Paul McCartney has often tried, failed at writing another "Eleanor Rigby"
Publish Date
Saturday, 17 July 2021, 7:00AM
Paul McCartney has written many songs in the same vein as classic The Beatles ballad "Eleanor Rigby" over the years, but most of them fell flat and he has no plans to release them.
Sir McCartney looked back on the Revolver album in a recent interview with Uncut, explaining that the success of "Eleanor Rigby" was a bit of a revelation to him. As a songwriter, it was one of the earliest times he tried building characters in his lyrics.
"It's quite a fun thing to do, to just dream up a name of a character and try and write that story of that character and then make it fit with another character," McCartney said. "'Eleanor Rigby,' I did it with just ... Father McKenzie and Eleanor. ... With my story songs, a lot of them besides 'Eleanor Rigby,' tend to be comedy. It's me doing the tongue-in-cheek thing, whereas 'Eleanor Rigby' was more serious. I think that's why it was more successful."