Eleanor Rigby - Releases

Releases

"Eleanor Rigby" was released simultaneously on 5 August 1966 on both the album Revolver and on a double A-side single with "Yellow Submarine" on Parlophone in the United Kingdom and Capitol in the United States. It spent four weeks at number one on the British charts, but in America it only reached the eleventh spot.

The song was nominated for three Grammys and won the 1966 Grammy for Best Contemporary (R&R) Vocal Performance, Male or Female for McCartney. Thirty years later, George Martin's isolated string arrangement (without the vocal) was released on The Beatles' Anthology 2. A remixed version of the track was included in the 2006 album Love.

It is the second song to appear in The Beatles' 1968 animated film Yellow Submarine. The first is "Yellow Submarine"; it and "Eleanor Rigby" are the only songs in the film which the animated Beatles are not seen to be singing. "Eleanor Rigby" is introduced just before the Liverpool sequence of the film, and its poignancy ties in quite well with Ringo Starr (the first member of the group to encounter the submarine) who is represented as quietly bored and depressed. "Compared with my life, Eleanor Rigby's was a gay, mad world."

In 1984, a re-interpretation of the song was included in the film and album Give My Regards to Broad Street, written by and starring McCartney. It segues into a symphonic extension, "Eleanor's Dream."

In 1996, a stereo remix featuring only the string arrangement was released on Anthology 2, and a fully remixed stereo version was issued in 1999 on the Yellow Submarine Songtrack, with some minor fixes to the vocals.