Lennon and McCartney would often give their compositions for other artists to record and score hits with, such as Peter and Gordon's 'A World Without Love'.Īmazingly, 'Yesterday' was actually offered first to singer Chris Farlowe before The Beatles recorded it. Others claim that McCartney and the other Beatles tried different instruments, such as drums and an organ, and that George Martin later persuaded them to have McCartney play his Epiphone Texan steel-string acoustic guitar, and overdubbing a string quartet on top.Įither way, none of the other Beatles were included in the final recording. There are different accounts of how the song was recorded, with many biographers stating that McCartney recorded the song by himself, without involving the other band members. "Sud-den-ly, and 'b' again, another easy rhyme: e, me, tree, flea, we, and I had the basis of it." 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. da-da da, yes-ter-day, sud-den-ly, fun-il-ly, mer-il-ly and Yes-ter-day, that's good. McCartney said his breakthrough came during a trip to Portugal in May 1965: "I remember mulling over the tune 'Yesterday', and suddenly getting these little one-word openings to the verse. I was sorry in a way, we'd had so many laughs about it."
"Then one morning Paul woke up and the song and the title were both there, completed. We made up our minds that only a one-word title would suit, we just couldn't find the right one.
We called it 'Scrambled Eggs' and it became a joke between us. Lennon later said: "Paul wrote nearly all of it, but we just couldn't find the right title. The delay may have been down to a disagreement between McCartney and producer George Martin over the song's arrangement. In that time, the Beatles released two albums: A Hard Day's Night and Beatles for Sale. McCartney claimed he had written 'Yesterday' during the Beatles' tour of France in 1964, but it was not released until the summer of 1965. The working opening verse was "Scrambled eggs/Oh my baby how I love your legs/Not as much as I love scrambled eggs". Like with all songs Lennon and McCartney wrote at the time, a substitute lyric, titled 'Scrambled Eggs' was used until he came up with something better. It was originally called 'Scrambled Eggs'.I thought if no one claimed it after a few weeks then I could have it." "Eventually it became like handing something in to the police. He said: "For about a month I went round to people in the music business and asked them whether they had ever heard it before. However, he was worried that he had subconsciously plagiarised another song. When he woke up, he quickly ran to a piano and played the tune to make sure he didn't forget it. McCartney is said to have composed the entire melody in a dream while staying at the Wimpole Street home of his then girlfriend Jane Asher. Paul McCartney wrote it in a dream (but thought he stole it).However, the song was written by Sir Paul McCartney. Like all Beatles songs at the time, the song is credited to Lennon-McCartney. Not Yesterday's Jack Malik, that's for sure. Here are all the fascinating facts behind 'Yesterday': But who wrote it, what inspired it and what is its legacy?