YESTERDAY famously began its life with the the unpromising title of SCRAMBLED EGGS. Here are ten more things you may not know about Paul McCartney's most famous composition.
Over 3,000 recorded versions have been released since 1965.
Bob Dylan hated YESTERDAY - until he didn't! When it was first released said "If you go into the Library of Congress, you can find a lot better than that. There are millions of songs like 'Michelle' and 'Yesterday' written in Tin Pan Alley". Five years later he recorded the above version, with George Harrison playing guitar
The working title of YESTERDAY was 'Scrambled Eggs' It opened with the unpromising Scrambled eggs/Oh how I love your legs.
George Martin said he first heard a version in January 1964. He allayed McCartney's fears that he had inadvertently plagiarised the melody.
McCartney experimented with the song for 18 months, finally recording it in June 1964.
Paul was still finishing writing the song during the recording of the film Help. This greatly annoyed director, Richard Lester. George Harrison was also unimpressed ('Who does he think he is? Beethoven?')
Paul McCartney was very uncomfortable about George Martin's inspired decision add a string quartet ('No vibrato, George. I don't want to sound like Mantovani!')
In 1986 YESTERDAY entered the Guinness Book of Records as the most recorded song of all time - there were 1600 versions then and an estimated 2000 now.
John Lennon had mixed feelings about YESTERDAY ("beautiful — and I never wished I'd written it.")Lennon refers to YESTERDAY in HOW DO YOU SLEEP, the song he wrote attacking Paul (not his finest hour!). Ironically he was often credited with writing the song by fans.
I go to restaurants and the groups always play Yesterday. Yokoand I even signed a guy's violin in Spain after he played us Yesterday. He couldn't understand that I didn't write the song. But I guess he couldn't have gone from table to table playingI Am The Walrus.
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