Title: The Meaning of American Pie Source:
[None] URL Source:[None] Published:Jun 19, 2015 Author:Don McLean Post Date:2015-06-19 19:09:19 by Lod Keywords:None Views:2430 Comments:21
I always suspected that the meaning of the song was basically that rock and roll is or was mankind's best and brightest hope, that its musicians -- though often drug-addled devil worshippers -- are demigods to be worshiped by all, and that when one or more them dies the whole world should mourn.
Turns out that I wasn't too far off on the rock and roll angle. But back then I missed the allusions to the expired prostiticians and the philandering commie preacher.
Now if the real Eleanor Rigby could see the stellar musical success she achieved posthumously, what would she say? Guessing this is the aspect of it she'd be expecting least..... or would that be Aretha singing it in the first person, hm??
McCartney said he came up with the name "Eleanor" from actress Eleanor Bron, who had starred with the Beatles in the film Help!. "Rigby" came from the name of a store in Bristol, "Rigby & Evens Ltd, Wine & Spirit Shippers", which he noticed while seeing his girlfriend of the time, Jane Asher, act in The Happiest Days of Your Life. He recalled in 1984, "I just liked the name. I was looking for a name that sounded natural. 'Eleanor Rigby' sounded natural." However, it has been pointed out that the graveyard of St Peter's Church in Liverpool, where John Lennon and Paul McCartney first met at the Woolton Village garden fete in the afternoon of 6 July 1957, contains the gravestone of an individual called Eleanor Rigby. Paul McCartney has conceded he may have been subconsciously influenced by the name on the gravestone.[10] The real Eleanor Rigby lived a lonely life similar to that of the woman in the song.
Confess I'm a real Eleanor Bron fan though I don't know much of her work at all. In some Beatles documentary, likely The Making of Help, she talks charmingly of working with them.