The Life of a Song: ‘Yesterday’
The song came to Paul McCartney in a dream one night in London in 1963
In his two performances at the Californian Desert Trip festival last month, Paul McCartney played for nearly three hours each time but still managed to omit one of his most famous songs. “Yesterday” is one of the most regularly played numbers in the 74-year-old’s touring canon, but perhaps he decided that the audience at what was dubbed “Oldchella” didn’t want to be reminded that they were clinging on to the music of the past.
Despite its popularity — it’s one of the most covered songs in history — “Yesterday” has a divisive reputation among listeners: to fans, it’s a gorgeously simple, melancholy ballad; to detractors, it’s the first major manifestation of McCartney’s Achilles heel — his mawkish sentimentality. Whichever camp you fall into, “Yesterday” was certainly the seed of future ructions in the band dynamics.
McCartney has said that the tune came to him almost fully formed in a dream one night in London in 1963. The then 21-year-old McCartney was living in an attic room in the five-storey Georgian family home in London’s Marylebone of his girlfriend, Jane Asher. He had begun dating the 17-year-old after the Radio Times sent her to interview The Beatles at a Royal Albert Hall gig earlier that year. The Beatles had just begun renting a flat together on Green Street, just off Park Lane. Despite finally having his own room, McCartney hated the austere surroundings of the sparsely furnished apartment. By contrast, Jane’s mother, Margaret Asher, a professor at the Royal Academy of Music, created a warm home for her husband and three children, and invited Jane’s boyfriend to come and live with them.
By: Bernadette McNulty
Source: Financial Times
