On his new podcast, A Life In Lyrics, Paul McCartney has explained how his mother influenced the lyrics on The Beatles track ‘Eleanor Rigby’.
Explaining the title of the track, McCartney told Irish poet Paul Muldoon: “There is a grave which John and I wandered around endlessly talking about our future. And there is a grave there [with the name Eleanor Rigby]. I don’t remember ever having seen that gravestone but it’s been suggested to me that psychologically I would have seen it.”
Discussing the line, “Wearing a face that she keeps in a jar by the door,” McCartney revealed how his mother’s Nivea inspired it. He explained: “My mum’s favourite was Nivea and I love it to this day. It kind of scared me a little that women used quite so much cold cream.”
McCartney continued: “It was my dread, when I got older and got married, that I would marry someone who would [wear a lot of cold cream] and put one of those big shower caps on and the curlers and have masses of things. So that played on my mind quite a bit, so she’s wearing a face that she keeps in a jar by the door.”
Episodes of the podcast are available to stream on a weekly basis on all podcast platforms unless fans are subscribed to Pushkin+ and can listen to the whole series in full. A second series has already been confirmed for February 2024. iHeartRadio will also broadcast the podcast on their stations across the United States every Sunday morning.
In the first episode of the podcast, he dissected The Beatles’ ‘Back In The USSR‘ and told Muldoon: “Chuck Berry wrote a song called ‘Back In The US’, which we were very familiar with and I thought it was cool, it was obviously about a serviceman going home.”
“It was a little but too pro-US because we were in the UK, so I could poke fun at it in my own way. When I saw USSR was sort of similar, then I realised I could set it back in the US, and do a little parody on Chuck’s idea of being back, and I would have a Russian guy who’d come from America and was glad to be back in Russia. He’d come from Miami on BOAC, British Overseas Airwaves Corporation,” McCartney added.
Explaining the title of the track, McCartney told Irish poet Paul Muldoon: “There is a grave which John and I wandered around endlessly talking about our future. And there is a grave there [with the name Eleanor Rigby]. I don’t remember ever having seen that gravestone but it’s been suggested to me that psychologically I would have seen it.”
Discussing the line, “Wearing a face that she keeps in a jar by the door,” McCartney revealed how his mother’s Nivea inspired it. He explained: “My mum’s favourite was Nivea and I love it to this day. It kind of scared me a little that women used quite so much cold cream.”
McCartney continued: “It was my dread, when I got older and got married, that I would marry someone who would [wear a lot of cold cream] and put one of those big shower caps on and the curlers and have masses of things. So that played on my mind quite a bit, so she’s wearing a face that she keeps in a jar by the door.”
Episodes of the podcast are available to stream on a weekly basis on all podcast platforms unless fans are subscribed to Pushkin+ and can listen to the whole series in full. A second series has already been confirmed for February 2024. iHeartRadio will also broadcast the podcast on their stations across the United States every Sunday morning.
In the first episode of the podcast, he dissected The Beatles’ ‘Back In The USSR‘ and told Muldoon: “Chuck Berry wrote a song called ‘Back In The US’, which we were very familiar with and I thought it was cool, it was obviously about a serviceman going home.”
“It was a little but too pro-US because we were in the UK, so I could poke fun at it in my own way. When I saw USSR was sort of similar, then I realised I could set it back in the US, and do a little parody on Chuck’s idea of being back, and I would have a Russian guy who’d come from America and was glad to be back in Russia. He’d come from Miami on BOAC, British Overseas Airwaves Corporation,” McCartney added.
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