On this day in ...... 1939 (70 years ago today), Eleanor Rigby died, 64 years after her birth and 27 years before The Beatles would release a song of the same name. (Video clips here.) Though the band members were vague about the source of the name, many believe that this woman was the inspiration: eventually the gravestone at right, which bears her name, was noticed in the Liverpool-area St. Peter Churchyard, "where John Lennon and Paul McCartney first met." The Guardian wrote last year:
McCartney was forced to concede that reading her epitaph when larking around in the grounds of St Peter's with John in the early days may have been a subconscious influence when he needed to come up with a believable name for his
forsaken spinster.
