0:16

Pushkin. Oh

0:23

my god, I wanted to

0:25

become a person who

0:27

wrote songs, and I wanted

0:29

to be someone who's

0:32

life was in music. I'm

0:38

poem, will do it. I'm a poet,

0:41

a lover of not only the lyric

0:43

poem, but the song lyric. Over

0:45

the past several years, I've

0:48

got to spend time with one of the greatest

0:50

songwriters of our era. And

0:53

will you look at me? It's happened.

0:55

I'm going on too. I'm actually a performer,

0:59

am I Actually I'm a songwriter? My

1:01

god? Well that crypto homey,

1:04

that is sir Paul McCartney. We

1:07

worked together on a book looking at the

1:09

lyrics of more than a fifty

1:11

office songs, and we recorded

1:14

many rs of our conversations.

1:22

This is McCartney, a

1:24

life in lyrics, a master

1:26

class, a memoir, and

1:28

an improvised journey with one of the

1:31

most iconic figures in

1:33

popular music. Each

1:35

episode is centered around the

1:37

writing of a particular

1:39

song, the people and the circumstances

1:43

that inspired it. In

1:45

this episode, eleanor Rigby.

1:53

Not many people know this, but

1:56

an early ambition of Paul McCartney's

1:59

was to be a poet. I feel okay

2:02

about admitting to the fact

2:04

that I wanted to look

2:06

a bit bookish. I wanted

2:09

to smoke a pipe on top checkable

2:11

bus. McCartney was friendly

2:13

with the poet Alan Ginsburg, who

2:16

had even revised some

2:18

of McCartney's poems. I saw

2:20

the best minds of my generation destroyed

2:24

by madness, starving, hysterical

2:28

nagan. I knew Ginsburg

2:31

quite well, and he edited

2:33

some of my poems. And did he attempt

2:35

to edit eleanor Rigby. No, he said,

2:38

that's a that's a great right,

2:42

very pleased. That was like in the

2:44

best review. The

2:50

subject of eleanor Rigby kept

2:52

coming up in my conversations

2:55

with Paul McCartney. It

3:00

was like a reference point for

3:02

him, a beacon he

3:04

would steer by. There

3:08

are many ways into this song,

3:11

many things to talk about, but

3:14

let's start with the central character,

3:17

eleanor Rigby herself. I

3:20

wanted a character who

3:24

summed up all the little

3:26

old ladies that I'd known, and I'm

3:28

looking back on it, I knew quite a few. Paul

3:30

McCartney's dad had brought

3:32

Paul and his brother up to be

3:34

rather gallant. He taught

3:37

them to stand up for old ladies

3:39

on buses, and he was

3:41

the type who would offer his hat good

3:44

morning. So I've been

3:46

kind of encouraged to if

3:48

I ever saw an old lady struggling with shopping,

3:51

I would pay the gallant young man. Can I carry

3:53

that for you? Oh glad, I'd be lovely.

3:55

Thank you. M chat chat chat, go

3:57

to the house drop it off? Would

4:01

you like a cup of tea? Paul

4:03

was an active boy Scout and

4:06

one of his favorite activities was Boba

4:08

jobwick, a common boys guy activity

4:11

throughout England at the time. In

4:14

Maidenhead, Buckingham Share, a group of enterprising

4:16

comes turn up at the town hall for their bob

4:18

a job time where kids would knock on doors

4:21

and offer their services

4:23

for a shilling. I was glad

4:25

I had to do all of this, like knocking

4:28

on doors, Yes,

4:31

excuse me, it's poor job wick. Have you

4:33

any jobs that you would like me to do? And

4:36

mostly would be puzzled as to what. Well I'd

4:38

liked what I said, Well, have you got shared

4:40

out of the back and maybe it's

4:43

each tidying? Oh yes, that's

4:46

or have you got the garden needs taking those?

4:48

Oh? We had given the ideas, so

4:50

I would and in this way I kind

4:52

of got to meet a lot of older people, and

4:56

I'd really loved it, and once

4:58

I got ten, Bob and I

5:01

think they kind of liked me. These

5:04

relationships with elderly women

5:06

are the original inspiration

5:09

for Eleanor rig So I imagined

5:13

this lady and I gave her a scenario,

5:15

and she's picking up the rice in the church.

5:18

Helena Rigby picks

5:20

up the rice in the church where her

5:22

wedding has been. So she's cleaning

5:24

up in the church, which immediately

5:27

sort of puts her in a

5:29

social position and

5:33

gives us an idea that there might

5:35

be a little bit of poignancy with this rice. And

5:37

it's not for her, it was where

5:39

a wedding had been. And

5:42

then she waits at the window and facing the jar

5:45

by the door, waits at the window

5:47

wearing the face that she keeps in

5:49

her jar by the door. Who

5:53

is it far? My mom's favorite

5:55

was Niva, and I love it to this

5:57

day. Yes, beautiful packaging.

6:00

Yeah, kind of

6:02

scared me a little that women used

6:05

quite so much cold cream uncle

6:07

EMPs as they call them, greasy

6:10

stuff. Yeah, it was Night's Red.

6:12

Yeah. When I got older and got married

6:14

and I would marry someone who would say,

6:16

oh I love and would put one of these big

6:19

shower capsule on the

6:21

curlors and have masses of things,

6:24

and I really

6:26

sort I played on my mind quite a bit.

6:28

So she's just wearing the face she

6:30

keeps in the job up I had the draw.

6:33

The name Eleanor had come partly

6:36

from the actress Eleanor Braun,

6:38

a star at the time who had briefly

6:41

dated John and Lennon and

6:43

starred in the Beatles nineteen sixty

6:46

five movie Help. I am

6:48

not what I seem. Hey,

6:54

my skin so right through to the skin, there's

6:56

more here than meet the eye.

6:59

Eleanor, I think there's always a ficture. Because we worked

7:01

with Eleanor Braun took

7:04

me a long time. I think of Eleanor. Paul's

7:07

girlfriend at the time, Jane Asher,

7:10

was also an actress, and

7:12

one time when she was playing at

7:15

the Bristol Old Vic, Paul was

7:17

wandering around outside. I

7:20

was wandering I'm waiting for the play to finish

7:22

and saw this shop, said

7:25

Rigby, that's

7:27

there's my soname right. It's

7:30

nice, it's ordinary, but

7:32

it's striking, it's strong, it's got all

7:34

the sort of stuff I've been looking for. This

7:37

is how Paul McCartney remembers it. Others

7:40

have pointed out that the Rigby name

7:42

might have come from somewhere different.

7:45

There is a grave off in Walton Church with John

7:47

and I wandered around endlessly

7:51

talking about our future,

7:53

and there is a grave there. On the

7:55

gravestone is the name eleanor

7:58

Rigby, and not far

8:01

from it another grave with

8:04

the name McKenzie on it.

8:06

I don't remember how we haven't seen that gravestor

8:09

sah, but it's been aggested to me

8:11

that, you know, psychologically, I would

8:13

have seen it. Yeah, I think we do

8:15

see things with our seeing. Of course

8:18

we don't. They plant themselves

8:20

brain and then I have to go to Bristol

8:23

and see it and go ah.

8:26

The other main character in the

8:28

song started out as Father

8:30

McCartney, but it changed

8:33

during a writing session with John

8:35

Lennon. I had Father

8:38

McCartney because it was the rights of syllables,

8:42

and I remember playing and he said, that's great Father

8:44

McCartney. He loved it. I said,

8:46

I'm really not comfortable with it because it's my

8:48

dad and my father McCartney.

8:51

Father McCay's me, you know, it's it's

8:53

not I don't want to. I don't want to be

8:56

that personal with this. So

8:58

we literally got the phone book out

9:01

and went on from McCartney, McCartney,

9:03

McCartney, McKenzie, that's good, father

9:06

McKenzie. And then we had

9:09

him working. But

9:11

his work was darning his socks, because

9:14

he was a sort of poor old vicar, darning

9:17

his socks in the night when there's nobody

9:20

there. What

9:22

does he care

9:26

where? Father

9:41

McCartney didn't make it into

9:44

the lyrics of eleanor Rigby, but

9:46

he did play an important

9:48

role in Paul's musical

9:51

upbringing. My dad had

9:54

sat me down as a kid and taught

9:56

me and my brother the idea

9:58

of harmony. Every

10:01

brother sang in harmony, so me and my brother did.

10:04

I once performed at a talent

10:06

competition with my brother Mike when I was eleven,

10:10

and he sang Bye Bye Love.

10:14

Didn't win, obviously,

10:17

not talented enough for the bottling's

10:20

crowd.

10:25

My dad was self taught, had learned

10:28

listen to things and could play

10:30

them. You know, I said, Dad, teach

10:32

me piano like you play. He said no, So

10:35

he said I can't play. He said you can't,

10:37

I can hear you? He said no. I

10:39

can't play properly, You've got to go on. So

10:42

Paul McCartney went out to learn from

10:45

a proper piano teacher, but

10:47

he didn't find that kind of music

10:50

lesson to be so stimulating.

10:53

He just killed me. I couldn't

10:55

do it when you go, and

10:59

you'd go to you. I've

11:02

heard better stuff than this on the

11:04

radio. This is not great,

11:06

but okay, I'm sure we have to

11:09

start here. And then she

11:11

said homework. Go home

11:13

and learn what a crochet and the quaver and thing us

11:15

and come back. So it was like, I've

11:17

got homework from school. I

11:20

don't need your homework. When Paul McCartney

11:22

was twenty one and the Beatles

11:24

already gaining national popularity,

11:28

he gave the piano lessons another

11:31

go, and this was Royal Guildhall

11:33

School of Music guy. And

11:36

he tried, but by then had written all on

11:38

a rugby and he had to take me

11:40

back to the five finger exercise Do do

11:42

Do Do Do Do? I

11:45

couldn't. I couldn't do the show. I

11:47

just didn't want to do it. Many

11:49

of Paul's peers felt

11:52

the same way about traditional

11:54

musical training. Everyone

11:56

in my generation, all of us groups

12:01

John George Paul and Ringo, Mick,

12:04

Charlie Peace and Sea. I don't

12:06

think any of us can read music. And

12:09

now I will teach

12:11

a kid how to play the piano

12:14

how we learned it, and

12:17

I will show them a couple of chords to get started

12:19

on. And if they're musical, they're

12:22

off that you get C D

12:24

minor E minor f G A

12:26

minor writer. That's

12:29

like most of the Beatles songs. That's

12:31

more than you need to know, which leads

12:34

us back to eleanor Rigby, a

12:36

song that grew from a

12:39

single chord

12:41

too, and its

12:43

basic sense, it's just an E minor

12:46

chord,

12:50

and all the fun happens with my

12:52

melody and the syncopation of the words

12:54

do do Do

12:58

Do do? It's all against the four

13:02

gps and a job by the dog.

13:06

Who is it? George Martin,

13:08

the Beatles producer, had introduces

13:10

Paul to the idea of the string quartet

13:13

on the song Yesterday, and

13:17

I had resisted the idea at first,

13:19

but when it worked, I

13:21

fell in love with the idea. So I knew

13:24

now that I wanted to do a similar thing

13:26

with eleanor Rigby. So I would go around to George's

13:28

house, we'd arrange a little session, and

13:30

I said to him, you know, I'm fascinated by Bach

13:36

because I'd suddenly grasped that

13:38

there was mathematics. I

13:43

can see one two, one

13:46

two and then on top of a one

13:48

two three four one two three

13:51

four one two now

13:54

forming a sort of pyramid, and then one five

13:57

six seven eight one two three four five six seventy

13:59

one to three four hundred sixteen

14:03

star. So I'd loved this two four eight

14:05

sixteen thing. And

14:12

I brought this idea and talked to George about

14:14

this, and he said, well, Bach,

14:17

you know, would have done. Listen, he laid

14:20

out the chords as he had done on yesterday.

14:23

George, talking about this later,

14:25

would say that he then became

14:27

inspired by Bernard Herman, who

14:30

had written the psycho music Right

14:32

Yea, which

14:35

is very dramatic, and he wanted to bring

14:37

some of that into the arrangements. Alfred

14:42

Hetchcock's nineteen sixties classic

14:46

about the Sinister Bates Motel

14:49

had been a huge box

14:51

office success. Nice

14:54

he had a vagacy We

14:56

are twelve vacancies, twelve cabins,

14:59

twelve vacancies. In

15:01

the movie, Anthony Perkins character

15:04

mels with his dead mother

15:07

and takes revenge on his desires.

15:10

Whether she's just a stranger, she's hungry

15:12

and it's raining out. Together they

15:14

kill Janet Lee in that

15:17

famous char scene, and

15:22

it's Bernard Hermann's stabbing

15:25

violins that make that

15:27

scene so iconic.

15:35

While eleanor Rigby isn't a film,

15:37

of course, McCartney says

15:39

that writing the lyrics was like structuring

15:43

a movie. Well, I was seeing it like

15:45

a film just in my going

15:47

imagination. I've got two

15:49

protragonists that are lonely. She

15:52

and then him. He's not sort

15:54

of you know, feels so sorry for him,

15:57

but he's lonely. So

16:00

you've got these two. So all the lonely

16:02

people now becomes the chorus.

16:05

Where do they belong? Whether they come from?

16:08

And in the third verse, the characters

16:11

are brought together. Died in the church,

16:15

so we brought her back to a rice

16:17

cleaning duties, and

16:20

so one day she keels over in the church

16:22

who was buried along with her name. So

16:26

yeah, she dies, and then he comes back. He's

16:28

the one who buries and he's wiping his hands as he

16:30

walked from the guy. No one was saved,

16:33

and that's your sort of wrap up to

16:35

the story. And

16:39

of course there's some kind

16:42

of strange connection between

16:45

the elderly woman

16:48

and of course in Psycho it

16:50

turns out to be a

16:53

woman who's kind of mammified in some

16:55

ways and son the kind of crazy

16:58

strange Maybe

17:00

George thought that link as well as

17:02

possible. He's thinking just purely musically.

17:05

You know, when

17:14

you finished it, don't you realize

17:16

at that moment, you know, this is

17:18

one hell of a song. I thought,

17:21

some dinger of us, I thought this is a cracker.

17:23

Yeah, you do you

17:25

do when you've when you've got something that Linda's

17:29

dad used to say, he's left Paul twitched. There's

17:33

a physical response. Yeah.

17:42

Elenor Gregby died

17:44

in the church and was buried alone

17:47

with the name. Nobody

17:50

came, Bather McKenzie

17:53

wiping the dad from his hands

17:55

as he watch from the grave. No

17:58

one was saved, dude.

18:04

They are going from eleanor

18:16

Rigby from the Beatles nineteen

18:19

sixty six album Revolver.

18:23

In the next episode,

18:32

we travel behind the Iron Curtain

18:35

to let ourselves in on one of

18:37

the greatest jokes of the Cold

18:39

War era. Back

18:42

in the U s s R.

18:51

Back in the USS are being

18:56

away the new place.

19:02

McCartney A Life in Lyrics

19:05

is a co production between iHeartMedia

19:08

NPL and Pushkin Industry.

19:10

Yes.