One morning in 1964, Paul McCartney awoke in the small attic bedroom of his girlfriend Jane Asher’s house at 57 Wimpole Street in London. A melody had come to him in his sleep, so complete, so moving, so natural that he was convinced it had to belong to someone else. He darted to the piano at the foot of his bed and began playing the tune before it could fade. To make sense of its structure, he filled in placeholder lyrics that began with the line, “Scrambled eggs, oh my baby how I love your legs.”
He spent weeks asking everyone around him, bandmates, friends, and industry insiders, if they had heard the melody before. George Martin, The Beatles’ producer, shook his head. None of the musicians or engineers at Abbey Road recognized it. Even Ringo Starr and George Harrison hadn’t heard it before. Still, Paul hesitated. “I thought someone must’ve written it already,” he recalled. “I had to make sure it hadn’t come from somewhere else.” It felt too perfect to be entirely his.
During these uncertain weeks, McCartney carried the tune with him everywhere. He would test it out on friends, cautiously humming the melody and asking, “Does this ring any bells?” No one could name it. There was no trace of it in any existing catalog. Gradually, he came to accept that it had come from his own subconscious, a fully formed gift that arrived in sleep.
As The Beatles began work on the album “Help!” in 1965, Paul began refining the lyrics. The humorous “Scrambled Eggs” lines gave way to something more poignant. The opening verse eventually settled on “Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away,” and the song took on a tone of heartbreak and loss. Unlike most Beatles songs that featured harmonies or full band arrangements, “Yesterday” was stripped down to Paul’s voice, an acoustic guitar, and a string quartet. It marked a distinct stylistic turn.
Recording took place on June 14, 1965. Paul sat alone in Studio 2 at Abbey Road Studios, with George Martin overseeing the session. The string arrangement, crafted by Martin, added a classical elegance that was rare in pop music at the time. When the final take was completed, McCartney stood back, unsure how people would react to such an intimate departure from The Beatles’ usual sound.
Upon release, “Yesterday” was not immediately issued as a single in the UK due to internal hesitations about branding it as a Beatles song. In the United States, however, Capitol Records released it in September 1965. It reached number one and remained there for four weeks. Over time, the song’s reputation grew to astonishing heights. It was recorded by over 2,000 artists, becoming one of the most covered songs in modern music history.
Paul later remarked that “Yesterday” felt like something handed to him by some invisible force, something he was meant to carry forward. Its origins in a dream, its evolution from parody to poetry, and its enduring emotional depth all point to a creative process that defied logic.
That one morning, in a quiet London bedroom, an unwritten song waited for a voice. Paul McCartney gave it one, and the world never forgot.