Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: Hi, everyone, it's Paul muldoon. Before we get to this episode,
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Speaker 3: Oh my god, I wanted to become a person who
Speaker 3: wrote songs, and I wanted to be someone who's life
Speaker 3: was in music.
Speaker 2: I'm Paul muldoun. I'm a poet, a lover of not
Speaker 2: only the lyric poem, but the song lyric. Over the
Speaker 2: past several years, I've got to spend time with one
Speaker 2: of the greatest songwriters of our era.
Speaker 4: And will you look at me, it's happened.
Speaker 3: I'm going on too. I'm actually a performer. I'm actually
Speaker 3: I'm a songwriter. My god, Well that that crypta homie.
Speaker 2: That is sir Paul McCartney. We worked together on a
Speaker 2: book looking at the lyrics of more than one hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty of his songs, and we recorded many hours
Speaker 2: of our conversations. This is McCartney a life in lyrics,
Speaker 2: a masterclass, a memoir, and an improvised journey with one
Speaker 2: of the most iconic figures in popular music. Each episode
Speaker 2: is centered around the writing of a particular song, the
Speaker 2: people and the circumstances that inspired it. In this episode,
Speaker 2: eleanor Rigby. Not many people know this, but an early
Speaker 2: ambition of Paul McCartney's was to be a poet.
Speaker 3: I feel okay about admitting to the fact that, yeah,
Speaker 3: I wanted to look a bit bookish. I wanted to
Speaker 3: smoke a pipe on the top deck of a boss.
Speaker 2: McCartney was friendly with the poet Allen Ginsberg, who had
Speaker 2: even revised some of McCartney's poems.
Speaker 3: I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness,
Speaker 3: starving hysterical megan. I knew Ginsburg quite well, and he
Speaker 3: edited some of my poems.
Speaker 1: And did he attempt to edit eleanor Rigby.
Speaker 3: No, he said, that's a that's a great poem. I'm
Speaker 3: very pleased. It was like in the best review.
Speaker 2: The subject of eleanor Rigby kept coming up in my
Speaker 2: conversations with Paul McCartney. It was like a reference point
Speaker 2: for him, a beacon. He would steer By. There are
Speaker 2: many ways into this song, many things to talk about,
Speaker 2: but let's start with the central character, eleanor Rigby herself.
Speaker 3: I wanted a character who some God all the little
Speaker 3: old ladies that I'd known, and I'm looking back on it,
Speaker 3: and I knew quite a few.
Speaker 2: Paul McCartney's dad had brought Paul and his brother up
Speaker 2: to be rather gallant. He taught them to stand up
Speaker 2: for old ladies on buses and he.
Speaker 3: Was the type who went off his hat good morning.
Speaker 3: So I've been kind of encouraged to if I ever
Speaker 3: saw an old lady struggling with shopping, I would be
Speaker 3: the gallant young man. Can I carry that for you?
Speaker 1: Oh God, be lovely.
Speaker 3: Thank you for much chat chat chat, go to the
Speaker 3: house drop it off. Would you like a cup of tea?
Speaker 2: Paul was an active Boy Scout and one of his
Speaker 2: favorite activities was barber Job Week, a common boy Scout
Speaker 2: activity throughout England at the time.
Speaker 5: In Maidenhead, Buckinghamshire, a group of enterprising cabs turn up
Speaker 5: in the town hall for their Bobbi Job task.
Speaker 2: Where kids would knock on doors and offer their services
Speaker 2: for a shilling.
Speaker 3: I'm so glad I had to do all of this,
Speaker 3: like knocking on doors. Yes, excuse me, it's Bob job week.
Speaker 3: Have you any jobs that you would like me to do?
Speaker 3: And most of it would be puzzled as to what
Speaker 3: when I'd liked what I said, Well, if you got
Speaker 3: shared out of the back and maybe it's and he's tidying,
Speaker 3: Oh yes, that's going to or if you've got the
Speaker 3: garden needs taking, oh yes. Have to give them the ideas.
Speaker 3: So I would, And in this way I kind of
Speaker 3: got to meet a lot of older people and I
Speaker 3: really loved it. I mean, once I got ten Bob,
Speaker 3: and I think they kind of liked me.
Speaker 2: These relationships with elderly women are the original inspiration for
Speaker 2: Eleanor Rigby.
Speaker 3: So I imagined this lady and gave her a scenario, and
Speaker 3: she's picking up the rice in the church.
Speaker 5: Helena Rigby picks up the rice in a church where
Speaker 5: a wedding has been so.
Speaker 3: She's cleaning up in the church, which immediately sort of
Speaker 3: puts her in a social position and gives us an
Speaker 3: idea that there might be a little bit of poignancy
Speaker 3: with this rice. And it's not for her. It was
Speaker 3: where a wedding had been And then she waits at
Speaker 3: the window and facing the jar by the door.
Speaker 5: Waits at the window, wearing the face that she keeps
Speaker 5: in a job by the door. Who is it for?
Speaker 3: My mom's favorite was Nivia, and I love it to
Speaker 3: this day.
Speaker 1: Beautiful packaging.
Speaker 3: Ye kind of scared me a little that women used
Speaker 3: quite so much cold cream.
Speaker 1: They call them greasy stuff.
Speaker 3: It was my dread when I got older and got married,
Speaker 3: that I would marry someone who would say, oh I
Speaker 3: love and would put one of these big shower capsule
Speaker 3: on the curlers and have masses of things. And I
Speaker 3: really so I played on my mind quite a bit.
Speaker 3: So she's just wearing the face she keeps in the
Speaker 3: job by the door.
Speaker 2: The name Eleanor had come partly from the actress Eleanor Brawn,
Speaker 2: a star at the time who had briefly dated John
Speaker 2: Lennon and starred in The Beatles nineteen sixty five movie Help.
Speaker 1: I Am not what I seem.
Speaker 3: Sure, Hey, my skin so right through to the skin.
Speaker 3: There's more here than meets the eye. See Eleanor, I
Speaker 3: think was always a thing she Because we worked with
Speaker 3: Eleanor Brown took me a long time to think of
Speaker 3: Elana or Rigby.
Speaker 2: Paul's girlfriend at the time, Jane Asher, was also an actress,
Speaker 2: and one time when she was playing at the Bristol
Speaker 2: Old Vic, Paul was wandering around outside.
Speaker 3: I was wondering, I'm waiting for the play to finish
Speaker 3: and saw this shot. Said Rigby. Well, that's there's my surname. Right.
Speaker 3: It's nice, it's ordinary, but it's striking, it's strong, it's
Speaker 3: got all the sort of stuff I've been looking for.
Speaker 2: This is how Paul McCartney remembers it. Others have pointed
Speaker 2: out that the Rigby name have come from somewhere different.
Speaker 3: There is a grave up in Wilton Church with John
Speaker 3: and I wandered around endlessly talking about our future, and
Speaker 3: there is a grave there.
Speaker 2: On the gravestone is the name eleanor Rigby, and not
Speaker 2: far from it another grave with the name McKenzie on it.
Speaker 3: I don't remember. I we haven't seen that grave, stores not,
Speaker 3: but it's been suggested to me that, you know, psychologically,
Speaker 3: I will have seen it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think we do see things without seeing. Of course
Speaker 1: we don't.
Speaker 3: They plant themselves to plain and then I have to
Speaker 3: go to Bristol and see it and go ah.
Speaker 2: The other main character in the song started out as
Speaker 2: Father McCartney, but it changed during a writing session with
Speaker 2: John Lennon.
Speaker 3: I had father McCartney because it was the right syllables,
Speaker 3: and I remember playing in.
Speaker 4: These said that's great.
Speaker 3: Father McCartney loved it. I said, no, I'm really not
Speaker 3: comfortable with it because it's my dad and my father McCartney.
Speaker 3: Father McKay's me, you know, it's it's not I don't
Speaker 3: want to I don't want to be that personal with this.
Speaker 3: So we literally got the phone book out and went
Speaker 3: on from McCartney, McCartney, McCartney, McKenzie, that's.
Speaker 5: Good, father McKenzie.
Speaker 3: And then we had him working, but his work was
Speaker 3: darning his socks, because he was a sort of poor old.
Speaker 5: Vicar darning his sucks in the night when there's nobody there.
Speaker 5: What does he care?
Speaker 3: All the lonely people where a lovely.
Speaker 5: Duel.
Speaker 2: Father McCartney didn't make it into the lyrics of Elma Rigby,
Speaker 2: but he did play an important role in Paul's musical upbringing.
Speaker 3: My dad had sat me down as a kid and
Speaker 3: taught me and my brother the idea of harmony. Every
Speaker 3: brother sang in harmony, so me and my brother did.
Speaker 3: I once performed in a talent competition with my brother
Speaker 3: Mike when I was eleven, and we sang Bye Bye Love.
Speaker 3: Didn't win, obviously, not talented enough for the Bottling's crowd.
Speaker 3: My dad was self taught, had learned, listened to things
Speaker 3: and could play them. You know, I said, Dad, teach
Speaker 3: me piana like you play. He said no, So he
Speaker 3: said I can't play. Said you can't. I can't hear you.
Speaker 3: He said no, I can't play properly. You've got to
Speaker 3: go and learn.
Speaker 2: So Partney went out to learn from a proper piano teacher,
Speaker 2: but he didn't find that kind of music lesson to
Speaker 2: be so stimulating.
Speaker 3: He just killed me.
Speaker 4: I couldn't do it when you go, and you'd go
Speaker 4: to I've heard better stuff than this on the radio.
Speaker 3: This is not great, but okay, I'm sure we have
Speaker 3: to start here. And then she set homework. Go home
Speaker 3: and learn what a crotchet and the quaver and thing
Speaker 3: us and come back. So it was like, I've got
Speaker 3: homework from school. I don't need your homework.
Speaker 2: But Paul McCartney was twenty one and the Beatles already
Speaker 2: gaining national popularity. He gave the piano lessons another go, and.
Speaker 3: This was Royal Guildhall School of Music guy and he tried,
Speaker 3: but by then I'd written Alan Rugby. But he had
Speaker 3: to take me back to the five finger exercise do do?
Speaker 3: I couldn't. I couldn't do the show. I just didn't
Speaker 3: want to do it.
Speaker 2: Many of Paul's peers felt the same way about traditional
Speaker 2: musical training.
Speaker 3: Everyone in my generation, all of us groups John George,
Speaker 3: Paul and Ringo, Nick, Charlie Peace and so I don't
Speaker 3: think any of us can read music. And now I
Speaker 3: will teach a kid how to play the piano how
Speaker 3: we learned it, and I will show them a couple
Speaker 3: of chords to get started on, and if they're musical,
Speaker 3: they're off. You get C D minor E minor F
Speaker 3: G A minor right there. That's like most of the
Speaker 3: Beatles songs. That's more than you need to know.
Speaker 2: Which leads us back to eleanor Rigby, a song that
Speaker 2: grew from a single chord.
Speaker 3: In its basic sense, it's just an E minor chord,
Speaker 3: and all the fun happens with my melody and the
Speaker 3: syncopation and the words. Do do do. It's all against
Speaker 3: the form fast.
Speaker 1: Who is it for?
Speaker 2: George Martin, the Beatles producer, had introduced Paul to the
Speaker 2: idea of the string quartet on the song Yesterday.
Speaker 3: And I had resisted the idea at first, but when
Speaker 3: it worked, I fell in love with the idea. So
Speaker 3: I knew now that I wanted to do a similar
Speaker 3: thing with eleanor Rigby. So I would go around to
Speaker 3: George's house with arrange a little session, and I said
Speaker 3: to him, you know, I'm fascinated by Bach, because I
Speaker 3: suddenly grasped that there was mathematics. I could see one
Speaker 3: two one two, and then on top of that one
Speaker 3: two three four one two three four one two now
Speaker 3: forming a sort of pyramid, and then one three four, five,
Speaker 3: six seven eight, one to three foot five six seven
Speaker 3: and one to three foot pat sixteen star. So I
Speaker 3: loved this two four eight sixteenth thing. And I brought
Speaker 3: this idea and talked to George about this, and he said, well, Bach,
Speaker 3: you know, would have done this, and he laid out
Speaker 3: the chords as he had done on yesterday. George, talking
Speaker 3: about this later, would say that he then became inspired
Speaker 3: by Bernard Hermann, who had written the psycho music right,
Speaker 3: which is very dramatic, and he wanted to bring some
Speaker 3: of that into the arrangements.
Speaker 2: Alfred hitched cox nineteen sixties classic about the Sinister Bates
Speaker 2: Motel had been a huge box office success Dirty Night.
Speaker 1: He had vacancy.
Speaker 3: We have twelve vacancies, twelve cabins, twelve vacancies.
Speaker 2: In the movie, Anthony Perkins character meles with his dead
Speaker 2: mother and takes revenge on his desires.
Speaker 1: Whether she's just a stranger, she's hungry.
Speaker 2: And it's writing out together. They kill Janet Lee in
Speaker 2: that famous char scene, and it's Bernard Hermann's stabbing violins
Speaker 2: that make that scene so iconic. While eleanor Rigby isn't
Speaker 2: a film, of course, McCartney says that writing the lyrics
Speaker 2: was like structuring a movie.
Speaker 3: Well, I was seeing is like a film just in
Speaker 3: my god imagination. I've got two protagonists that are lonely.
Speaker 3: She and then him. He's not sort of you don't
Speaker 3: feel so sorry for him, but he's lonely. So you've
Speaker 3: got these two. So all the lonely people now becomes
Speaker 3: the chorus where do they belong? Where do they come from?
Speaker 2: And in the third verse, the characters are brought together.
Speaker 3: Died in the church, so we brought her back to
Speaker 3: a rice cleaning duties. And so one day she keels
Speaker 3: over in the church and was buried along with her name. So, yeah,
Speaker 3: she dies, and then he comes back. He's the one
Speaker 3: who buries and he's wiping his hands as he walks
Speaker 3: from the great No one was saved, And that's your
Speaker 3: sort of wrap up to the story.
Speaker 1: And of course there's some kind of strain connection between
Speaker 1: the elderly woman, and of course in Psycho it turns
Speaker 1: out to be a woman who's kind of mummified in
Speaker 1: some ways, the kind of crazy Linco strange.
Speaker 3: Maybe George thought that link as well. That's possibly he's
Speaker 3: thinking just purely musically. You know.
Speaker 1: When you finished it, did you realize at that moment,
Speaker 1: you know, this is one hell of us all.
Speaker 3: I thought, this is a cracker. You do you do
Speaker 3: when you've when you've got something that that Linda's dad
Speaker 3: used to say, he's left ball twitched.
Speaker 1: There's a physical response.
Speaker 5: Rigby died in the church and was buried alone with
Speaker 5: the name Nobody came Boto McKenzie widering no Dad from
Speaker 5: his hands as he watched from the grave. No one
Speaker 5: was saved all Alonely do they all call.
Speaker 3: All alone? Do they belonge?
Speaker 2: Eleanor Rigby from the Beatles nineteen sixty six album Revolver.
Speaker 2: In the next episode, we traveled behind the Iron Curtain
Speaker 2: to let ourselves in one one of the greatest jokes
Speaker 2: of the Cold War era.
Speaker 1: Back in the U. S.
Speaker 3: S R.
Speaker 4: Back in the U.
Speaker 5: S s R.
Speaker 2: McCartney A Life in Lyrics is a co production between
Speaker 2: iHeartMedia n p L. And Pushkin Industries.