1976: Yesterday

Rarely will a musician as easily have composed a melody as Paul McCartney did with Yesterday. He dreams the song and once he is awake, he gets behind the piano to play the melody in order to prevent him forgetting it again. Because it is McCartney's immediately clear that he has something special singing in his head. At first he thinks it is an existing piece. But when he has played it  for a few weeks to several people, he comes to the conclusion that it really has to be his own composition.

Video: The Beatles - Yesterday

As easy as it went with the tune, so difficult is it to the lyrics and the arrangement. The melody is already from 1964, but it will take a small year for the recording and release. During that time McCartney is working on it, so that the rest of the band is already getting tired of the song, well before the recording session should begin. George Harrison: "Blimey, he's always talking about that song. You'd think he was Beethoven or somebody!" 
Lennon also confirmed that it took some time before the lyrics were finished:

The song was around for months and months before we finally complete 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.” 

According to McCartney it is Lennon who came up with the title, after that he finally completes the song:

I started to develop the idea ... da-da da, yes-ter-day, sud-den-ly, fun-il-ly, mer-il-ly and Yes-ter-day, that's good. All my troubles seemed so far away. It's easy to rhyme those a's: say, nay, today, away, play, stay, there's a lot of rhymes and those fall in quite easily, so I gradually pieced it together from that journey. Sud-den-ly, and 'b' again, another easy rhyme: e, me, tree, flea, we, and I had the basis of it.

Now that the lyrics are finished, the song can finally get recorded. Only it becomes clear quickly that the composition is not very suitable for the standard occupancy with drums, bass and electric guitars, although they have played the song live or several times that way.

Video: The Beatles - Yesterday, full band version

Eventually, producer George Martin comes with the idea to use strings, initially to the horror of McCartney: "I don't want Mantovani". But Martin knows how to convince him to use a string quartet and together they go to work out the arrangement. And that does not go completely smoothly. The classically trained producer has difficulty with some ideas of the self-taught McCartney, like the use of the cello in the second verse and the high tone of the violin in the latter. McCartney: 

He showed me how to write it correctly and I was trying to sabotage the correct method, in such manner that I got it just the way I love music - so you keep it fresh, and I still think it is a good method.

The recordings itself went without a hitch: only two takes were needed. Because "Yesterday" differs so much from the Beatles output until then, and because McCartney was the only Beatle who plays on it, George Martin proposes to release it as a solo single. But manager Brian Epstein doesn’t agree: "No, whatever we do, we are not splitting up the Beatles”. In fact, the band doesn’t want to release it as a single either: "We were ashamed a bit before we were a Rock 'n' Roll band", McCartney said. And so it did not happen. At least not in Britain. Further from home, where the influence of the band on record companies is smaller, Yesterday does get released as a single. And in autumn 1965 it’s topping the charts around the world. And despite everything, even in Britain, since Matt Monro scores a number 1 hit with his cover version. And he's not the last one who covers Yesterday: more than 3000 versions have been made, and therewith Yesterday is the most covered song according to the Guinness Book of Records.

Video: Yesterday cover - Jay Z, Linkin Park & Paul McCartney

Eventually Yesterday got released in England as well. In 1976 record company EMI decides to release all Beatles singles at once, including Yesterday. So after eleven years, the original version is finally hitting the British charts.

André Homan

André Homan is a Dutch writer and journalist.

Nieuwere post Oudere post