The Beatles Yesterday is one of the most persistent songs in their entire catalog. Over 3000 different versions of this track have been recorded by a huge variety of artists. The song had humble beginnings inside the mind of Paul McCartney – more specifically, inside a dream he had one night. With a fair number of McCartney’s musical compositions resulting from dreams, this shouldn’t be much of a surprise. Perhaps due to the otherworldly manner in which the song had appeared to him, after his initial demo recording of the song he became paranoid that it was actually the property of some other songwriter. He feared that he had merely heard it somewhere else and had the suggestion of its tune planted in his subconscious. Gradually, over a period of several weeks, and through the assurances of everyone he played it for that it was indeed original, McCartney set out to complete the song and lyric.

The words to the piece were quite difficult to pin down for the talented songwriter. He had given the song the temporary title of ‘Scrambled Eggs’, and it became an ongoing joke in the band. After the filming of ‘Help!’ in 1965, McCartney took a vacation in Portugal and in transit he managed to come up with almost the entire rhyming scheme for the track, as well as the final title.

In the studio recording of The Beatles Yesterday, only one member of the band is actually playing an instrument. Paul decided to accompany himself using only an acoustic guitar, although producer George Martin fleshed out the rather bare arrangement with a string section before the track was released. Rather bizarrely for a band that would develop such a reputation for experimentation, the three other members of the band fought McCartney tooth and nail when he proposed releasing ‘Yesterday’ as a single. Their argument was that the song represented too great of a departure from the band’s current sound and style. Eventually, the American market got to have ‘Yesterday’ backed with Ringo Starr’s cover of country song ‘Act Naturally’ on the B-side, as it was hoped that Starr’s popularity in that country would carry the day. McCartney, of course, had the last laugh, and the song performed very well on both the American and later the British charts. Sometimes, even when you are part of a band as successful as the Beatles it is important to go against the grain and listen to the passionate arguments of the lone dissenting member.