One of Paul McCartney’s favorite songs that he wrote for The Beatles was “Yesterday.” It came to him in a dream and became a hit for the band. To this day, it is one of their most enduring and well-known songs. Despite its success, the group felt a bit embarrassed about it. McCartney revealed that his bandmates made fun of him for the song.
Paul McCartney said his bandmates teased him about ‘Yesterday’
“Yesterday” was a successful song for The Beatles, but they didn’t release it as a single. It was slow and yearning and didn’t seem to fit their image as a rock band.
“I wouldn’t have put it out as a solo ‘Paul McCartney’ record. We never entertained those ideas,” McCartney said in The Beatles Anthology. “It was sometimes tempting; people would flatter us: ‘Oh, you know you should get out front,’ or, ‘You should put a solo record out.’ But we always said ‘no’. We didn’t release ‘Yesterday’ as a single in England at all, because we were a little embarrassed about it — we were a rock’n’roll band.”
McCartney liked the song, and so did his bandmates. Still, they often teased him about it.
“I am proud of it. I get made fun of because of it a bit,” McCartney said, adding, “I remember George saying, ‘Blimey, he’s always talking about “Yesterday,” you’d think he was Beethoven or somebody.’ But it is, I reckon, the most complete thing I’ve ever written.”
John Lennon explained that part of the reason they teased him about it was because of its early title.
“This song was around for months and months before we finally completed it,” he said. “Every time we got together to write songs for a recording session, this would come up. We almost had it finished. Paul wrote nearly all of it, but we just couldn’t find the right title. We called it ‘Scrambled Egg’ and it became a joke between us.”
Paul McCartney was very proud of ‘Yesterday’
Despite his bandmates’ teasing, McCartney didn’t lose faith in the song. His biggest problem with it was that he didn’t make as much money from it as he thought he should have.
“For ‘Yesterday,’ which I wrote totally on my own, without John’s or anyone’s help, I am on 15%,” he said. “To this day I am only on 15% because of the deals Brian [Epstein] made, and that is unjust, particularly as it has been such a smash. It is possibly the smash of this century.”
He got an idea for the song in a dream
Part of why McCartney felt so proud of the song was because it almost seemed that it came to him divinely. Its melody came to him in a dream.
“It was my most successful song. It’s amazing that it just came to me in a dream,” he said. “That’s why I don’t profess to know anything; I think music is all very mystical. You hear people saying, ‘I’m a vehicle; it just passes through me.’ Well, you’re dead lucky if something like that passes through you.”
