterly lonely people, who come together serendipitously at her funeral, such as it was. "Nobody came." Well, the Father did.

So, a lonely preacher throws dirt on the grave of someone no one cared about. And there are dark strings.

I had no idea what his point was, and still don't. If you love it, there must be some reason. I would like to know what that reason is.

It always made me very depressed, and I didn't get the point of making listeners depressed. I mean, just for the sake of it.

So, if anyone could explain why they like it, I would like that.

rjm
P.S. -- There is a statue of "her" on a bench in Liverpool. So, is she the "unknown soldier of loneliness"? Is that it?

Sent via mobile

I've never read such rubbish!

It's just a song and a very good one too - great lyrics and melody. It's about a lonely person who has no friends but someone was kind enough to see that person off and showing some compassion. Simple.

In essence, it is something that Paul as just made up. Came up with an idea and made it up as he went along. I think it's a very clever song...

[rjm]

"Where do THEY all belong?"

That's the problem, right there. "They."

It's not that she "had no friends"; she had nobody.

Whereas the narrator has a "normal" life without such loneliness. He's popular, happy. Bewildered by all the lonely people. Where do they all come from?

It's very difficult to imagine Lennon writing such a song. Very.

rjm
P.S. -- The Father wasn't being kind; it was his job. He was also one of "them."

Sent via mobile

[mysterytrainrideson]

"Where do THEY all belong?"

That's the problem, right there. "They."

It's not that she "had no friends"; she had nobody.

Whereas the narrator has a "normal" life without such loneliness. He's popular, happy. Bewildered by all the lonely people. Where do they all come from?

It's very difficult to imagine Lennon writing such a song. Very.

rjm
P.S. -- The Father wasn't being kind; it was his job. He was also one of "them."

Sent via mobile

It's getting silly now. Ok you don't like the song, no need to pan out the lyrics. It's just a made up bunch of lyrics that fit and work out well. You have to understand the art of songwriting...

[rjm]

"Where do THEY all belong?"

That's the problem, right there. "They."

It's not that she "had no friends"; she had nobody.

Whereas the narrator has a "normal" life without such loneliness. He's popular, happy. Bewildered by all the lonely people. Where do they all come from?

It's very difficult to imagine Lennon writing such a song. Very.

rjm
P.S. -- The Father wasn't being kind; it was his job. He was also one of "them."

Sent via mobile

It's getting silly now. Ok you don't like the song, no need to pan out the lyrics. It's just a made up bunch of lyrics that fit and work out well. You have to understand the art of songwriting...

Okay. I'll work on that.

(We do have some pros here; like to hear what they think.)

rjm

Sent via mobile

[When In Rome]

"Where do THEY all belong?"

That's the problem, right there. "They."

It's not that she "had no friends"; she had nobody.

Whereas the narrator has a "normal" life without such loneliness. He's popular, happy. Bewildered by all the lonely people. Where do they all come from?

It's very difficult to imagine Lennon writing such a song. Very.

rjm
P.S. -- The Father wasn't being kind; it was his job. He was also one of "them."

Sent via mobile

It's getting silly now. Ok you don't like the song, no need to pan out the lyrics. It's just a made up bunch of lyrics that fit and work out well. You have to understand the art of songwriting...

Okay. I'll work on that.

(We do have some pros here; like to hear what they think.)

rjm

Sent via mobile

I always took it to mean how did the lonely people get to where they are now (i.e. lonely/on their own etc) and will they ever find that somebody or something to make it all seem worthwhile (from the observers point of view) before they shuffle off this mortal coil, in a similar kind of sense as 'There but for Fortune' as sung by Joan Baez. In 'Eleanor Rigby' it seems not...
But, hey that's just how I read it...

[mysterytrainrideson]

"Where do THEY all belong?"

That's the problem, right there. "They."

It's not that she "had no friends"; she had nobody.

Whereas the narrator has a "normal" life without such loneliness. He's popular, happy. Bewildered by all the lonely people. Where do they all come from?

It's very difficult to imagine Lennon writing such a song. Very.

rjm
P.S. -- The Father wasn't being kind; it was his job. He was also one of "them."

Sent via mobile

It's getting silly now. Ok you don't like the song, no need to pan out the lyrics. It's just a made up bunch of lyrics that fit and work out well. You have to understand the art of songwriting...

Okay. I'll work on that.

(We do have some pros here; like to hear what they think.)

rjm

Sent via mobile

Bloody cheek!

The chorus goes:

"All the lonely people where do they all come from?"
"All the lonely people where do they all belong?"

It's meaning is people like Eleanor Rigby. I don't know if you've worked it out or not but there is more then one lonely person in this world, but
where do they all come from?...and where do they
all belong?...is what he is saying.

[Mister Moon]

I can see your point, rjm.

To be honest, I don't hate the song, but it's not one of my favourites either. I find it not just morbid, but pompous. Too arty, if you ask me.

I have transcribed for you the "Eleanor Rigby" chapter from Ian MacDonald's great book "Revolution In The Head: The Beatles' Records And The Sixties". I hope you find it interesting. You can also visit the "Eleanor Rigby" page in "The Beatles Bible" website. The link is at the end of this post:

Death is a subject normally avoided in pop music. Where acknowledged, it is either sanitised with heavenly choirs or treated as a black joke (e.g., The Shangri-La's camp 1965 classic “Leader Of The Pack”). Consequently the downbeat demise of a lonely spinster in “Eleanor Rigby” - not to mention the brutal image of the priest “wiping the dirt from his hands as he walks from the grave” - came as quite a shock to pop listeners in 1966. Taken together with George Martin's wintry string octet arrangement, the impact was transfixing.

In fact, the song's grim final verse was settled on only after much head-scratching and at the last minute. According to McCartney, “Eleanor Rigby” began as a plain tune with a melancholy descending phrase and the image of a spinster, Miss Daisy Hawkins, sweeping up the rice in a church after a marriage. Meeting Jane Asher in Bristol, where she was working in rep, McCartney allegedly got the name Rigby from a clothes shop, adding “Eleanor” from Eleanor Bron, the actress who had played the female lead in “Help!”. Against this is the fact that the Rigbys were a well-known local family in Liverpool, of whom one, Eleanor (1895-1939), lies buried in the churchyard of St. Peter's in Woolton, close to McCartney's home suburb of Allerton.

Armed with only the first verse, McCartney headed for Lennon's house at Weybridge where, during an informal evening with friends, he and the other Beatles pieced the rest of the song together. Starting as Father McCartney, the priest in the second verse soon became the more neutral Father McKenzie, a name found by consulting a telephone directory. Starr suggested the idea of him “darning his socks in the night”. The refrain “Ah look at all the lonely people” seems to have been designed by committee, possibly later in the studio (where some say the last verse was decided); others maintain that the song was completed during the same evening. (Lennon, who subsequently claimed “about 70 per cent” of the lyric, apparently tried to quash the idea of its two characters “meeting” at the end).

Given its chaotic genesis, “Eleanor Rigby” is extraordinarily cogent and concentrated. The face that the heroine “keeps in a jar by the door” (to mask the despair inadmissible by English middle-class etiquette) remains the single most memorable image in The Beatles' output. Yet the lyric's televisual vividness (“Look at him working”) is never gratuitous, being consistently at the service of the song's relentless despondency. Eleanor Rigby dies alone because unable to tell anyone how she felt. McKenzie's sermon won't be heard – not that he cares very much about his parishioners - because religious faith has perished along with communal spirit (“No one was saved”). Often represented as purveyors of escapist fantasy, The Beatles were, at their best, more poignantly realistic about their society than any other popular artist of their time.

The monochrome pessimism of the lyric is paralleled in the naked sinplicity of the music : a plain E Dorian melody over what amounts to two chords. Arranged by Martin from a rough idea by McCartney, the string accompaniment was recorded along with a guide vocal in a standard three-hour session, the final vocals being added later. Issued as a single (coupled with “Yellow Submarine”), “Eleanor Rigby” held the UK No. 1 spot for four weeks during August and September. (The comparatively hollow “Paperback Writer” lasted only two weeks at the top). In militantly optimistic America, however, the combination fared less well, “Yellow Submarine's” light relief proving more popular. Neither reached the top of the chart.

http://www.beatlesbible.com/songs/eleanor-rigby/

[rjm]

Thanks, Mister Moon. You know, I never read a review. These are just my own thoughts.

And if it's "bloody cheek" that I've got, so be it!

(Hoping I know what that means.)

rjm

Sent via mobile

[mike edwards66]

The chorus goes:

"All the lonely people where do they all come from?"
"All the lonely people where do they all belong?"



where do they all come from?...and where do they
all belong?...is what he is saying.

Wow.