Lennon later indicated that the song had been around for a while before: Although McCartney has never elaborated 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. During the intervening time, The Beatles released two albums, A Hard Day's Night and Beatles for Sale, both of which could have included "Yesterday". McCartney originally claimed he had written "Yesterday" during the Beatles' tour of France in 1964 however, the song was not released until the summer of 1965. You'd think he was Beethoven or somebody!" The patience of the other Beatles was also tested by McCartney's work in progress, George Harrison summing this up when he said: "Blimey, he's always talking about that song. Richard Lester, the director, was eventually greatly annoyed by this and lost his temper, telling McCartney to finish writing the song or he would have the piano removed. I used to call it 'Scrambled Eggs'."ĭuring the shooting of Help!, a piano was placed on one of the stages where filming was being conducted and McCartney would take advantage of this opportunity to tinker with the song. In his biography, Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now, McCartney recalled: "So first of all I checked this melody out, and people said to me, 'No, it's lovely, and I'm sure it's all yours.' It took me a little while to allow myself to claim it, but then like a prospector I finally staked my claim stuck a little sign on it and said, 'Okay, it's mine!' It had no words. As Lennon and McCartney were known to do at the time, a substitute working lyric, titled "Scrambled Eggs" (the working opening verse was "Scrambled Eggs/Oh, my baby how I love your legs"), was used for the song until something more suitable was written. Upon being convinced that he had not robbed anyone of his melody, McCartney began writing lyrics to suit it. 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. As he put it, "For about a month I went round to people in the music business and asked them whether they had ever heard it before. McCartney's initial concern was that he had subconsciously plagiarised someone else's work (known as cryptomnesia). Upon waking, he hurried to a piano and played the tune to avoid forgetting it. OriginsAccording to biographers of McCartney and the Beatles, McCartney composed the entire melody in a dream one night in his room at the Wimpole Street home of his then girlfriend Jane Asher and her family. In 2000 McCartney asked Yoko Ono if she would agree to change the credit on the song to read "McCartney–Lennon" in the The Beatles Anthology but she refused. (However, it was issued as a single there in 1976.) Although credited to " Lennon–McCartney", the song was written solely by McCartney. The final recording was so different from other works by The Beatles that the band members vetoed the release of the song as a single in the United Kingdom. It was the first official recording by The Beatles that relied upon a performance by a single member of the band, Paul McCartney. "Yesterday" is a melancholy acoustic guitar ballad about a relationship break-up. Broadcast Music Incorporated (BMI) asserts that it was performed over seven million times in the 20th century alone. In 1997, the song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. 1 Pop song of all time by MTV and Rolling Stone magazine the following year. "Yesterday" was voted the best song of the 20th century in a 1999 BBC Radio 2 poll of music experts and listeners and was also voted the No. Consequently, whilst it topped the American chart in 1965 the song first hit the British top 10 three months after the release of Help! in a cover version by Matt Monro. At the time of its first appearance the song was released by The Beatles' record company as a single in the United States but not in the United Kingdom (for further details see below). The song remains popular today with more than 2,200 cover versions, and is one of the most covered songs in the history of recorded music. " Yesterday" is a song originally recorded by The Beatles for their 1965 album Help!. Yesterday love was such an easy game to play Suddenly I'm not half the man I used to be Now it looks as though they're here to stay Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away