McCartney's story is that he awoke one day with the melody in his head and immediately went to a piano to pick it out so he could remember it. He could not believe that a tune that good could have come to him so easily, so he began playing it to anybody who would listen to learn if it was indeed his own. Producer George Martin recalled that Paul played it to him as early as January of 1964 in Paris. A member of the Yardbirds remembers Paul playing it in his dressing room during the run of Another Beatles Christmas Show in December '64. And director Richard Lester threatened to have a piano removed from the set if Paul didn't stop playing it while filming a sequence of the film Help!
McCartney had no proper lyrics for the song for quite a while, merely singing, "Scrambled eggs/Oh, my baby, how I love your legs." Finally, in May of 1965, the right words came to him as he and Jane Asher were on a long drive in Portugal. He wound up with a perfect set of simple, evocative lyrics which tell an unresolved, yet universally relatable tale.
The Beatles convened at Abbey Road Studios on June 14th, 1965, to begin sessions to fill out the non-soundtrack side of their Help! album. McCartney brought in three very different songs on this date - the fast tempo folk-rock number I've Just Seen a Face, the hard rocker I'm Down, and Yesterday. Oddly, he saved the tender ballad for last, after screaming out his lungs for much of the afternoon.
Take one of Yesterday is available on Anthology 2. We hear George ask what the chords are, Paul tells him after saying that the song will be in another key (?), then immediately launches into the first take alone on acoustic guitar. It was probably after this take that the rest of the group decided there was nothing they could offer other than moral support. Producer George Martin, however, suggested a string arrangement - something the Beatles had not used on any of their recordings to date. McCartney was hesitant because he did not want the song to sound like Mantovani. The brilliant solution was to not use an orchestra, but rather a string quartet, which would provide an elegant classical touch to the recording.
Paul went to Martin's house on June 16th to go over the arrangement, at which point he requested a few changes to the producer's score. It is to Martin's eternal credit that he listened and attempted to incorporate most of Paul's ideas, starting a trend that he would continue in the following years as his arranging skills became integral to the ever-expanding palette of the Beatles' sound. The quartet was recorded on the 17th, Paul overdubbed one vocal line at the end of the first bridge, and the track was complete.
Martin, manager Brian Epstein and the band only briefly entertained the idea of releasing the song as a Paul McCartney solo number before deciding that it would still be credited as the Beatles. They did, however, bury the song as the thirteenth track on side two of the British Help! album. Capitol Records in the USA had other ideas, choosing to hold the song back for release as a single in September of 1965.
Yesterday was performed live for the first time on August 1st on the television program Blackpool Night Out. On Anthology 2, we can hear George introduce the song by saying, "...and so, for Paul McCartney of Liverpool, opportunity knocks." Paul was joined either by the house orchestra or a pre-recorded tape. In any case, it sounds like more than just a quartet. The album had not yet been released, thus the audience is unfamiliar with the song, and doesn't exactly know how to respond.
A similar thing happened a few weeks later, on August 14th, when the Beatles taped an appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show in New York. This performance can be seen on the video collection 1+. Once again, George handles the introduction, and the audience has no prior knowledge of the song. A photo in the 1+ hard cover book shows three violinists off camera, Paul singing alone with his acoustic guitar, and George and John off in the shadows sitting on the side of the riser for Ringo's drum kit. When this performance aired a month later, just the day before the American single was released, it convinced the powers that be at Capitol to push Yesterday as the A-side over Ringo's cover of Act Naturally (yes, there actually had been a question about that!). The song soon rose to number one on the Billboard chart.
EMI's Parlophone label probably realized in retrospect that it had missed the boat by not releasing Yesterday as a single in the UK. To somewhat make amends, the song became the title track of an EP in March of 1966. In June of that year, Capitol put together a compilation album entitled "Yesterday"...and Today, a full year after the song had been recorded. And, at the end of the year, Parlophone featured the song on the group's first greatest hits album A Collection of Beatles Oldies.
Unlike most of the group's quieter numbers, the Beatles chose to feature this song in concert. During the British tour of December 1965, Paul accompanied himself on electric organ. And the full band finally played Yesterday on their usual instruments for the world tour of 1966.
The first post-career release was on the Red Album in 1973. In 1976, EMI re-released all twenty-two of the band's original UK singles, plus an additional single pictured above - Yesterday b/w I Should Have Known Better. Yesterday was the opening track of the 1977 compilation album Love Songs. It appeared on the US version of the album 20 Greatest Hits. And, of course, it is on the 2000 worldwide smash album 1.
The most impressive legacy of Yesterday is that it almost instantly became one of the most covered songs of all time. Yet, most singers find it impossible to resist adding some level of emotion in their performances. For me, Paul's simple, unaffected delivery backed by his acoustic guitar and the string quartet remains unmatched.
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