The “utterly surprising” 1966 song Sting wishes he had written
In the new wave era, few frontmen wrote quite as many bangers as Sting.
There was the slightly unnerving ‘Every Breath You Take’, the reggae-infused ‘Roxanne’, the glimmering ‘Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic’, the list goes on. As the driving creative force behind The Police, the Geordie rocker penned some of the most infectious and innovative guitar songs of the late 1970s and early 1980s.
These pieces will still have audiences singing along for decades to come, evidenced by the fact that The Police sold well over 100m records and the sales count keeps rising. All the while, Sting had time to popularise tantric practices along the way, too.
He was afforded even more time to focus on the latter when the days of The Police came to an end in the mid-1980s. But Sting didn’t stop writing songs. He embarked upon a solo career and created more subdued but equally enduring tracks like ‘Fields Of Gold’ and ‘Englishman In New York’.
The former even prompted Paul McCartney to say that he wished he had written the track. Evidently, the feeling of admiration was mutual.
The song Sting wishes he had written
Sting has plenty of hits to his name, but even the most established songwriters have certain compositions they envy others for writing. For the former Police frontman, many of those pieces stem from the pen of Paul McCartney, Beatle, bassist, and one of the greatest songwriters of all time.
McCartney was an inspiration to Sting before he even started writing tracks. In fact, during a conversation with Clash, the Police singer admitted that the Beatle was “one of the reasons he became a songwriter”. Like Sting, McCartney and his songwriting partner, John Lennon, were working-class northern kids who managed to “conquer the world with their songs, giving an entire generation permission to try and do the same.”
Sting was part of that generation, and he took the permission and ran with it. Still, he stated that he could “go on at length about McCartney songs” he wishes he had written. If he had to choose just one, however, it would be 1966’s ‘Eleanor Rigby’, a piece he describes as “compelling, mysterious, and utterly surprising!”
‘Eleanor Rigby’ featured on The Beatles’ seventh record, the slightly more psychedelic Revolver, in 1966. True to Sting’s assessments, the track is immediately compelling from its opening moments. A haunting harmony between McCartney, Lennon, and George Harrison delivers the first refrain, “Ah, look at all the lonely people.”
Instrumentally, the track is made up entirely of harsh strings that intensify McCartney’s words. The song borrows its name from Help! star Eleanor Bron, while taking simultaneous inspiration from the old ladies who McCartney used to help out in his youth. “Eleanor Rigby,” he sings amidst those haunting refrains, “Picks up the rice in the church where the wedding has been, lives in a dream.”
Even with the knowledge of McCartney’s inspiration, the song retains a sense of mystery. There’s a sense of melancholy, too, in the lonely actions of the characters McCartney and Lennon describe and even in the chorus of voices that somehow still feel alone. It was also, as Sting asserted, “utterly surprising,” particularly at the time of release.
If anything, it showcases McCartney’s singularity as a songwriter. As David Crosby put it, “Nobody else wrote about those people. Nobody else had the heart to write about the lonely, old, frozen-in-place people that are the main part of the population. Nobody writes about them. We write about glorious, brave, bigger-than-life. We write about people who are in terrible pain. We write about very dramatic things.”
In that regard, perhaps Sting identified with it because it is a very Northern English song. It is far from Americanised rock ‘n’ roll, focusing instead on the intrigue of humble existences. As Crosby continued, “We don’t write about small, cold, old, painful, lonely stuff like that, man. It was a very brave piece of writing. It’s a kind song, it’s a song of compassion in a quiet and very beautiful way.”
It certainly warmed and inspired Sting. It also liberated him towards the eclecticism that would bring an English folk twinge to his solo discography. After all, ‘Eleanor Rigby’ was a much gloomier piece than audiences were used to hearing from The Beatles, hinting at the new, more experimental directions that were still to come.
It was also a much darker track than most audiences were used to hearing on the radio generally, yet it still found favour with the audiences and remains one of the band’s most well-loved songs, to the envy of Sting.
Never Miss A Beat
The Far Out Beatles Newsletter
All the latest stories about The Beatles from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.