Inspiration comes from unexpected places. Paul McCartney partially wrote The Beatles’ “Yesterday” on a car ride with a movie star. The movie star was sleeping when the gears in Paul’s mind started turning.
Paul McCartney wrote The Beatles’ ‘Yesterday’ in the presence of his sleeping girlfriend
In the 1997 book Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now, Paul talked about finishing “Yesterday” when he was in a car with Jane Asher, his girlfriend. Asher is an actor known for her roles in Alfie starring Michael Caine and The Masque of the Red Death starring Vincent Price.
“It was a long, hot, dusty drive,” he said. “Jane was sleeping but I couldn’t, and when I’m sitting that long in a car, I either manage to get to sleep or my brain starts going. I remember mulling over the tune ‘Yesterday,’ and suddenly getting these little one-word openings to the verse.”
Famously, “Yesterday” initially included lines about scrambled eggs. “I started to develop the idea: Scrambled eggs, da-da da,” Paul recollected. “I knew the syllables had to match the melody, obviously: ‘Da-da da, yes-ter-day, sud-den-ly, fun-il-ly, mer-illy, and yes-ter-day, that’s good. All my troubles seemed so far away.’”
Paul McCartney explained why it was so easy for him to write rhymes for the song
After that, the lyrics fell into place. “It’s easy to rhyme those a’s: say, nay, today, away, play, stay, there’s a lot of rhymes and those fall in quite easily, so I gradually pieced it together from that journey,” he said. “‘Sud-den-ly’ and ‘be’ again, another easy rhyme: e, me, tree, flea, we, and I had the basis of it.”
Ultimately, Paul and Asher arrived in Albufeira, Portugal. That city is a famously scenic tourist destination. Even more than that, it played a pretty important role in helping Paul write his most famous ballad. Beatles fans across the world owe a lot to this one city in Portugal.
How The Beatles’ ‘Yesterday’ performed in the United States and the United Kingdom
The Beatles’ “Yesterday” became a No. 1 single on the Billboard Hot 100 for four weeks, lasting on the Billboard Hot 100 for 11 weeks altogether. The track appeared on numerous compilation albums, including 1. 1 features all of The Beatles’ No. 1 singles, so it’s a great resource for music fans who want to get a taste of The Beatles’ expansive sound. That compilation topped the Billboard 200 for eight weeks, remaining on the chart for 540 weeks in total, making it the Fab Four’s most popular record in the U.S.
According to The Official Charts Company, “Yesterday” became a more modest hit in the United Kingdom. There, the ballad only reached No. 8, staying on the chart for nine weeks altogether. We can only speculate why American audiences seemed to respond more to “Yesterday” than British audiences. In the U.K., 1 topped the chart for nine weeks, becoming a hit for 444 weeks.
A certain car ride clearly bored Asher but it set Paul on the path to musical greatness.
