Paul McCartney has long since been heralded as one of the best British songwriters of all time, an accolade he still holds to this day and pumps up with every new release. Drawing inspiration from across the human spectrum, Macca also revealed that Alfred Hitchock’s horror classic Psycho influenced one of his most beloved songs, ‘Eleanor Rigby’.
Paul was not intrinsically drawn to the character of the shudder-inducing Norman Bates, or the murder at the heart of the picture, it was instead the film’s iconic score that acted as the instigating moment for McCartney, convincing him that strings could be “edgy” and a perfect fit for the song.
The score, written by Bernard Herrmann, is one of the most recognisable in cinema history, and it was an avant-garde moment for the 1960 feature film. Herrmann took the previously heralded classical instrument, the warm violin and turned it into a violent weapon, capable of putting any person on edge—who can forget the piercing shower scene.
He took his inspiration to George Martin, the Beatles’ producer extraordinaire, who recalled: “He [Paul] came to me with ‘Eleanor Rigby,’ which cried out for strings.” Martin said the strings shouldn’t be “the smooth, legato stuff of ‘Yesterday,’ but something very biting…[and] very edgy.” Paul handed over the score for Psycho to Martin as a spark of influence.
George Martin took the score, along with another Herrmann soundtrack, this one for François Truffaut’s film adaptation of Fahrenheit 451, and began to work diligently on the strings for ‘Eleanor Rigby’. Both scores combined strings with electronic instruments and Martin was keen to introduce a degree of bit and a “tight rhythm.”
Psycho may well have completed the track but the first line of the song was inspired from something very different indeed. “It just came. When I started doing the melody I developed the lyric. It all came from the first line. I wonder if there are girls called Eleanor Rigby?”
One of many great Paul tracks from Revolver—the song is a continuation of Macca’s fascination with the unloved and forgotten.
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