Written by:
Lennon-McCartney
Recorded: 14, 17 June 1965
Producer: George Martin
Engineer: Norman Smith
Released: 6 August 1965 (UK), 13 September 1965 (US)
Paul McCartney: vocals, guitar
Tony Gilbert: violin
Sidney Sax: violin
Kenneth Essex: viola
Francisco Gabarro: cello
Available on:
Help!
1
Anthology 2
Love
Written by Paul McCartney, Yesterday holds the record as the most covered song in history, according to the Guinness Book of Records.
"Well, we all know about Yesterday. I have had so much accoladde for Yesterday. That's Paul's song and Paul's baby. Well done. Beautiful - and I never wished I'd written it."John Lennon, 1980
All We Are Saying, David Sheff
Paul McCartney is said to have composed the melody in a dream while staying at the family home of Jane Asher in Wimpole Street, London. The melody came to McCartney fully-formed, although he was initially unsure of its originality.
"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.'"Paul McCartney
Anthology
The song's working title was Scrambled Eggs; its second line was "Oh my baby how I love your legs". George Martin claims to have first heard the song at the George V hotel in Paris in January 1964.
"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."George Martin
The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions, Mark Lewisohn
If McCartney did compose Yesterday in early 1964, it would have been left off two Beatles albums before they recorded it. McCartney's authorised biographer Barry Miles put the date of composition at May 1965, during the filming of Help!, when he was known to have been experimenting with the song's lyrics.
"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!'"Richard Lester
A Hard Day's Write, Steve Turner
The Shadows' guitarist Bruce Welch recalled McCartney completing the lyrics in June 1965. McCartney took a holiday at Welch's Portuguese villa, where he is said to have settled on the title Yesterday.
"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."Bruce Welch
A Hard Day's Write, Steve Turner
Although famously arranged for guitar and string quartet, McCartney considered having the BBC Radiophonic Workshop do a futuristic electronic version of 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. 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."Paul McCartney
Many Years From Now, Barry Miles
Special thanks to http://www.beatlesbible.com
By: Shahen Gasparyan
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