Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: Hi, everyone, it's Paul Moldoin. Before we get to this episode,
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Speaker 3: Yesterday, Oh my trouble seems so far slow Dodge really
Speaker 3: still day Yugakusumason you the sun met and RESO.
Speaker 4: What she.
Speaker 3: In Yesterday?
Speaker 2: I'm Paul muldoon For a while now, I've been fortunate
Speaker 2: to spend time with one of the greatest songwriters of
Speaker 2: our era.
Speaker 4: And will you look at me? I'm going on to
Speaker 4: I'm actually a performer, that is.
Speaker 2: Sir Paul McCartney. We worked together on a book looking
Speaker 2: at the lyrics of more than one hundred and fifty
Speaker 2: of his songs, and we recorded many hours of our conversations.
Speaker 4: It was like going back to an old snapshot album
Speaker 4: looking back on work I hadn't ever analyzed.
Speaker 2: This is McCartney A Life in Lyrics, class a memoir
Speaker 2: and an improvised journey with one of the most iconic
Speaker 2: figures in popular music in this episode, Yesterday.
Speaker 3: Yesterday, All my trouble seems so far way.
Speaker 5: God looks as oover thereesday.
Speaker 3: Oh, I believe in Yesterday.
Speaker 2: What you heard at the top of the episode was
Speaker 2: a super cut of Yesterday, covers just a tiny fraction
Speaker 2: of the renditions that exist out there. The most covered
Speaker 2: song of all the I think, perhaps, isn't it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the magic didn't sort of end with our recording,
Speaker 4: but it sort of continued. One of the fun things
Speaker 4: I said to We had a publicist I was a
Speaker 4: friend of mine, and I suddenly thought, three thousand persons,
Speaker 4: I've never heard them. So I said to him, get
Speaker 4: me the top ten I'll do for now. So he
Speaker 4: got me Sinatra. Suddenly I'm not half the man I
Speaker 4: used to be. Elvis, there's a shadow hanging over Marvin
Speaker 4: Gay Yesterday.
Speaker 3: Came all too suddenly.
Speaker 6: Hello, did she have the door?
Speaker 4: I don't know, Ray Charles, unbelievable people, who's true it?
Speaker 4: Oh God, this is incredible. But Sinatra, Elvis, and Marvin
Speaker 4: all altered the lyric.
Speaker 5: Must have said something wrong alone yesterday.
Speaker 4: Because there were much old men. They said why she
Speaker 4: had to go. I don't know. She wouldn't say I
Speaker 4: must have done something.
Speaker 2: Wrong, rather than I did something wrong.
Speaker 4: So I don't do things wrong. I'm Sinatra, I'm over
Speaker 4: some wronger. I must have done something wrong. I loved that.
Speaker 4: It was like disclaimer, I must have must have seen
Speaker 4: something wrong.
Speaker 1: Now, a long, long long.
Speaker 2: Covered by so many of the great artists of the
Speaker 2: twentieth century and beyond, Paul McCartney's Yesterday has taken its
Speaker 2: place among the timeless standards of our age. So it's
Speaker 2: fitting that when the melody first came to Paul, he
Speaker 2: assumed the song had already been written by someone else.
Speaker 2: He was in his early twenties and living at his
Speaker 2: girlfriend Jane Asher's family home in London.
Speaker 4: Asher's House fifty seven Wimpole Street. I stayed there forever,
Speaker 4: and it was only afterwards I thought I'd ever paid rent.
Speaker 4: That was a terrific must have been a terrific boom
Speaker 4: to you. Yeah, in terms of your career, was it
Speaker 4: was very good? Yeah, it was very nice. Yeah. The
Speaker 4: mom was a great cook and a fun lady and
Speaker 4: liked me. The father was an eccentric, super intelligent doctor,
Speaker 4: and the kids were my girlfriend, her brother Peter, and
Speaker 4: her sister Claire. So you know, it was like the
Speaker 4: Barretts of Wimpole Street.
Speaker 7: The Barrett's of Wimpbell Street. The year is eighteen forty five.
Speaker 7: The place London.
Speaker 2: The Parretts of Wimple Street was a nineteen thirty play
Speaker 2: about star crossed lovers. It was so popular that during
Speaker 2: the course of McCartney's life, it was adapted for film, musical,
Speaker 2: theater and television.
Speaker 7: The action takes place in Elizabeth Barrett's bed sitting room
Speaker 7: in her father's house at fifty Wimpole Street.
Speaker 2: The story is set on the very London street where
Speaker 2: McCartney lived with the Asher family for three years in
Speaker 2: the mid nineteen sixties.
Speaker 4: The fact that it was in Wimpole Street was, you know,
Speaker 4: it didn't go unnoticed. So it was this lovely family
Speaker 4: in this great old Georgian building in Wimpole Street, and yeah,
Speaker 4: it was great. It was really nice. So they very
Speaker 4: kindly let me stay in the upstairs, the attic room
Speaker 4: perfect for an artist. I to get a piano in there,
Speaker 4: a small sawn off piano, and I went to sleep
Speaker 4: one night and dreamed a chune somewhere in my dream
Speaker 4: I heard this tune, and when I woke up, I thought,
Speaker 4: I love that tune. It's great. I love that one.
Speaker 2: The melody lilting and grand was clear in McCartney's mind,
Speaker 2: but he couldn't remember who had written it. Perhaps it
Speaker 2: was one of the classics he had heard in his childhood.
Speaker 4: What is it?
Speaker 3: Now?
Speaker 4: Is it? Is it? A Fredist thing? Is a cold
Speaker 4: porta thing? Is it? What is it? What is it? Da? Well,
Speaker 4: so I kind of fell out of bed and the
Speaker 4: piano was right now to the left of my bed,
Speaker 4: so I just sort of thought, well, I'll I'll try
Speaker 4: and work out how this song goes. What it is,
Speaker 4: It's got to be some outstanding that I've just heard
Speaker 4: years ago and I've forgotten forgotten it. So I worked
Speaker 4: out chords and the two opening chords are kind of nice.
Speaker 4: I got very lucky there, so I didn't have to
Speaker 4: go to those chords. So it's just a melody. And
Speaker 4: I say i'd heard it in my head. It was
Speaker 4: very clear, and it was just a little and in
Speaker 4: order to solidify it in my memory, I just blocked
Speaker 4: it out with some words which are scrambled egg or
Speaker 4: my baby. I'll love your legs. No no, no, no,
Speaker 4: scrambled these provisional lyrics. Was that something you did quite
Speaker 4: a lot? Or it was this? It was it was
Speaker 4: was kind of rare thing, right. We did that sometimes,
Speaker 4: but not often because you know it mainly were just
Speaker 4: sitting there writing it. So you'd get your final lyrics
Speaker 4: pretty quickly. Yeah, your only lyrics. You never really revised
Speaker 4: or stuff. Alan Ginsburg first thought, best thoughts, right, then
Speaker 4: he goes and revises every single ever wrote. But I
Speaker 4: like the theory. So I had this tune, and I
Speaker 4: think the first person I saw was John I said,
Speaker 4: what's this? Been bugging me? What's this song? I think
Speaker 4: you'd hear though it? So so I just thought of it.
Speaker 4: I treamed it. He said, I don't know. I never
Speaker 4: heard it. So then I went to George Martin. Must
Speaker 4: have been doing sessions at the time. He'll know it
Speaker 4: because he's got a much wider knowledge as he would know.
Speaker 4: I said, what's this? So well, I dreamed it. Anyway,
Speaker 4: After a couple of weeks of this, it became clear
Speaker 4: that no one knew it and it didn't exist except
Speaker 4: in my head, and so I claimed it. It's like
Speaker 4: finding it on the street.
Speaker 2: There may have been a degree of luck to McCartney
Speaker 2: waking up with this melody fully formed in his head.
Speaker 2: But if writing the song was like finding it on
Speaker 2: the street, all of Paul's musical influences, all the way
Speaker 2: back to his childhood, had paved the way.
Speaker 4: I always have loved good tunes, and my dad played
Speaker 4: on his piano. I listened to them. My cousin Betty
Speaker 4: introduced me to my funny Valentine. I loved sort of
Speaker 4: classic pieces that I would hear. I would love cheeky
Speaker 4: geek friend Astaire, all these things. I just sort of
Speaker 4: these classics. Heaven, I'm in heaven, and my heartbeats so
Speaker 4: that I can hardly be.
Speaker 3: And I seem too fine. The happiness I when we're
Speaker 3: all together dancing cheape.
Speaker 4: Heaven. I'm in heaven, and answer me and only back
Speaker 4: to heaven. So I had a lot of information in
Speaker 4: my head of those tunes. My dad just in the
Speaker 4: New Year's Eve, and that would be three hours of songs,
Speaker 4: and the pretty much didn't repeat them, just did them all.
Speaker 4: Even so all that info is in my head. It
Speaker 4: was magical. Yes, they was definitely magical. People I've said
Speaker 4: to me, do you believe in magic? And I say
Speaker 4: I have to because of that song. I have to
Speaker 4: How the hell did that come into my brain? Now,
Speaker 4: if you really want to try and work it out,
Speaker 4: I think I'd loaded my computer so strongly with teacher
Speaker 4: Cheek star dust when I fall in love, these beautiful
Speaker 4: songs I'd heard all my childhood. I mean, I still
Speaker 4: remember standing in the kitchen of Fort Lynn Road and
Speaker 4: hearing When I fall in Love by Nac and Cole.
Speaker 4: That's I was reaching for an HP bod and thinking,
Speaker 4: my god, this is good, this is class.
Speaker 3: When I fall in love, it will be forever.
Speaker 6: I'll never fall.
Speaker 4: In love, so you know, that's all. That's all I
Speaker 4: can think is that all of that data used modern
Speaker 4: terminology had gone into my very sophisticated computer. The human
Speaker 4: brain had jumbled up, done all that sort of stuff,
Speaker 4: and somehow, as a dream it just tumbled out this song.
Speaker 3: Suddenly I'm not half the man I used to be.
Speaker 3: There's a shadow hanging over yesterday, came said why.
Speaker 2: Usually McCartney's lyrics have come to him along with his
Speaker 2: melodies in a flash of inspiration, almost all at once.
Speaker 2: The lyrics of the tune he dreamed, however, required more
Speaker 2: conscious deliberation.
Speaker 4: And I went with j Nasher to Portugal the holiday
Speaker 4: and it was hot, so dusty. Day we landed in Lisbon,
Speaker 4: we took a car ride three four hours down to
Speaker 4: Albifaira on the coast, and we were going to stay
Speaker 4: at Bruce Welsh's house. It was his flat. They were
Speaker 4: very generous guys, and he was in the shadow. He
Speaker 4: was in Cliffridge's shadows. And so I'd met Bruce a
Speaker 4: few times. He said, if you ever want to know,
Speaker 4: it was like you kidding what You let me have
Speaker 4: your flat? So we were heading down to it, and
Speaker 4: so I had a lot of time in the back
Speaker 4: of the car doing nothing, just sort of swaying around.
Speaker 4: And you didn't have iPads or iPhones, thank god, you
Speaker 4: just had yourself. So I'm just looking at the countryside.
Speaker 4: It was very hot and very dusty to say, and
Speaker 4: sort of half asleep. But one of the things is
Speaker 4: that I like to do when I'm when I'm in
Speaker 4: that mode is too I've got plenty of time now
Speaker 4: to try and think. Okay, scrambled eggs ba ba ba,
Speaker 4: what can that be?
Speaker 3: Yesterday love was such an easy game to play.
Speaker 4: Here's the question, how do you know when it's right?
Speaker 4: Why did you try enough? Stuff that's wrong? Scrambled eggs
Speaker 4: is wrong, and you try punctually sounds like punching someone
Speaker 4: immediately it's not right. Yesterday, Okay, you've got it. It
Speaker 4: just slots in like a slot machine, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 4: that's that's the word to use. And also a word
Speaker 4: like yesterday suddenly implies longing and sadness.
Speaker 3: Nine needed place to hide. Yes, And I also.
Speaker 4: Remember thinking people like sad songs. Remember sort of thinking
Speaker 4: I like sad songs. People like sad songs. It's kind
Speaker 4: of you know, it's a place where we can put
Speaker 4: our sorrow a sad song for the three minutes less.
Speaker 2: You know as much, the more you've done, the more
Speaker 2: difficult it is.
Speaker 4: I mean, do you feel that that? Well? I think so.
Speaker 4: You know. It's like how much gold can you find
Speaker 4: in a mind endless supply? Well, there is an endless supply,
Speaker 4: but the quality of it may not be quite as
Speaker 4: fine as the original vein. But it doesn't matter because
Speaker 4: I had the original vein and I'm still enjoying digging
Speaker 4: it up just as much.
Speaker 2: By the time McCartney and Sure reached Bruce Welch's flat
Speaker 2: in southern Portugal. Paul had completed the lyrics.
Speaker 4: When I got to Bruce's house, he said to me,
Speaker 4: a couple of years ago, he said, don't you remember,
Speaker 4: so you said, have you got a guitar? Have you
Speaker 4: got a guitar? You got a car? He said, well, yeah,
Speaker 4: but you're lefty. It's right on it, I said, because
Speaker 4: I used to turn them upside down because I worked
Speaker 4: with John a lot. So I had to grab his
Speaker 4: guitar and I could so I could play upside that,
Speaker 4: so could he. So I grabbed this thing, and I
Speaker 4: know the chords because I've written them on the piano.
Speaker 4: So I go, oh, wait a minute. I just had
Speaker 4: an idea coming down. So he said, you sang it
Speaker 4: for me, he said, and that was the first public
Speaker 4: performance ever of yesterday. You sang it to me in
Speaker 4: my flat and albefra. Then I played it when I
Speaker 4: got back to England on my own guitar and completed
Speaker 4: the middle eight.
Speaker 2: I said, the lyrics of Yesterday tell a story of loss,
Speaker 2: the way heartbreak can make us nostalgic for a happier past.
Speaker 2: Given the subject matter. It's even more remarkable that McCartney
Speaker 2: was so young when he wrote it.
Speaker 4: I was twenty four, so after that it's twelve. But
Speaker 4: you know, so world weary. These lyrics brilliant. I'm not
Speaker 4: half the used to be. God, it's been a hard life,
Speaker 4: mind you. It had because I'd lost my mother ten
Speaker 4: years before that, and so did suggest to me that
Speaker 4: this was a losing my mother song, which I always
Speaker 4: sort of said, no, I don't think, so, you know,
Speaker 4: think about it. Why she had to go? I don't know.
Speaker 4: She wouldn't say losing your mother to cancer. And no
Speaker 4: one said anything. We didn't nurse, it wasn't simply wasn't discussed.
Speaker 4: We didn't know what it was at all.
Speaker 3: Why she had to go.
Speaker 6: I don't know she.
Speaker 4: She had to go? Why I don't know. Did I
Speaker 4: say something wrong? You know? It may be because there's
Speaker 4: so much tumbled into your youth. Of course there is,
Speaker 4: and your formative years that you can't appreciate it all.
Speaker 4: Sometimes it's only in retrospect you can appreciate it. And
Speaker 4: I remember very clearly one day feeling very embarrassed because
Speaker 4: I embarrassed my mom. We were out in the backyard
Speaker 4: and she talked posh compared to work. She was of
Speaker 4: Irish origin and she was a nurse, so she was
Speaker 4: about street level. So she had something sort of going
Speaker 4: from and she would talk, but reasons was a little
Speaker 4: bit bosh and it was a little bit well she
Speaker 4: as well. She had to connection to her Auntie Dyllis
Speaker 4: as well, and so she taught her a little bit
Speaker 4: of this. And I remember she said something like, Paul,
Speaker 4: will you ask him? If he's going to ask, ask,
Speaker 4: it's ask more, you know, and she's got to got
Speaker 4: a little embarrassed another later, thinking God, I wish I'd
Speaker 4: never said that, and it stuck with me, you know,
Speaker 4: after she died. Oh fuck, I really wish I got
Speaker 4: a couple of those little things that I know the
Speaker 4: people would forgive me because they're not big things. Of
Speaker 4: course they're little things, but they're little things that I
Speaker 4: just think of. I could just take a robber, just
Speaker 4: rub that little moment, be better. And when she died,
Speaker 4: I wonder I said something wrong and will be HARKing
Speaker 4: back to that crazy.
Speaker 3: Little thing I said, soundy love?
Speaker 4: But yeah, so so I don't know these does this happen?
Speaker 4: Do you find yourself unconsciously putting songs into girl lyrics
Speaker 4: that are really your dead mother, And what do you think.
Speaker 4: I suspect it might be true. I think so it
Speaker 4: sort of fits if you look at the lyrics.
Speaker 8: I know for Yesterday, Yesterday love was such an easy
Speaker 8: game to play.
Speaker 3: I need a place to head away. Oh really Etuday.
Speaker 2: When it came time to record Yesterday, McCartney opted for
Speaker 2: simple but striking orchestration with the help of George Martin.
Speaker 4: It was just me and guitar, solo, Me and guitar,
Speaker 4: and George Martin said it would be really good to
Speaker 4: try a string quartette, and I very firmly said no,
Speaker 4: we're a rock combo. So George, being very smart and
Speaker 4: wonderful and having the best bedside manner of any producer
Speaker 4: you would ever want to meet, said well, let's try it,
Speaker 4: and if you don't like it, we'll take it off. Yeah.
Speaker 4: So I thought, well that's fair enough. So we did
Speaker 4: retried it, and I remember sitting up in the control
Speaker 4: room and hearing it and going, oh my god. George
Speaker 4: was so right. Lent a depth to the song, and
Speaker 4: it sort of made it seem kind of important, and
Speaker 4: so I really liked it, and we said, of course you,
Speaker 4: we'll keep it. And what I loved was then George
Speaker 4: would then say, well, if he voiced it for a
Speaker 4: string quartet, that note would go there down there on
Speaker 4: the cello, and this middle note in the chord would
Speaker 4: come here with viola, and this next note higher up,
Speaker 4: we'll go to the second violin, and the sort of
Speaker 4: top note, we'll go to the top one. So he
Speaker 4: spread it out and he said, you know that's how
Speaker 4: Bach would have voiced it. Yes, And I thought, wow,
Speaker 4: it's like a revolution idea because our chords are always
Speaker 4: within one octave knock and roll chords, to just play
Speaker 4: the whole chord straight as a clutch kind of thing, yes,
Speaker 4: And so he'd spread it out and that was a
Speaker 4: bit of an eye opener to me.
Speaker 2: Oh, yesterday, game said, relying as it does on Paul's
Speaker 2: voice his guitar. Yesterday was the first Beatles song that
Speaker 2: featured just one of the band members.
Speaker 4: Thank you, thank you very much.
Speaker 6: We'd like to carry on now with a song from
Speaker 6: our new album in England and it'll be out in
Speaker 6: America shortly, and it's a song with featuring just Paul
Speaker 6: and it's called Yesterday.
Speaker 2: One of the things that makes it such a great song,
Speaker 2: surely is that it's presented in simple terms. But it's
Speaker 2: a very complex personality that's describing let's say, his predicament.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, you know, I'm pretty complex character. You know,
Speaker 4: you don't come from being a schoolboy in Liverpool to
Speaker 4: where I am now without some complexity sneaking in somewhere.
Speaker 4: Rather like yourself, I'm very simple, you know what I'm saying. Yeah,
Speaker 4: but the song, you know, I think the thing that
Speaker 4: you want to try and get is complex simplicity or
Speaker 4: simple complexity. You want it to seem easy and yeah,
Speaker 4: if anyone gives it a second thought, you want there
Speaker 4: to be a little bit of depth in it.
Speaker 2: You know, we're talking about the magic of this in
Speaker 2: a strange way, the ease of it. What do you
Speaker 2: make though of those who believe as many seem to
Speaker 2: then writing a song, actually, he must be a pretty
Speaker 2: simple thing today that.
Speaker 4: It must be simple to do. Well, that's let's see
Speaker 4: them do it well exactly. That's fair enough. Now. I
Speaker 4: think the thing about it is if you if you
Speaker 4: write good songs and you make it look easy, what
Speaker 4: what you don't want to forget is what went on before,
Speaker 4: all the stuff that you put into it before you
Speaker 4: try to write a song. I was looking at a
Speaker 4: Saisan exhibition with a friend of mine and the first
Speaker 4: picture in it was an academic drawing. He'd done almost photographic,
Speaker 4: beautiful male nude and he's just like jaw dropping. Then
Speaker 4: as you go through he appears to go off and
Speaker 4: in the end you come out. My friend came out
Speaker 4: thinking he couldn't draw it off. He said, why didn't
Speaker 4: he stick with that? He ended up with the bathers,
Speaker 4: And if you look at the drawing on that, it
Speaker 4: would appear to be hopeless. I mean it's you know,
Speaker 4: someone would say I could definitely do the better than that.
Speaker 4: This is what happens. But everyone who goes to an
Speaker 4: academy can pretty much do that because they have to
Speaker 4: to get the degree. But what he goes on to
Speaker 4: do based on that skill is something else. And I
Speaker 4: think that's what I'm talking about him. I'm not relying
Speaker 4: to myself with it says that, but I think there's
Speaker 4: a lot goes into it before you arrive at the song.
Speaker 4: All the little songs you whistled as a kid, all
Speaker 4: the little poems, you read all the little poems you
Speaker 4: made up, all the little things you did, and now
Speaker 4: you're going to write a song, and you do it
Speaker 4: and it seems very easy. But it's easy because there's
Speaker 4: a lot of stuff went before.
Speaker 3: Yesterday. All my trouble seems so far away.
Speaker 5: That looks is over there to stay. Oh, I believe
Speaker 5: in Yesterday.
Speaker 2: Suddenly Yesterday from the Beatles nineteen sixty five album Help.
Speaker 2: In our next episode, McCartney responds to adair.
Speaker 1: From the actor Dustin Hoffman, Tree to me, take MATJ.
Speaker 2: Picasso's last words, drink to me next time on McCartney
Speaker 2: A Life in Lyrics. McCartney A Life in Lyrics is
Speaker 2: a co production between I Heart Me India, NPL and
Speaker 2: Pushkin Industries