Paul McCartney: Well that started off with sitting down at the piano and getting the first line of the melody, and playing around with words. I think it was 'Miss Daisy Hawkins' originally; then it was her picking up the rice in a church after a wedding. That's how nearly all our songs start, with the first line just suggesting itself from books or newspapers.
At first I though it was a young Miss Daisy Hawkins, a bit like 'Annabel Lee', but not so sexy; but then I saw I'd said she was picking up the rice in church, so she had to be a cleaner; she had missed the wedding, and she was suddenly lonely. In fact she had missed it all - she was the spinster type.
Jane [Asher] was in a play in Bristol then, and I was waking round the streets waiting for her to finish. I didn't really like 'Daisy Hawkins' - I wanted a name that was more real. The thought just came: "Eleanor Rigby picks up the rice andlives in a dream" - so there she was. The next thing was Father MacKensie. It was going to be Father McCartney, but then I thought that it was a bit of a hang-up for my Dad, being in this lonely song. So we looked through the phone book. That's the beauty of working at random - it does come up perfectly, much better than if you try to think it with your intellect.
Anyway there was Father MacKensie, and he was just as I had imagined him, lonely, darning his socks. We weren't sure if the song was going to go on. In the next verse we thohght of a bin man, an old feller going through dustbins; but it got too involved - embarassing. John and I wondered whether to have Eleanor Rigby and him have a thing going, but we couldn't really see how. When I played it to John we decided to finish it.
That was the point anyway. She didn't make it, she never made it with anyone, she didn't even look as if she was going to.
Paul McCartney (in 1966) - "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. I was in Bristol when I decided Daisy Hawkins wasn't a good name. I walked 'round looking at the shops, and I saw the name Rigby. Then I took the song down to John's house in Weybridge. We sat around, laughing, got stoned and finished it off."
John Lennon (in 1980) - "Paul's baby, and I helped with the education of the child... The violin backing was Paul's idea. Jane Asher had turned him on to Vivaldi, and it was very good."
Paul McCartney (in 1984) - "I got the name Rigby from a shop in Bristol. I was wandering round Bristol one day and saw a shop called Rigby. And I think Eleanor was from Eleanor Bron, the actress we worked with in the film 'Help!' But I just liked the name. I was looking for a name that sounded natural. Eleanor Rigby sounded natural."
John Lennon has claimed partial authorship of the lyrics to this song.
Pete Shotton, childhood friend of John Lennon and ex-Quarry Men member,
has claimed to have been on hand during the writing of the lyric to this song
and has also claimed to have come up with Father MacKensie and Eleanor Rigby
being somehow connected as illustrated in the last verse.
