Norwegian Wood and Eleanor Rigby | Page 2 | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

Referring back to the original question of:

Sunii said
I was watching a press conference on Youtube, and one of the reporters asked Paul if Norwegian Wood was about a lesbian.

Another question was asked to John what Eleanor Rigby was about. John being a clown and all said it was about 2 queers.

I can’t help but wonder if any of their songs were about the “gay community”. Any comments?

“Norwegian Wood ” is about an independent temptress in the wake of the feminist movement: John makes this independence prevalent when he opens the song with “I once had a girl, or should I say she once had me?”, meaning that the woman he sang about was in control–dare I say “wearing the pants”?–during that particular encounter. The theme of female independence continues when he later says, “She told me she worked in the morning and started to laugh. I told her I didn’t and crawled up to sleep in the bath.”<–Translation: the woman worked while the man stayed at home, a total reversal of traditional gender roles. In general, “Norwegian Wood ” is a nod to the power that women had always been able possess over men, especially in matters of desire–bottom line, the man in the song was peeved because he didn’t get what he wanted: sex. And how did he express his dissatisfaction and anger? Why, he burned her house down! In order to preserve his power and masculinity, he had to get the final word in somehow…

As for the meaning of “Eleanor Rigby “, Mustard summed it up beautifully:

meanmistermustard said
Only by doing little in her life – one of the many distant figures who knew her but didnt know her, probably doing the small talk and the sympathy as and when required. My reading of it is that when Eleanor was buried every part of her existence died with her, she had no one else, no kids, no husband, nothing, certainly not around anyway (“Waits at the window, wearing the face that she keeps in a jar by the door. Who is it for?“). The theme of the song is loneliness in society for the eldery and it comes across to me that Father MacKenzie did little to ease her’s, the wiping his hands of the dirt showing him moving on and absolving himself from her death, he had done his duty as a member of the Church but little outside of that. 

McKenzie seemed to be past the point of caring so maybe he had lost his zeal for his role as ‘Father’ due to nobody atttending the services and hearing his sermons and that had led to his apathy. 

There were reports at the time that Eleanor Rigby was a comment on the deminishing role of the church within society, how it had stopped being the central point of the community – there probably still are.