Yesterday

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Yesterday, The Beatles' ode to lost love which has become the most covered song in the world, was recorded and mastered during this week 50 years ago. Arguably Paul McCartney's most recognisable creation, Yesterday also has one of the most fascinating backstories in contemporary musical history. As McCartney explained in I got out of bed, sat at the piano, found G, found F sharp minor 7th — and that leads you through then to B to E minor, and finally back to E.

It all leads forward logically. McCartney was living in Wimpole Street, London, at the time, at the family home of Jane Asher, who he was dating at the time. Asher was present, albeit asleep, several months later when the final lyrics were attached to the song, during an mile drive through Portugal.

The Beatles UK number ones. Yesterday was the first song a Beatle recorded without the accompaniment of his band members. McCartney played on it alone, and for the rest of he and John Lennon worked individually on Beatles songs, after years of collaborating on material. She declined his plea. Keen to not forget his magical dream melody, McCartney wrote some temporary lyrics for the song — about scrambled eggs, and named it after the breakfast dish.

Scrambled Eggs became a running joke between the band for "months and months" before it was recorded in June, according to Lennon, who said: The establishment and the elder generation now discovered The Beatles, and thought this was the start of The Beatles. The press people treated McCartney like a God, and Lennon like a fool. The litterature pointed out McCartney as the composer.

Lennon said that Yesterday got to his head, and Harrison said that McCartney thought he was Beethoven. That led to the split. And the singles became worse. Yes,Baised Lennon-Harrison fan, I agree. Most cheesy girlish Beatles track ever. You never site sources, never have attributable quotes. Sometimes I read comments on the various songs and the hatred of one member or another seems to permeate everything. How dare he outlive John and George. Some of you are truly pathetic. You have to put someone down in order to make your point. Now, of course, all of this is opinion. Yesterday is a great song, derivative of nothing.

It can provide real meaning to those who have loved and lost, whatever the circumstances. It is a highlight whenever it is played in his concerts. I agree, Darren — great song of course! Nonetheless, lovely song, derivative or not. To all you whiners: Or, in other words — shut the fuck up! Sincerely, A Beatles fan.

Up to the autumn , when Yesterday became a success, Lennon was the dominant composer in The Beatles. But that was a secret, opposed to when McCartney did Yesterday. Somewhere I can hear George Martin say about this comment you have frequently posted elsewhere over and over: Can someone change that record? Besides , it was utterly boring to begin with……. It was just another great Beatles song. Can you imagine the daggers thrown at Paul over such self indulgence? Thank you John, George, Ringo and Paul for the music you gave us.

So dreadfully overly familiar to all of us and yet, it has a certain indescribable quality that raises it above the common place. Little wonder McCartney has described it as a song from a dream, all inspiration born of years in the craft. Some songs need not have obvious lyrics to make sense, since they capture the emotion perfectly in words and music- they just feel right. I am not surprised to read that the band had a few goes on how to play it, even though the quality of the song permeates even their sloppy live version from the tour.

It may be a simple and repetitive song, but its charm lies in its simplicity. I consider lyrics are quite deep for a young lad in the peak of fame. Paul has talked about understanding what John was saying when John was showing him the words to Help.

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Specifically, how John felt overcome by the fame and the avalanche they were under, and how he suddenly had lost his self assuredness and self confidence on what they were doing and where they were going and why they were doing it. Surely, they all must have felt that way. Just play music and have fun.

Remember, Paul was never as literal as John was.

He couched his feelings in all sorts of metaphors and hidden phrases. Perhaps Yesterday is about the loss of their lives, of their control. John and paul often copied each other at the time, and George was heavily influenced by them in the early years. Paul did better than that with and without the Beatles. No agenda here, just an odd little factoid. Still love both songs. Biased Lennon and Harrison fan and his other offsider should be locked up and the key thrown away.

The song is a gem. Permanent exile for the unworthy. Yes, the John v. Paul and Paul v. John fan fight gets very silly at times. Did The Beatles ever perform this song unison? What about the UK single release in ? It was the highest new entry to the UK singles charts on 14 March and eventually reached no.

Yesterday: the song that started as Scrambled Eggs

Well, we all know about Yesterday. I have had so much accolade for Yesterday. That's Paul's song and Paul's baby. Beautiful — and I never wished I'd written it. 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? 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: It's a good little tune, but I couldn't have written it because I dreamt it. 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. We were shooting Help! 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! 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. It occurred to me to have the BBC Radiophonic Workshop do the backing track to it and me just sing over an electronic quartet.

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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. It would have been very interesting to do, but I never followed it up. Although McCartney has never elaborated on his claims, a delay may have been due to a disagreement between McCartney and George Martin regarding the song's arrangement , or the opinion of the other Beatles who felt it did not suit their image.

The song was around for months and months before we finally completed it. Every time we got together to write songs for a recording session, this one would come up. We almost had it finished. Paul wrote nearly all of it, but we just couldn't find the right title. We called it 'Scrambled Eggs' and it became a joke between us.

We made up our minds that only a one-word title would suit, we just couldn't find the right one. Then one morning Paul woke up and the song and the title were both there, completed. I was sorry in a way, we'd had so many laughs about it. McCartney said the breakthrough with the lyrics came during a trip to Portugal in May I remember mulling over the tune 'Yesterday', and suddenly getting these little one-word openings to the verse. I started to develop the idea All my troubles seemed so far away. It's easy to rhyme those a's: Sud-den-ly, and 'b' again, another easy rhyme: On 27 May , McCartney and Asher flew to Lisbon for a holiday in Albufeira , Algarve , and he borrowed an acoustic guitar from Bruce Welch , in whose house they were staying, and completed the work on "Yesterday".

Hammond concluded his article by saying that, despite the similarities, "Yesterday" is a "completely original and individual [work]". Now it looks as though they're here to stay. I believed that love was here to stay. Won't you tell me where I've gone astray". Ostensibly simple, featuring only McCartney playing an Epiphone Texan steel-string acoustic guitar [17] backed by a string quartet in one of the Beatles' first uses of session musicians, [18] "Yesterday" has two contrasting sections, differing in melody and rhythm, producing a sense of disjunction.

The first section "Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away The second section "Why she had to go I don't know The tonic key of the song is F major although, since McCartney tuned his guitar down a whole step, he was playing the chords as if it were in G , where the song begins before veering off into the key of D minor. It is this frequent use of the minor, and the ii-V7 chord progression Em and A 7 chords in this case leading into it, that gives the song its melancholy aura.

When the song was performed on The Ed Sullivan Show , it was done in the above-mentioned key of F, with McCartney as the only Beatle to perform, and the studio orchestra providing the string accompaniment. However, all of the Beatles played in a G-major version when the song was included in tours in and When McCartney appeared on The Howard Stern Show , he stated that he owns the original lyrics to "Yesterday" written on the back of an envelope.

The track was recorded at Abbey Road Studios on 14 June , immediately following the taping of " I'm Down ", and four days before McCartney's 23rd birthday. There are conflicting accounts of how the song was recorded, the most quoted one being that McCartney recorded the song by himself, without bothering to involve the other band members. Regardless, none of the other band members were included in the final recording.

McCartney performed two takes of "Yesterday" on 14 June On 17 June, an additional vocal track by McCartney and a string quartet were overdubbed on take 2 and that version was released. Take 1, without the string overdub, was later released on the Anthology 2 compilation. On take 1, McCartney can be heard giving chord changes to Harrison before starting, but while Harrison does not appear to actually play, he was most certainly present because his voice is captured on the session tapes.

Take 2 had two lines transposed from the first take: In , just before the album Love was released, George Martin elaborated on the recording set-up of the song: Paul played his guitar and sang it live, a mic on the guitar and mic on the voice. But, of course, the voice comes on to the guitar mic and the guitar comes on to the voice mic. So there's leakage there. Then I said I'd do a string quartet.

The musicians objected to playing with headphones, so I gave them Paul's voice and guitar on two speakers either side of their microphones. So there's leakage of Paul's guitar and voice on the string tracks.

The leakage of sound from one track to another was a concern when the surround version of the song was mixed for Love , but it was decided to include the track nevertheless. As Martin explained in the liner notes of Love: We agonised over the inclusion of "Yesterday" in the show. It is such a famous song, the icon of an era, but had it been heard too much? The story of the addition of the original string quartet is well known, however, few people know how limited the recording was technically, and so the case for not including it was strong, but how could we ignore such a marvellous work?

We introduced it with some of Paul's guitar work from " Blackbird ", and hearing it now, I know it was right to include it. Its simplicity is so direct; it tugs at the heartstrings. Concerning the debate on how the song should be released, Martin later said: This did not prevent Matt Monro from recording the first of many cover versions of "Yesterday".

His version made it into the top ten in the UK charts soon after its release in the autumn of The song spent a total of 11 weeks on the chart, selling a million copies within five weeks.

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