Yesterday

Pushkin. Hi, everyone, it's Paul Muldoon. 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.

Not sloud Dodge.

Really still day Uga kusum Meason you the sunwritten resou.

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 Donald two. 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 as 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 tho thereesday. Oh, I believe in Yesterday.

What you heard at the top of the episode was a supercut 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, that 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 suddy. Did she.

Have to go? I don't know, Ray, Charles, unbelievable people who's tune it? Oh God, this is incredible. But Sinatra, Elvis, and Marvin all altered the lyric.

I must have said something wrong alone.

Today 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 alver some wrong. I must have done something wrong. I loved that. It was like disclaimer, I must have.

Must have said 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 Wimball Street. I stayed there and it was only afterwards I thought I'd ever paid rent.

Well, that was a terrific must have been a terrific boom to you.

Yeah, in terms of your career, it 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 Barretts oft Wimpell 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've managed to get a piano in there, a small sawn off piano, and I went to sleep one night and dreamed. But you somewhere in my dream I heard this tune, and when I woke up,

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 Fredister? Things are called portal things? It what is it? What is it?

Well?

So I kind of fell out of the 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, so I got very lucky there, so I didn't have to go to those chords. So it's just a melody,

Scrambled that these provisional lyrics. Was that something you did quite a lot, or it was.

This, well, it was it was a 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 our stuff. Alan Ginsburg first thought, best thoughts. Right, then he goes and revises every single we 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?

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've always have loved good tunes, and my dad played them 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 as their all these things. I just sort of these classics.

Heaven. I'm in heaven and my heartbeats all that I can hardly.

Be, and I seem too fine the happiness I when we're all together dancing cheap.

Heaven. I'm in heaven, but 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. So all that info is in my head. It was magical. Yesterday 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

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

Yesterday?

Love was such an easy game to play.

Here's the question, how do you know when it's right?

Why didn't 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 need a place to hide, really, 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, a.

Suppose 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 ca He said, well, yeah, but you're lefty. It's right down there, 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 ups that, so could he. So I grabbed this thing, and I know the chords because I've written them on the piano.

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 half of that it's twelve, but you know, so world weary. These lyrics brilliant. I'm not half the I 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 someone did suggest to me that this was a losing my mother's song, which I always sort of said, no, I don't think so you know what you said, 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.

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, or 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 above street level.

So she had something so going for and she would talk which reasons was a little bit bosh and it was a little bit well she as well, she had to connection. So her Auntie dyllis as well, and so she taught a little bit of said. I remember she said something like, Paul, will you ask him? If he's going to ask ask, it's.

Ask mom, 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, 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 wrob that little moment out be better. And when she died, I wonder I said.

Something wrong and will we harken back to that crazy little thing?

I said, Sunday 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 quite. 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.

Yesterday.

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 quartet, 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,

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 volum.

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 corde to just play the whole chord straight as a clutch kind of thing. And so he'd spread it out and that was a bit of an eye opener to me.

Oh, yesterday, gainsaidly, 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 j 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 someone rather like yourself, 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 yet 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 that.

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

Yesterday. All my trouble seems so far away, that.

Looks as though there here 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.

To take to ma.

Gje 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 Iheartmeat Media NPL and Pushkin Industries