In 1966,  the album "Revolver" was released on the very same day as a 45 rpm single. The album and the single contained the song "Eleanor Rigby." To this very day, I feel what I felt when I heard it the very first time on the radio in August of 1966. The harrowing effect of loneliness and unwillingness of others to help was heart-breaking to me then and now.

If you will indulge me, here are the lyrics:
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Eleanor Rigby (John Lennon-Paul McCartney)

Ah, look at all the lonely people
Ah, look at all the lonely people

Eleanor Rigby
Picks up the rice in the church where a wedding has been
Lives in a dream
Waits at the window
Wearing a face she keeps in a jar by the door
Who is it for?

All the lonely people, where do they all come from?
All the lonely people, where do they all belong?

Father McKenzie
Writing the words of a sermon that no one will hear
No one comes near
Look at him working
Darning his socks in the night when there's nobody there
What does he care?

All the lonely people, where do they all come from?
All the lonely people, where do they all belong?

Ah, look at all the lonely people
Ah, look at all the lonely people

Eleanor Rigby
Died in the church and was buried along with her name
Nobody came
Father McKenzie
Wiping the dirt from his hands as he walks from the grave
No one was saved

All the lonely people, where do they all come from?
All the lonely people, where do they all belong?
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I was only 8 years old (two months shy, actually) but then and there I determined that I would speak to the lonely. Poor Eleanor Rigby. She is poor and hungry and lonely. She is allowed to pick up the rice after a wedding but she is not a wedding guest and cannot eat with the attendees at the ceremony. She tries to keep a smile on her face for others while nobody knows the crippling loneliness she feels.

What was she dreaming about? Was she an old woman who dreamed of a wedding that would never take place for her? Was she dreaming about being friends with those who attended the wedding? I didn't know but I wanted to know Eleanor.

But that chorus! Where did all the lonely people come from? More importantly for me, where did they all belong? The very wording declares that they belonged SOMEWHERE. Is loneliness because of misplacement? If I am lonely, is it because I belong somewhere else?

Then comes the lonely life of Father McKenzie. His loneliness is also misplacement. He should not be a priest! He allows Eleanor to forage for the discarded rice but he does not feed poor, discarded Eleanor. He is more focused on his theology than he is on a starved child of God who needs food and not sermons. After all, the song says, what does he care? No one has come to him and he goes to nobody.

Was this, at this young age, the beginnings of my disaffection with religion? Was this when I realized that religion was a sick and sad substitute for relationship?

Eleanor Rigby died in that church and she and any memory of her were buried together. Nobody mourned her. Nobody even attended the funeral. And...she DIED in the CHURCH.

Father McKenzie...

He wipes his hands of the whole matter. His words were meaningless and empty. "No one was saved"... least of all, Father McKenzie.

When I was 16 years old, I took a music class at Indian River State College (formerly Indian River Community College). It was a Music Appreciation class and the professor was Louis Maser, a 1938 graduate of the University of Kansas. I never did find out what took him to Kansas for music.

He was a brilliant music teacher. He was a renowned trumpet player but his piano lessons were widely sought-after. He was hilarious, he was charming, and he was one of the finest chess players I ever met.

In his private lessons, he was patient and he was kind. I was not a good musician but he always said "If you could only get your fingers to co-operate with your heart." So, it was he that encouraged me to study music literature with the same passion I had for history and philosophy. "The piano may never reveal your heart but the pen certainly will. Make others feel what you feel by your words about the music!"

So, I wound up for a time following his advice about writing on music. I wrote for my high school and college newspapers and wrote a lot of concert and record reviews. Why did I ever stop?

In his college classroom, he served up musical delicacies that thrill me to this very day. Sure, we heard all the stuff from Bach and Mozart and the rest and I enjoyed listening to the music and watching him diagram the music. He played for us Saint-Saens and Sibelius, Shostakovitch and Smetana, Michaud and Mahler, Grieg and Glinka and so many others I had never heard. 

More than this, however, he began telling the personal stories of these great and sometimes not-so-great composers.

The French composer Lully, for example, had spent most of his career working for King Louis XIV. In those days, the conductor was not more than a time-keeper and they used a long staff instead of the later baton. They would beat out the time on the floor using this big staff. Lully was conducting a Te Deum in celebration of Louis XIV’s recent recovery from illness. During the performance, Lully struck his big toe with the heavy staff. The wound turn gangrenous and Lully died from it. No wonder they invented the baton. “Conducting is dangerous stuff!” Maser proclaimed.

With stories like that, I became intrigued with the composers as people and not just as music-writers. He told of Brahms being raised in a brothel. Beethoven was beaten by his father to make the young Ludwig play for the old man’s drunken friends. Wagner married Liszt’s daughter. Handel and Scarlatti used to have harpsichord and organ contests between themselves.

He especially loved to talk about Joseph Haydn. His favorite re-telling was how Mozart and Beethoven had called him “Papa” Haydn. Maser even seemed to get a little misty-eyed when discussing it. After studying with him for the next two or three years, a couple of other students and I decided to call him “Papa Lou” Maser. So help me, the old guy had to wipe tears away and just said, “Bless you boys.”


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