Joan Baez - Eleanor Rigby

Thursday, time for a cover.

"Eleanor Rigby" is a song by the English rock band THE BEATLES from their 1966 album "Revolver". It was also issued on a double A-side single, paired with "Yellow Submarine". The song was written primarily by Paul McCartney and credited to Lennon–McCartney.

The song continued the transformation of THE BEATLES from a mainly rock and roll- and pop-oriented act to a more experimental, studio-based band. With a double string quartet arrangement by George Martin and lyrics providing a narrative on loneliness, "Eleanor Rigby" broke sharply with popular music conventions, both musically and lyrically. Richie Unterberger of AllMusic cites the band's "singing about the neglected concerns and fates of the elderly" on the song as "just one example of why THE BEATLES' appeal reached so far beyond the traditional rock audience".

Paul McCartney came up with the melody of "Eleanor Rigby" as he experimented on his piano. However, the original name of the protagonist that he chose was not Eleanor Rigby, but Miss Daisy Hawkins. The singer-composer Donovan reported that he heard McCartney play it to him before it was finished, with completely different lyrics. In 1966, McCartney recalled how he got the idea for his song:

I was sitting at the piano when I thought of it. The first few bars just came to me, and I got this name in my head ... "Daisy Hawkins picks up the rice in the church". I don't know why. I couldn't think of much more so I put it away for a day. Then the name "Father McCartney" came to me, and all the lonely people. But I thought that people would think it was supposed to be about my Dad sitting knitting his socks. Dad's a happy lad. So I went through the telephone book and I got the name "McKenzie"

McCartney said he came up with the name "Eleanor" from actress Eleanor Bron, who had starred with THE BEATLES in the film "Help!". "Rigby" came from the name of a store in Bristol, "Rigby & Evens Ltd, Wine & Spirit Shippers", which he noticed while seeing his girlfriend of the time, Jane Asher, act in The Happiest Days of Your Life. He recalled in 1984, "I just liked the name. I was looking for a name that sounded natural. 'Eleanor Rigby' sounded natural."

The American singer, songwriter, musician, and activis Joan Baez sings the song "Eleanor Rigby" from her 1967 Vanguard album "Joan". This song about loneliness and death was something of a shock to the pop audience of the time, but the song has been recorded by over sixty singers ranging from Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin to Ethel the Frog and Alice Cooper. Evidently McCartney had lonely older people in mind when writing the song, but the video shows a range of ages. The last part of the video has photos of the gravestone of the "real" Eleanor Rigby that may have influenced the name of this song, the statue of her in Liverpool, and McCartney.

The album "Joan" having exhausted the standard voice/guitar folksong format by 1967, Baez collaborated with arranger-conductor Peter Schickele (with whom she'd worked on the 1966 Christmas album, Noël), on an album of orchestrated covers of mostly then-current pop and rock and roll songs. Works by Donovan, Paul Simon, Tim Hardin, THE BEATLES, and Richard Fariña were included, as well as selections by Jacques Brel and Edgar Allan Poe.

Enjoy today's cover by Joan Baez



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