Ten Fun Facts About YESTERDAY
In Inside the Songs Paul McCartney describes how he wrote his most famous song. Some mysteries remain.
- In 1986 the Guinness Book of Records declared YESTERDAY the most recorded song of all time. There were 1600 versions then — and this figure has risen to more than 2000. It has recorded in multiple musical styles — in including jazz and classical.
Gershwin’s SUMMERTIME has been performed more — with an estimated 30,000 cover version over eight decades, but YESTERDAY is closing in.
2. Though acclaimed by most critics, YESTERDAY has not always been popular with the great and groovy. Bob Dylan was particularly snooty, raising the flag instead for the Great American Songbook in 1966.
“If you go into the Library of Congress, you can find a lot better than that. There are millions of songs like ‘Michelle’ and ‘Yesterday’ written in Tin Pan Alley”.
Bob eventually changed his tune, or rather Paul’s. In 1970 he recorded an impromptu version, with George Harrison (another YESTERDAY sceptic) playing guitar. Let’s say it’s an unusual interpretation
3. The melody famously came to Paul in a dream, late in 1964. He was lodging with the Asher family at the time, squashed with his piano into the attic of their home in Wimpole Street.
I woke up with a lovely tune in my head. I thought, That’s great, I wonder what that is? There was an upright piano next to me, to the right of the bed by the window. I got out of bed, sat at the piano, found G, found F sharp minor seventh — and that leads you through then to B to E minor, and finally back to G.
4. Worried that he would forget the tune, Paul created a dummy lyric with the working title ‘Scrambled Eggs’. The opening couplet was unpromising: ‘Scrambled eggs/Oh how I love your legs.’
5. Suspecting himself of subconscious plagiarism, McCartney tested the melody out on musically knowledgeable friends. It rang no bells with John Lennon, Alma Colgan, or even with George Martin, a walking encyclopaedia of popular song.
Eventually it became like handing something in to the police. I thought that if no one claimed it after a few weeks then I would have it.
Alas, George Harrison did not have George Martin around to advise him when he was recording MY SWEET LORD in 1970. Just saying!
6. McCartney experimented with YESTERDAY for several months before finally recording it in June 1965. None of the other Beatles played on the recording — the first de facto solo record produced by the group. This caused a little unease within the group, especially as YESTERDAY departed from the guitar sound associated with brand Beatle. John Lennon is believed to have insisted that it should not be released as a single in the UK.
7. Paul was still finishing writing the song during the filming of Help!. This irritated director, Richard Lester. George Harrison was similarly unimpressed (‘Who does he think he is? Beethoven?’).
8. When George Martin suggested he write a string part, McCartney was uneasy (‘No vibrato, George. I don’t want to sound like Mantovani!’).
Realising this would be unnatural for a modern string player, Martin asked McCartney to help supervise the arrangement. This demonstrated the practical issue.
As a result of which,{McCartney} added the cello phrase in bar 4 of the middle eight (1.25–27) and the first violin’s held high A in the final verse.’Macdonald
9. YESTERDAY was the first song The Beatles recorded without their standard line-up — only McCartney performs alongside the string players.
It also revealed new compositional possibilities and a ‘hitherto unsuspected world of classical music colour.’ (Macdonald
10. John Lennon had mixed feelings about the ‘beautiful’ YESTERDAY. In HOW DO YOU SLEEP there is the vicious barb, ‘the only song you done was yesterday’ — an allusion to the supposedly substandard quality of McCartney’s solo work.
An early version also includes a slanderous aside: “You probably pinched that bitch anyway.” Felix Dennis later claimed that Yoko Ono and Allen Klein also contributed to the lyric, though both denied this. Lennon had the sole writing credit — though ‘credit’ is perhaps not the mot juste.
Lennon later regretted the vitriol of HOW DO YOU SLEEP. The better side of his nature was amused by the karmic irony of being regularly credited with writing the song.
I go to restaurants and the groups always play Yesterday. Yoko and I even signed a guy’s violin in Spain after he played us Yesterday. He couldn’t understand that I didn’t write the song. But I guess he couldn’t have gone from table to table playing I Am The Walrus.
