Yesterday

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Yesterday is a song off The Beatles' 1965 album Help!. It was written by Paul McCartney and credited to Lennon/McCartney.

Contents

AKA and Working Titles

Writing

Paul McCartney came up with the melody to Yesterday in a dream while staying at then-girlfriend Jane Asher's house on Wimpole Street in London. He originally got the full melody in the dream, though he was not fully sure at the time that he had composed it himself. McCartney recalls, "I was living in a little flat at the top of a house and i had a piano by my bed. I woke up one morning with a tune in my head and I thought, 'Hey, I don't know this tune - or do I?' It was like a jazz melody. My dad used to know a lot of old jazz tunes; I thought maybe I'd just remembered it from the past. I went to the piano and found the chords to it, made sure I remembered it and then hawked it round to all my friends, asking what it was: 'Do you know this? It's a good little tune, but I couldn't have written it because I dreamt it.'" Originally, the song was called Scrambled Eggs and the second line was "Oh my baby how I love your legs." Beatles producer George Martin claims to have first heard the song while The Beatles were staying at the George V Hotel in January 1964. Martin recalled, "Paul said he wanted a one-word title and was considering Yesterday, except that he thought it was perhaps too corny. I persuaded him that it was all right." If this is true, Yesterday was left off of two Beatles albums before it was finally recorded for Help!. Barry Miles, author of Many Years From Now, Paul McCartney's authorized biography, puts the date of composition as May 1965, during the filming of Help!, when he was known to be experimenting with the song's lyrics. Richard Lester, director of Help!, recalls, "We were shooting Help! in the studio for about four weeks. At some point during that period, we had a piano on one of the stages and he was playing this 'Scrambled Eggs' all the time. It got to the point where I said to him, 'If you play that bloody song any longer have the piano taken off stage. Either finish it or give up!'" Bruce Welch, guitarist for The Shadows, recalls that McCartney finished the lyrics in June 1965, while vacationing at Welch's Portuguese villa. Welch recalls, "I was packing to leave and Paul asked me if I had a guitar. He'd apparently been working on the lyrics as he drove to Albufeira from the airport at Lisbon. He borrowed my guitar and started playing the song we all now know as Yesterday." Though later famously arranged for guitar and string quartet, McCartney considered having the BBC Radiophonic Workshop do a futuristic electronic version of it. McCartney recalls, "It occurred to me to have the BBC Radiophonic Workshop do the backing track to it and me just sing over an electronic quartet. I went down to see them... The woman who ran it was very nice and they had a little shed at the bottom of the garden where most of the work was done. I said, 'I'm into this sort of stuff.' I'd heard a lot about the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, we'd all heard a lot about it. It would have been very interesting to do, but I never followed it up."

Recording

Recording for Yesterday began on June 14, 1965, when two vocal and guitar takes were recorded after the group had recorded I've Just Seen A Face and I'm Down. After they had recorded several unrecorded rehearsals of Yesterday with John Lennon on organ, George Martin suggested a string quartet for the song, something never before done by The Beatles. McCartney was skeptical of this idea at first, and he insisted the musicians perform without vibrato. Martin and McCartney wrote the score together, with most of it written by Martin. McCartney recalls, "Writing a song out with George Martin was nearly always the same process. For Yesterday he had said, 'Look, why don't you come round to my house tomorrow? I've got a piano, and I've got the manuscript paper. We'll sit down for an hour or so, and you can let me know what you're looking for'... He would say, 'This is the way to do the harmony, technically.' And I'd often try to go against that. I'd think, 'Well, why should there be a proper way to do it?' Yesterday was typical. I remember suggesting the 7th that appears on the cello. George said, 'You definitely wouldn't have that in there. That would be very un-string-quartet. I said, 'Well? Whack it in, George. I've got to have it.'" The string parts were overdubbed on June 17, along with another attempt at the vocal by Paul. McCartney didn't use headphones and the original vocal track leaked from the studio speakers onto the second recording, giving the impression of double-tracking. The string players were uncredited for their contributions to the song. Instead of being an actual quartet, the other players were just recruited by Sidney Sax for the occasion.

Recording Sessions

The wiki has no info about this for now

Reception

Despite it's enormous success, Yesterday was never released as a single in the UK, though it was part of The Beatles' live set throughout 1966. McCartney recalls, "I wouldn't have put it out as a solo Paul McCartney record. We never entertained those ideas. It was sometimes tempting; people would flatter us: 'Oh, you know you should get out front,' or, 'You should put a solo record out. But we always said no. In fact, we didn't release Yesterday as a single in England at all, because we were a little embarrassed about it - we were a rock 'n' roll band." In 1980, John Lennon commented on mistakenly being believed to have written 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." Lennon said in the same interview, "A couple of lines he's come up with show indications he's a good lyricist, but he just never took it anywhere. He wrote the lyrics to Yesterday. Although the lyrics don't resolve into any sense, they're good lines. They certainly work. You know what I mean? They're good - but if you read the whole song, it doesn't say anything; you don't know what happened. She left and he wishes it was yesterday - that much you get - but it doesn't really resolve. So, mine didn't use to resolve, either..." Yesterday was issued as a single in the US in November 1966, with Act Naturally as the B-Side. Newspapers at the time commented that "Paul McCartney is number one without the other Beatles." It became the most played song on American radio, a position it held for eight consecutive years. According to the Guiness Book of World Records, it is the most covered song in history, with more than 3000 cover versions.

LOVE Mix

A mix of Yesterday was included on the 2006 Beatles remix album LOVE. It included a short instrumental section of Blackbird at the beginning of the track.

Personnel

The Beatles

Guest Musicians

Production

Available Versions

The Beatles

Paul McCartney

To Be Completed...

Available On

Cover Versions

Source

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