“Eleanor Rigby” is track two of an album by the Beatles called Revolver. The song is a lament, yet with a quick 138 b.p.m. tempo and and orchestra played counterpoint all over an e minor ninth chord.
Is it just me or does it sound as though the song *had to be*? Does it not have a sound that never gets played out with time? Who else could mix Chuck berry-like songs with Michael Legrand movie sequence-like songs. The best movie background song ever is from Rocky, (the original), as Rocky refuses to go down, Bill Conti’s “Going The Distance” has the audience wanting to scream with passion wanting to cheer Stallone on and make him stand up- the biggest influence on that song, besides the basic circles of fifths harmonic progression Conti uses, the string sound, uh *quite* a bit influenced by Eleanor Rigby. The Beatles made the statement: you can be a man and still play orchestral songs in minor keys and struggle through hard times. In 1966, this was a major musical revolution – or revival of Beethoven’s machismo. When Sylvester Stallone first heard this music, having failed in Hollywood as an actor and at 30 taking a last try with ‘Rocky’ as Director/Writer/Actor, “came to tears.” Sly was sly (sorry) enough to feel that the music fit so well with the loneliness of a fighter alone in training, in his mind, in the ring that if anything was going to make such movie work, Conti’s originals would – and sure enough, the one Rocky movie of all 20 or whatever he’s up to now is that for which Stallone won Best Picture of the Year 1976, the one and original Rocky, only in reflection dubbed ‘Rocky I’.
Meanspeed Music Summary
song title=”Eleanor Rigby“
composer=Lennon/McCartney
performer=The Beatles
trials calibrated=9
time elapsed, total=1,081.46 seconds
beats measured, total=1,656 beats
beats per trial=276
mean time per trial=120.16222 seconds
average tempo/mean speed=137.8 beats per minute
mean beat time=0.4354 seconds per beat
Emotive category according to meanspeed music theory=bpm, therefore [mixed fast]
File Kind=AAC audio file
Size=3.9 MB
Bit rate=256 kbps
sample rate=44.100 kHz
volume=(-8.9 dB)
Profile=Low Complexity
Channels =Stereo
File Type=m4a
File Support=iTunes® v 7.6, QuickTime 7.4.1
most interesting rhyme=’there’ and ‘care’ in a pitifully the most pitifully sad lyric in this morose song. Yes, by the end we know that Eleanor is going to die all alone, and in fact she was lucky that the church took her in and gave her a burial and a service. What always gets me is the priest, fixing his socks – knowing that it doesn’t matter because (a) no one sees him doing it and (b) no one listens or even attends his services and sermons anyway. Yet as a man of Christian faith, works through the Spirit he feels.
“Look at him working.
Darning his socks in the night when there’s nobody there.
What does he care?”
Ian Schneider
meanspeed music company
February 23, 2008
