The Beatles’ songbook became standard repertoire for artists to perform almost as quickly as they kicked off “the British invasion.” But one was covered more than all the rest: Yesterday.
“McCartney: A Life in Lyrics” is a co-production between iHeart Media, MPL and Pushkin Industries.
The series was produced by Pejk Malinovski and Sara McCrea; written by Sara McCrea; edited by Dan O’Donnell and Sophie Crane; mastered by Jason Gambrell with assistance from Jake Gorski and sound design by Pejk Malinovski. The series is executive produced by Leital Molad, Justin Richmond, Lee Eastman, Scott Rodger and Paul McCartney.
Thanks to Lee Eastman, Richard Ewbank, Scott Rodger, Aoife Corbett and Steve Ithell.
Pushkin.
Hi, everyone, it's Paul Moldoin. Before we get to this episode, I wanted to let you know that you can binge all twelve episodes of McCartney A Life and Lyrics right now, add free by becoming a Pushkin Plus subscriber. Find Pushkin Plus on the McCartney A Life and Lyrics Show, pedge in Apple Podcasts, or at pushkin dot Fm, slash Plus.
Yesterday, Oh my trouble seems so far slow Dodge really still day Yugakusumason you the sun met and RESO.
What she.
In Yesterday?
I'm Paul muldoon For a while now, I've been fortunate to spend time with one of the greatest songwriters of our era.
And will you look at me? I'm going on to I'm actually a performer, that is.
Sir Paul McCartney. We worked together on a book looking at the lyrics of more than one hundred and fifty of his songs, and we recorded many hours of our conversations.
It was like going back to an old snapshot album looking back on work I hadn't ever analyzed.
This is McCartney A Life in Lyrics, class a memoir and an improvised journey with one of the most iconic figures in popular music in this episode, Yesterday.
Yesterday, All my trouble seems so far way.
God looks as oover thereesday.
Oh, I believe in Yesterday.
What you heard at the top of the episode was a super cut of Yesterday, covers just a tiny fraction of the renditions that exist out there. The most covered song of all the I think, perhaps, isn't it.
Yeah, the magic didn't sort of end with our recording, but it sort of continued. One of the fun things I said to We had a publicist I was a friend of mine, and I suddenly thought, three thousand persons, I've never heard them. So I said to him, get me the top ten I'll do for now. So he got me Sinatra. Suddenly I'm not half the man I used to be. Elvis, there's a shadow hanging over Marvin Gay Yesterday.
Came all too suddenly.
Hello, did she have the door?
I don't know, Ray Charles, unbelievable people, who's true it? Oh God, this is incredible. But Sinatra, Elvis, and Marvin all altered the lyric.
Must have said something wrong alone yesterday.
Because there were much old men. They said why she had to go. I don't know. She wouldn't say I must have done something.
Wrong, rather than I did something wrong.
So I don't do things wrong. I'm Sinatra, I'm over some wronger. I must have done something wrong. I loved that. It was like disclaimer, I must have must have seen something wrong.
Now, a long, long long.
Covered by so many of the great artists of the twentieth century and beyond, Paul McCartney's Yesterday has taken its place among the timeless standards of our age. So it's fitting that when the melody first came to Paul, he assumed the song had already been written by someone else. He was in his early twenties and living at his girlfriend Jane Asher's family home in London.
Asher's House fifty seven Wimpole Street. I stayed there forever, and it was only afterwards I thought I'd ever paid rent. That was a terrific must have been a terrific boom to you. Yeah, in terms of your career, was it was very good? Yeah, it was very nice. Yeah. The mom was a great cook and a fun lady and liked me. The father was an eccentric, super intelligent doctor, and the kids were my girlfriend, her brother Peter, and her sister Claire. So you know, it was like the Barretts of Wimpole Street.
The Barrett's of Wimpbell Street. The year is eighteen forty five. The place London.
The Parretts of Wimple Street was a nineteen thirty play about star crossed lovers. It was so popular that during the course of McCartney's life, it was adapted for film, musical, theater and television.
The action takes place in Elizabeth Barrett's bed sitting room in her father's house at fifty Wimpole Street.
The story is set on the very London street where McCartney lived with the Asher family for three years in the mid nineteen sixties.
The fact that it was in Wimpole Street was, you know, it didn't go unnoticed. So it was this lovely family in this great old Georgian building in Wimpole Street, and yeah, it was great. It was really nice. So they very kindly let me stay in the upstairs, the attic room perfect for an artist. I to get a piano in there, a small sawn off piano, and I went to sleep one night and dreamed a chune somewhere in my dream I heard this tune, and when I woke up, I thought, I love that tune. It's great. I love that one.
The melody lilting and grand was clear in McCartney's mind, but he couldn't remember who had written it. Perhaps it was one of the classics he had heard in his childhood.
What is it?
Now?
Is it? Is it? A Fredist thing? Is a cold porta thing? Is it? What is it? What is it? Da? Well, so I kind of fell out of bed and the piano was right now to the left of my bed, so I just sort of thought, well, I'll I'll try and work out how this song goes. What it is, It's got to be some outstanding that I've just heard years ago and I've forgotten forgotten it. So I worked out chords and the two opening chords are kind of nice. I got very lucky there, so I didn't have to go to those chords. So it's just a melody. And I say i'd heard it in my head. It was very clear, and it was just a little and in order to solidify it in my memory, I just blocked it out with some words which are scrambled egg or my baby. I'll love your legs. No no, no, no, scrambled these provisional lyrics. Was that something you did quite a lot? Or it was this? It was it was was kind of rare thing, right. We did that sometimes, but not often because you know it mainly were just sitting there writing it. So you'd get your final lyrics pretty quickly. Yeah, your only lyrics. You never really revised or stuff. Alan Ginsburg first thought, best thoughts, right, then he goes and revises every single ever wrote. But I like the theory. So I had this tune, and I think the first person I saw was John I said, what's this? Been bugging me? What's this song? I think you'd hear though it? So so I just thought of it. I treamed it. He said, I don't know. I never heard it. So then I went to George Martin. Must have been doing sessions at the time. He'll know it because he's got a much wider knowledge as he would know. I said, what's this? So well, I dreamed it. Anyway, After a couple of weeks of this, it became clear that no one knew it and it didn't exist except in my head, and so I claimed it. It's like finding it on the street.
There may have been a degree of luck to McCartney waking up with this melody fully formed in his head. But if writing the song was like finding it on the street, all of Paul's musical influences, all the way back to his childhood, had paved the way.
I always have loved good tunes, and my dad played on his piano. I listened to them. My cousin Betty introduced me to my funny Valentine. I loved sort of classic pieces that I would hear. I would love cheeky geek friend Astaire, all these things. I just sort of these classics. Heaven, I'm in heaven, and my heartbeats so that I can hardly be.
And I seem too fine. The happiness I when we're all together dancing cheape.
Heaven. I'm in heaven, and answer me and only back to heaven. So I had a lot of information in my head of those tunes. My dad just in the New Year's Eve, and that would be three hours of songs, and the pretty much didn't repeat them, just did them all. Even so all that info is in my head. It was magical. Yes, they was definitely magical. People I've said to me, do you believe in magic? And I say I have to because of that song. I have to How the hell did that come into my brain? Now, if you really want to try and work it out, I think I'd loaded my computer so strongly with teacher Cheek star dust when I fall in love, these beautiful songs I'd heard all my childhood. I mean, I still remember standing in the kitchen of Fort Lynn Road and hearing When I fall in Love by Nac and Cole. That's I was reaching for an HP bod and thinking, my god, this is good, this is class.
When I fall in love, it will be forever.
I'll never fall.
In love, so you know, that's all. That's all I can think is that all of that data used modern terminology had gone into my very sophisticated computer. The human brain had jumbled up, done all that sort of stuff, and somehow, as a dream it just tumbled out this song.
Suddenly I'm not half the man I used to be. There's a shadow hanging over yesterday, came said why.
Usually McCartney's lyrics have come to him along with his melodies in a flash of inspiration, almost all at once. The lyrics of the tune he dreamed, however, required more conscious deliberation.
And I went with j Nasher to Portugal the holiday and it was hot, so dusty. Day we landed in Lisbon, we took a car ride three four hours down to Albifaira on the coast, and we were going to stay at Bruce Welsh's house. It was his flat. They were very generous guys, and he was in the shadow. He was in Cliffridge's shadows. And so I'd met Bruce a few times. He said, if you ever want to know, it was like you kidding what You let me have your flat? So we were heading down to it, and so I had a lot of time in the back of the car doing nothing, just sort of swaying around. And you didn't have iPads or iPhones, thank god, you just had yourself. So I'm just looking at the countryside. It was very hot and very dusty to say, and sort of half asleep. But one of the things is that I like to do when I'm when I'm in that mode is too I've got plenty of time now to try and think. Okay, scrambled eggs ba ba ba, what can that be?
Yesterday love was such an easy game to play.
Here's the question, how do you know when it's right? Why did you try enough? Stuff that's wrong? Scrambled eggs is wrong, and you try punctually sounds like punching someone immediately it's not right. Yesterday, Okay, you've got it. It just slots in like a slot machine, you know. Yeah, that's that's the word to use. And also a word like yesterday suddenly implies longing and sadness.
Nine needed place to hide. Yes, And I also.
Remember thinking people like sad songs. Remember sort of thinking I like sad songs. People like sad songs. It's kind of you know, it's a place where we can put our sorrow a sad song for the three minutes less.
You know as much, the more you've done, the more difficult it is.
I mean, do you feel that that? Well? I think so. You know. It's like how much gold can you find in a mind endless supply? Well, there is an endless supply, but the quality of it may not be quite as fine as the original vein. But it doesn't matter because I had the original vein and I'm still enjoying digging it up just as much.
By the time McCartney and Sure reached Bruce Welch's flat in southern Portugal. Paul had completed the lyrics.
When I got to Bruce's house, he said to me, a couple of years ago, he said, don't you remember, so you said, have you got a guitar? Have you got a guitar? You got a car? He said, well, yeah, but you're lefty. It's right on it, I said, because I used to turn them upside down because I worked with John a lot. So I had to grab his guitar and I could so I could play upside that, so could he. So I grabbed this thing, and I know the chords because I've written them on the piano. So I go, oh, wait a minute. I just had an idea coming down. So he said, you sang it for me, he said, and that was the first public performance ever of yesterday. You sang it to me in my flat and albefra. Then I played it when I got back to England on my own guitar and completed the middle eight.
I said, the lyrics of Yesterday tell a story of loss, the way heartbreak can make us nostalgic for a happier past. Given the subject matter. It's even more remarkable that McCartney was so young when he wrote it.
I was twenty four, so after that it's twelve. But you know, so world weary. These lyrics brilliant. I'm not half the used to be. God, it's been a hard life, mind you. It had because I'd lost my mother ten years before that, and so did suggest to me that this was a losing my mother song, which I always sort of said, no, I don't think, so, you know, think about it. Why she had to go? I don't know. She wouldn't say losing your mother to cancer. And no one said anything. We didn't nurse, it wasn't simply wasn't discussed. We didn't know what it was at all.
Why she had to go.
I don't know she.
She had to go? Why I don't know. Did I say something wrong? You know? It may be because there's so much tumbled into your youth. Of course there is, and your formative years that you can't appreciate it all. Sometimes it's only in retrospect you can appreciate it. And I remember very clearly one day feeling very embarrassed because I embarrassed my mom. We were out in the backyard and she talked posh compared to work. She was of Irish origin and she was a nurse, so she was about street level. So she had something sort of going from and she would talk, but reasons was a little bit bosh and it was a little bit well she as well. She had to connection to her Auntie Dyllis as well, and so she taught her a little bit of this. And I remember she said something like, Paul, will you ask him? If he's going to ask, ask, it's ask more, you know, and she's got to got a little embarrassed another later, thinking God, I wish I'd never said that, and it stuck with me, you know, after she died. Oh fuck, I really wish I got a couple of those little things that I know the people would forgive me because they're not big things. Of course they're little things, but they're little things that I just think of. I could just take a robber, just rub that little moment, be better. And when she died, I wonder I said something wrong and will be HARKing back to that crazy.
Little thing I said, soundy love?
But yeah, so so I don't know these does this happen? Do you find yourself unconsciously putting songs into girl lyrics that are really your dead mother, And what do you think. I suspect it might be true. I think so it sort of fits if you look at the lyrics.
I know for Yesterday, Yesterday love was such an easy game to play.
I need a place to head away. Oh really Etuday.
When it came time to record Yesterday, McCartney opted for simple but striking orchestration with the help of George Martin.
It was just me and guitar, solo, Me and guitar, and George Martin said it would be really good to try a string quartette, and I very firmly said no, we're a rock combo. So George, being very smart and wonderful and having the best bedside manner of any producer you would ever want to meet, said well, let's try it, and if you don't like it, we'll take it off. Yeah. So I thought, well that's fair enough. So we did retried it, and I remember sitting up in the control room and hearing it and going, oh my god. George was so right. Lent a depth to the song, and it sort of made it seem kind of important, and so I really liked it, and we said, of course you, we'll keep it. And what I loved was then George would then say, well, if he voiced it for a string quartet, that note would go there down there on the cello, and this middle note in the chord would come here with viola, and this next note higher up, we'll go to the second violin, and the sort of top note, we'll go to the top one. So he spread it out and he said, you know that's how Bach would have voiced it. Yes, And I thought, wow, it's like a revolution idea because our chords are always within one octave knock and roll chords, to just play the whole chord straight as a clutch kind of thing, yes, And so he'd spread it out and that was a bit of an eye opener to me.
Oh, yesterday, game said, relying as it does on Paul's voice his guitar. Yesterday was the first Beatles song that featured just one of the band members.
Thank you, thank you very much.
We'd like to carry on now with a song from our new album in England and it'll be out in America shortly, and it's a song with featuring just Paul and it's called Yesterday.
One of the things that makes it such a great song, surely is that it's presented in simple terms. But it's a very complex personality that's describing let's say, his predicament.
Yeah, well, you know, I'm pretty complex character. You know, you don't come from being a schoolboy in Liverpool to where I am now without some complexity sneaking in somewhere. Rather like yourself, I'm very simple, you know what I'm saying. Yeah, but the song, you know, I think the thing that you want to try and get is complex simplicity or simple complexity. You want it to seem easy and yeah, if anyone gives it a second thought, you want there to be a little bit of depth in it.
You know, we're talking about the magic of this in a strange way, the ease of it. What do you make though of those who believe as many seem to then writing a song, actually, he must be a pretty simple thing today that.
It must be simple to do. Well, that's let's see them do it well exactly. That's fair enough. Now. I think the thing about it is if you if you write good songs and you make it look easy, what what you don't want to forget is what went on before, all the stuff that you put into it before you try to write a song. I was looking at a Saisan exhibition with a friend of mine and the first picture in it was an academic drawing. He'd done almost photographic, beautiful male nude and he's just like jaw dropping. Then as you go through he appears to go off and in the end you come out. My friend came out thinking he couldn't draw it off. He said, why didn't he stick with that? He ended up with the bathers, And if you look at the drawing on that, it would appear to be hopeless. I mean it's you know, someone would say I could definitely do the better than that. This is what happens. But everyone who goes to an academy can pretty much do that because they have to to get the degree. But what he goes on to do based on that skill is something else. And I think that's what I'm talking about him. I'm not relying to myself with it says that, but I think there's a lot goes into it before you arrive at the song. All the little songs you whistled as a kid, all the little poems, you read all the little poems you made up, all the little things you did, and now you're going to write a song, and you do it and it seems very easy. But it's easy because there's a lot of stuff went before.
Yesterday. All my trouble seems so far away.
That looks is over there to stay. Oh, I believe in Yesterday.
Suddenly Yesterday from the Beatles nineteen sixty five album Help. In our next episode, McCartney responds to adair.
From the actor Dustin Hoffman, Tree to me, take MATJ.
Picasso's last words, drink to me next time on McCartney A Life in Lyrics. McCartney A Life in Lyrics is a co production between I Heart Me India, NPL and Pushkin Industries