'Yesterday' by The Beatles: The making of Paul McCartney's masterpiece

The story of how one of The Beatles' biggest ever songs was almost not released under the band's name.

The Beatles were always so much more than the sum of their parts.  Despite the delights of John Lennon and Paul McCartney's solo careers (and those of George Harrison and Ringo Starr, too), when the Fab Four were together they genuinely changed the history of popular music and the whole society.

But even when they were together there were moments when individual members of the band were in complete creative control.

That was especially true on The Beatles (aka The White Album), when each corner of the band was frequently off doing their own thing. But there's one much earlier example that really stands out, too.  'Yesterday' is one of the most famous Beatles song that very nearly wasn't a Beatles song. This is why.
Who wrote 'Yesterday'?

Like the vast majority of The Beatles' original songs, 'Yesterday' was credited to Lennon–McCartney. It says it right there on the label.

But we all know that while some of the duo's songs for the Fab Four were true co-writes and many were driven by one of the pair and polished by the other, there were songs that were pretty much or actually entirely written only by either Paul McCartney or John Lennon.

These songs were still credited to the duo, thanks to an agreement they had from their earliest days writing songs together.

So 'Yesterday' was a Lennon–McCartney song, but it was actually written almost entirely by Paul McCartney.

In one interview in 1966, Lennon suggested he'd pitched in a little ("we just held finish off the ribbons 'round it"), but by his Playboy interview in 1980 he said plainly: "That's Paul’s song, and Paul's baby. Well done. Beautiful – and I never wished I'd written it."

There was a little bit of afters, decades later, when Sir Paul tweaked the songwriting credits for The Beatles songs on 2002 Back in the US live album to "Paul McCartney and John Lennon".

Yoko objected, ad a year later he switched it back, and told the Sunday Herald: "I'm happy with the way it is and always has been. Lennon and McCartney is still the rock 'n' roll trademark I'm proud to be a part of – in the order it has always been." Regarding the actual writing, the "official" story goes that Paul McCartney woke one night at the family home of his then-girlfriend Jane Asher at 57 Wimpole Street with the melody for the song in his head.

In those pre-voice note days, he jumped on to the nearby piano and played it out so he wouldn't forget it.

"There wasn't any room for me to keep my records," McCartney said in The Lyrics book of his room at Jane's. "They had to be kept outside on the landing. But somehow I had a piano in there - a small, sawn-off piano that stood by my bed."

That top line was so incredibly, obviously brilliant that Macca was initially convinced that he'd pinched it from somewhere.

As well as friend, singer and pop fan Alma Cogan ("I think she may have thought I was writing it for her," McCartney later recalled), Paul revealed in Hulu doc 3, 2, 1 that he played the melody to George Martin: "George's got a wider knowledge of particularly older songs.

"So I said, 'What's this?' He said, 'I don't know.' I said...it's this melody, y'know, 'cause I can't have written it. There was no conscious effort involved. I just woke up and it was there.'"

Source: Mayer Nissim/goldradio.com

Read More>>>