What's the 'truth' behind Yesterday?

Yesterday, all my troubles seem so far away

Now it looks as though they’re here to stay… — Of course, you know what song these lines are from

Early this year, Funfare came out with a story about how Yesterday, probably the most covered Beatle song, came about. According to excerpts from an article I read in a Rolling Stone magazine special edition, the song was originally titled Scrambled Eggs with lyrics far different from that of the final cut. I didn’t expect that simple story to stir the proverbial hornet’s nest among Beatlemaniacs who promptly sent rejoinders, including election lawyer Romy Macalintal who recalled that the late ’60s TV host Joey Lardizabal had come up with his own funny lyrics and Pocholo Concepcion who clarified that no Beatle member had ever dropped out as Funfare erroneously mentioned (not George Martin who was a producer of some Beatles songs but was never a member).

To clear the issue once and for all, Edgar Cruz, an avowed Beatle fan (who said that he gobbles up Beatles stories with gusto), sent Funfare lengthy excerpts from Lennon-McCartney: The Love You Take that tells a story behind the making of Yesterday some-what different from what Funfare came out with:

That Yesterday (Lennon-MCCARTNEY) came to Paul McCartney in a dream is an unsettled issue but it is generally accepted that Martin heard it for the first time at the posh George V hotel in Paris with the rest of the Beatles during the tour of France. When he woke up, he played it on the upright piano and called it Scrambled Eggs with the opening lines as “Scrambled eggs / Oh, you’ve got such lovely legs.”

McCartney narrated: “I woke up with a lovely tune in my head. I thought, ‘That’s great, I wonder what that is?’ There was an upright piano next to me, to the right of the bed by the window. I got out of bed, sat at the piano, found G, found F sharp minor 7th — and that leads you through then to B to E minor, and finally back to E. It all leads forward logically. I liked the melody a lot, but because I’d dreamed it, I couldn’t believe I’d written it. I thought, ‘No, I’ve never written anything like this before.’ But I had the tune, which was the most magic thing!”

McCartney annoyed director Richard Lester when he used the Help! stage to compose the lyrics, threatening to remove the piano he used. Breakthrough came while on a trip to Portugal in May 1965. McCartney recounted, “I remember mulling over the tune ‘Yesterday,’ and suddenly getting these little one-word openings to the verse. I started to develop the idea…’da-da da, yester-day, sudden-ly, fun-il-ly, mer-il-ly and Yes-ter-day, that’s good. All my troubles seemed so far away.’ It’s easy to rhyme those a’s, nay, today, away, play, stay, there’s a lot of rhymes and those fall in quiet places, so I gradually pieced it together from that journey. Sud-den-ly, and ‘b’ again, another easy rhyme; e, me, tree, fleas, we and I had the basis of it.” McCartney completed the lyrics when he vacationed with girlfriend Jane Asher in the Lisbon house of Bruce Welsh using his acoustic guitar.

As the melody came to him completely, McCartney was worried he might have unconsciously picked it from another artist’s song. The group and Martin could not agree if it was appropriate material as it was clearly not in their style. It took 18 months for the exceptional song to be re-worked, completed, and be accepted into an album. McCartney wrote the proper lyrics. Producer George Martin suggested a one-word title.

But as it would turn out, the melody was an unconscious distillation of Ray Charles’ version of Hoagy Carmichael’s Georgia On My Mind, a case of cryptomnesia. Cryptomnesia is the scientific term for subconsciously plagiarizing some else’s work.

Yesterday has similarities in the lyrics and rhyming schemes (the use of words ending in “ay”) of Nat “King” Cole’s “Answer Me My Love”: “…You were mine yesterday / I believed that love was here to stay / Won’t you tell me where I’ve gone astray / Please answer me, my love…”

McCartney slowed down the song’s tempo and pared down the first stanza’s lyrics to its essential, the first line from “You were mine yesterday” to “Yesterday,” made a specific quotation as highlighted, “I believe that love was here to stay” to “Now it looks they’re here to stay…” He contemporized “Won’t you tell me where I’ve gone astray” into the third stanza’s “…Something I said wrong…”

This explains how the working title Scrambled Eggs changed to the final title Yesterday.

But there’s a big difference in theme between the two songs. While Answer Me My Love insists for a reconciliation, Yesterday accepts the rejection, giving it a dramatic inflection. The lyrics construction of the latter is not repetitive, the delivery of message direct to the point and tighter. This makes the Yesterday process of editing, the process of selecting what to copy and improving on what had been copied that made the Beatles reprocessed songs have the semblance of originality and a freshness all its own.

Italian producer and songwriter Lilli Greco also hypothesized Yesterday to be a rehash of Piccere’ Che Vene a Dicere, a 19th century Neapolitan song. But this is an unrealistic assertion. Lennon and McCartney don’t read music sheets. (Note: Could Answer Me My Love be based from this Neapolitan song?)

McCartney recorded it by himself, with him playing an acoustic guitar and backed up by a string quartet. Theoretically speaking, Yesterday does not qualify as a Beatle song as it had zero input from the other Beatles. In fact, McCartney toyed with the idea of releasing it as a solo single. But business manager Epstein was quick to reject it. Regardless of the song’s critical merits, the recording’s morbid suggestion was that other Beatle members were dispensable from the communal ownership. Although the exclusion of the other Beatles in the song’s creation was unintended, Yesterday was proof that a Beatle could remain sufficient by himself.

With Edgar’s help, Maybe we can leave “yesterday” behind for a while and proceed to the next Beatle song… Come Together perhaps?

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