Paul McCartney Compared The Beatles' 'Eleanor Rigby' to the Mother From Alfred
Alfred Hitchcock's 'Psycho' inspired The Beatles' "Eleanor Rigby" lyrically and musically. Despite this, there are huge differences between the two.
Paul McCartney said The Beatles‘ “Eleanor Rigby” has a “madcap connection” to a character from Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. Despite this, the Psycho character doesn’t actually have much in common with the protagonist of “Eleanor Rigby.” Notably, John Lennon said the hit was inspired by the music of a famous composer.
In a 2021 article from The New Yorker, Paul discussed the origins of The Beatles’ “Eleanor Rigby.” “It did feel like a breakthrough for me lyrically — more of a serious song,” he recalled. “[Producer] George Martin had introduced me to the string-quartet idea through ‘Yesterday.’ I’d resisted the idea at first, but when it worked, I fell in love with it. So I ended up writing ‘Eleanor Rigby’ with a string component in mind. When I took the song to George, I said that, for accompaniment, I wanted a series of E-minor chord stabs. In fact, the whole song is really only two chords: C major and E minor.
Source: Matthew Trzcinski/cheatsheet.com
