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The Beatles · S7 E5
Eleanor Rigby
A string octet, no guitars, no drums. A song about loneliness so precise it sounds like a short story. Pop music will never be the same after this
Studio Two, Abbey Road, spring 1966. Eight string players sit in a semicircle, reading a George Martin arrangement that contains no guitar parts, no bass parts, and no drums, and they are about to record the entire backing of a Beatles song without a single Beatle touching an instrument.
"For No One" (The Beatles, 1966). Paul McCartney's other Revolver masterpiece about isolation and loss. While "Eleanor Rigby" uses a string octet to paint loneliness on a grand scale, "For No One" does it with a single French horn and a lyric so precisely observed it reads like a diary entry. Two sides of the same writer, recorded within weeks of each other.
For No One, The Beatles (1966)
The French horn solo was played by Alan Civil, principal horn of the BBC Symphony Orchestra and one of the finest classical musicians in Britain. McCartney asked him to play higher than the instrument was designed to go, into a register Civil later admitted made him nervous. The result is a solo so exposed and vulnerable it sounds like the song itself crying. The rest of the arrangement is stark: piano, clavichord, drums, and nothing else.
Sources
Lewisohn, Mark. "The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions." Hamlyn, 1988.
MacDonald, Ian. "Revolution in the Head." Chicago Review Press, 2005.
All the Lonely People
McCartney starts "Eleanor Rigby" alone at a piano, working out the melody and the opening image of a woman picking up rice at a church. The rest comes from a group session at John's Kenwood house, where Lennon, Harrison, Pete Shotton, and Ringo all throw in lines. Paul has said he assembled the name from actress Eleanor Bron (who starred in Help!) and a shop called Rigby & Evens he spotted in Bristol, though a real Eleanor Rigby's gravestone sits in the very churchyard where John and Paul first met.
Sources
Miles, Barry. "Many Years from Now." Secker & Warburg, 1997.
The Beatles. "The Beatles Anthology." Chronicle Books, 2000.
“I was thinking of all the lonely people. Where do they all come from? Where do they all belong? I don't think you can say I was one of them, but I had a lot of sympathy for them.”
— Paul McCartney
TAP TO REVEAL: Is there a real Eleanor Rigby?
The Arrangement
George Martin's string arrangement is unlike anything in pop music. He writes for four violins, two violas, and two cellos, all playing in a sharp, staccato style that Paul specifically requested by saying he didn't want it to sound like Mantovani. The attack is aggressive, almost violent, closer to Bernard Herrmann's Psycho score than to anything the Beatles had tried before. No Beatle plays a single note of instrumentation on the finished track.
Sources
MacDonald, Ian. "Revolution in the Head." Chicago Review Press, 2005.
Emerick, Geoff. "Here, There and Everywhere." Gotham Books, 2006.
Eleanor Rigby
Here, There and Everywhere, The Beatles (1966)
If "Eleanor Rigby" is McCartney writing about other people's loneliness, "Here, There and Everywhere" is him writing about his own happiness with Jane Asher. John Lennon called it one of his favorite McCartney compositions. Paul wrote it by the pool at John's Kenwood house, inspired by the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds, and the three-part harmonies float over a fingerpicked guitar with a delicacy that makes the whole thing feel weightless.
Here, There and Everywhere, The Beatles (1966)
"To lead a better life, I need my love to be here." The opening line sets up one of the simplest, most elegant love songs in the Beatles' catalog. McCartney's melody moves through three different keys without ever sounding complicated, a trick he learned from studying Gershwin. It's the quiet masterpiece hiding in the shadow of Revolver's louder experiments.
What instrument plays the famous solo on 'For No One,' Paul McCartney's other ballad from the Revolver sessions?
On August 5, 1966, the Beatles release Revolver, fourteen tracks that make everything recorded before them sound old. Three weeks later, they will play their last concert ever.
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