Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hi, everyone, it's Paul Muldoon. Before we get to
Speaker 1: this episode, I wanted to let you know that you
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Speaker 1: Lyrics right now, add free by becoming a Pushkin Plus subscriber.
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Speaker 2: Yesterday, Oh my trouble seems so far.
Speaker 3: Not sloud Dodge.
Speaker 2: Really still day Uga kusum Meason you the sunwritten resou.
Speaker 3: What she.
Speaker 4: In?
Speaker 3: Yesterday?
Speaker 1: I'm Paul Muldoon For a while now, I've been fortunate
Speaker 1: to spend time with one of the greatest songwriters of
Speaker 1: our era.
Speaker 4: And will you look at me? I'm Donald two. I'm
Speaker 4: actually a performer.
Speaker 1: That is Sir Paul McCartney. We worked together on a
Speaker 1: book looking at the lyrics of more than one hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty of his songs, and we recorded many hours
Speaker 1: 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 1: This is McCartney A Life in Lyrics as class a
Speaker 1: memoir and an improvised journey with one of the most
Speaker 1: iconic figures in popular music. In this episode, Yesterday.
Speaker 3: Yesterday, All my trouble seems so far way.
Speaker 5: God looks as tho thereesday. Oh, I believe in Yesterday.
Speaker 1: What you heard at the top of the episode was
Speaker 1: a supercut of Yesterday covers just a tiny fraction of
Speaker 1: the renditions that exist out there, the most covered song
Speaker 1: of all the I think, perhaps, isn't it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that 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.
Speaker 6: Suddenly I'm not half the man I used to be.
Speaker 4: Elvis. There's a shadow hanging over Marvin Gay.
Speaker 3: Yesterday came all too suddy. Did she.
Speaker 4: Have to go? I don't know, Ray, Charles, unbelievable people
Speaker 4: who's tune it? Oh God, this is incredible. But Sinatra, Elvis,
Speaker 4: and Marvin all altered the lyric.
Speaker 7: I must have said something wrong alone.
Speaker 4: Today because there were much old men they said why
Speaker 4: she had to go. I don't know. She wouldn't say
Speaker 4: I must have done something.
Speaker 1: Wrong, rather than I did something wrong.
Speaker 4: So I don't do things wrong. I'm Sinatra, I'm alver
Speaker 4: some wrong. I must have done something wrong. I loved that.
Speaker 4: It was like disclaimer, I must have.
Speaker 3: Must have said something wrong.
Speaker 2: Now, a long, long.
Speaker 1: Long covered by so many of the great artists of
Speaker 1: the twentieth century and beyond, Paul McCartney's Yesterday has taken
Speaker 1: its place among the timeless standards of our age. So
Speaker 1: it's fitting that when the melody first came to Paul,
Speaker 1: he assumed the song had already been written by someone else.
Speaker 1: He was in his early twenties and living at his
Speaker 1: girlfriend Jane Asher's family home in London.
Speaker 4: Asher's House, fifty seven Wimball Street. I stayed there and
Speaker 4: it was only afterwards I thought I'd ever paid rent.
Speaker 1: Well, that was a terrific must have been a terrific
Speaker 1: boom to you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, in terms of your career, it was. It was
Speaker 4: very good. Yeah, it was very nice. Yeah. The mom
Speaker 4: was a great cook and a fun lady and liked me.
Speaker 4: The father was an eccentric, super intelligent doctor and The
Speaker 4: kids were my girlfriend, her brother Peter, and her sister Claire.
Speaker 4: So you know, it was like the Barretts of Wimpole Street,
Speaker 4: The Barretts oft Wimpell Street. The year is eighteen forty five.
Speaker 4: The place London.
Speaker 1: The Parretts of Wimple Street was a nineteen thirty play
Speaker 1: about star crossed lovers. It was so popular that during
Speaker 1: the course of McCartney's life, it was adapted for film, musical,
Speaker 1: 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 1: The story is set on the very London street where
Speaker 1: McCartney lived with the Asher family for three years in
Speaker 1: 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've managed to get a piano
Speaker 4: in there, a small sawn off piano, and I went
Speaker 4: to sleep one night and dreamed. But you somewhere in
Speaker 4: my dream I heard this tune, and when I woke up,
Speaker 4: I thought, I love that tune. It's great. I love
Speaker 4: that one.
Speaker 1: The melody lilting and grand was clear in McCartney's mind,
Speaker 1: but he couldn't remember who had written it. Perhaps it
Speaker 1: was one of the classics he had heard in his childhood.
Speaker 4: What is it? Now? Is it? Is it? A Fredister?
Speaker 4: Things are called portal things? It what is it? What
Speaker 4: is it?
Speaker 2: Well?
Speaker 4: So I kind of fell out of the bed and
Speaker 4: the 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: so I got very lucky there, so I didn't have
Speaker 4: to go to those chords. So it's just a melody,
Speaker 4: and I say i'd heard it in my head. It
Speaker 4: was very clear, and it was just a little and
Speaker 4: in order to solidify it in my memory, I just
Speaker 4: blocked it out with some words which are scrambled egg
Speaker 4: on my baby hal of your legs.
Speaker 1: Scrambled that these provisional lyrics. Was that something you did
Speaker 1: quite a lot, or it was.
Speaker 4: This, well, it was it was a kind of rare thing. Right.
Speaker 4: We did that sometimes, but not often because you know
Speaker 4: it mainly were just sitting there writing it. So you'd
Speaker 4: get your final lyrics pretty quickly. Yeah, your only lyrics.
Speaker 4: You never really revised our stuff. Alan Ginsburg first thought,
Speaker 4: best thoughts. Right, then he goes and revises every single
Speaker 4: we ever wrote. But I like the theory. So I
Speaker 4: had this tune and I think the first person I
Speaker 4: saw was John I said, what's this? Been bugging me?
Speaker 4: What's this song? I think you'd hear moment, So I
Speaker 4: just thought of it. I treamed it. He said, I
Speaker 4: don't know. I never heard it. So then I went
Speaker 4: to George Martin. Must have been doing sessions at the time.
Speaker 4: He'll know it because he's got a much wider knowledge
Speaker 4: as he would know. I said, what's this? So what
Speaker 4: I well, I dreamed it. Anyway, After a couple of
Speaker 4: weeks of this, it became clear that no one knew
Speaker 4: it and it didn't exist except in my head, and
Speaker 4: so I claimed it. It's like finding it on the street.
Speaker 1: There may have been a degree of luck to McCartney
Speaker 1: waking up with this melody fully formed in his head.
Speaker 1: But if writing the song was like finding it on
Speaker 1: the street, all of Paul's musical influences, all the way
Speaker 1: back to his childhood, had paved the way.
Speaker 4: I've always have loved good tunes, and my dad played
Speaker 4: them on his piano. I listened to them. My cousin
Speaker 4: Betty introduced me to my funny Valentine. I loved sort
Speaker 4: of classic pieces that I would hear. I would love
Speaker 4: cheeky geek friend as their all these things. I just
Speaker 4: sort of these classics.
Speaker 5: Heaven. I'm in heaven and my heartbeats all that I
Speaker 5: can hardly.
Speaker 3: Be, and I seem too fine the happiness I when
Speaker 3: we're all together dancing cheap.
Speaker 4: Heaven. I'm in heaven, but 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: So all that info is in my head. It was magical.
Speaker 4: Yesterday was definitely magical. People I've said to me, do
Speaker 4: you believe in magic? And I say I have to
Speaker 4: because of that song. I have to. How the hell
Speaker 4: did that come into my brain? Now, if you really
Speaker 4: want to try and work it out, I think I'd
Speaker 4: loaded my computer so strongly with teacher cheek star dust
Speaker 4: when I fall in Love, these beautiful songs I'd heard
Speaker 4: all my childhood. I mean, I can still remember standing
Speaker 4: in the kitchen of fourth Lynn Road and hearing When
Speaker 4: I Fall in Love by Nak and Cole as I
Speaker 4: was reaching for an HP bod and thinking, my god,
Speaker 4: this is good, this is class.
Speaker 1: When I fall in love, it will be forever.
Speaker 3: 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 5: There's a shadow hanging over yesterday, came said.
Speaker 3: Why.
Speaker 1: Usually McCartney's lyrics have come to him along with his
Speaker 1: melodies in a flash of inspiration, almost all at once.
Speaker 1: The lyrics of the tune he dreamed, however, required more
Speaker 1: 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 was 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 I
Speaker 4: like to do when I'm when I'm in that mode
Speaker 4: is too I've got plenty of time now to try
Speaker 4: and think. Okay, scrambled eggs ba ba ba, what can be?
Speaker 2: Yesterday?
Speaker 5: Love was such an easy game to play.
Speaker 1: Here's the question, how do you know when it's right?
Speaker 4: Why didn't 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 6: Nine need a place to hide, really, yes, And I
Speaker 6: also remember thinking people like sad songs.
Speaker 4: Remember sort of thinking I like sad songs. People like
Speaker 4: sad songs. It's kind of you know, it's a place
Speaker 4: where we can put our sorrow a sad song for
Speaker 4: the three minutes less. You know, a.
Speaker 1: Suppose the more you've done, the more difficult it is.
Speaker 1: I mean, do you feel that that?
Speaker 4: Well? I think so. You know. It's like how much
Speaker 4: gold can you find in a mind endless supply? Well,
Speaker 4: there is an endless supply, but the quality of it
Speaker 4: may not be quite as fine as the original vein.
Speaker 4: But it doesn't matter because I had the original vein,
Speaker 4: and I'm still enjoying digging it up just as much.
Speaker 1: By the time McCartney and Sure reached Bruce Welch's flat
Speaker 1: 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 ca He said, well, yeah,
Speaker 4: but you're lefty. It's right down there, 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 ups 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: idea coming down. So he said, you sang it for me,
Speaker 4: he said, and that was the first public performance ever
Speaker 4: of yesterday. You sang it to me in my flat
Speaker 4: and Albafa and I played it when I got back
Speaker 4: to England on my own guitar and completed the middle eight.
Speaker 7: I said, the lyrics of Yesterday tell a story of loss,
Speaker 7: the way heartbreak can make us nostalgic for a happier past.
Speaker 1: Given the subject matter. It's even more remarkable that McCartney
Speaker 1: was so young when he wrote it.
Speaker 4: I was twenty four, so half of that it's twelve,
Speaker 4: but you know, so world weary. These lyrics brilliant. I'm
Speaker 4: not half the I used to be. God, it's been
Speaker 4: a hard life, mind you. It had because I'd lost
Speaker 4: my mother ten years before that, and someone did suggest
Speaker 4: to me that this was a losing my mother's song,
Speaker 4: which I always sort of said, no, I don't think
Speaker 4: so you know what you said, think about it? Why
Speaker 4: she had to go? I don't know. She wouldn't say
Speaker 4: losing your mother to cancer. And no one said anything.
Speaker 1: It wasn't simply wasn't discussed.
Speaker 4: We didn't know what it was at all.
Speaker 2: Why she had to go. 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, or
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: above street level.
Speaker 8: So she had something so going for and she would
Speaker 8: talk which reasons was a little bit bosh and it
Speaker 8: was a little bit well she as well, she had
Speaker 8: to connection. So her Auntie dyllis as well, and so
Speaker 8: she taught a little bit of said. I remember she
Speaker 8: said something like, Paul, will you ask him? If he's
Speaker 8: going to ask ask, it's.
Speaker 9: Ask mom, you know, and she's got to got a
Speaker 9: little embarrassed another later, thinking God, I wish I'd never
Speaker 9: said that, and it stuck with me, you know, after
Speaker 9: she died.
Speaker 4: Oh, I really wish I got a couple of those
Speaker 4: little things that I know the people would forgive me
Speaker 4: because they're not big things. Of course they're little things,
Speaker 4: but they're little things that I just think of. I
Speaker 4: could just take a robber, just wrob that little moment
Speaker 4: out be better. And when she died, I wonder I said.
Speaker 8: Something wrong and will we harken back to that crazy
Speaker 8: little thing?
Speaker 5: I said, Sunday 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 quite.
Speaker 4: It sort of fits if you look at the lyrics.
Speaker 5: I know for Yesterday Yesterday love was such an easy
Speaker 5: game to play. I need a place to head away.
Speaker 3: Oh really.
Speaker 2: Yesterday.
Speaker 1: When it came time to record Yesterday, McCartney opted for
Speaker 1: 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 quartet, 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: but that's fair enough. So we did retried it, and
Speaker 4: I remember sitting up in the control room and hearing
Speaker 4: it and going, oh my god, George was so right.
Speaker 4: It lent a depth to the song and it sort
Speaker 4: of made it seem kind of important, and so I
Speaker 4: really liked it. And we said, of course you, we'll
Speaker 4: keep it.
Speaker 10: And what I loved was then George would then say, well,
Speaker 10: if he voiced it for a string quartet, that note
Speaker 10: would go there down there on the cello, and this
Speaker 10: middle note in the chord would come here with viola,
Speaker 10: and this next note higher up, we'll go to the
Speaker 10: second violin, and the sort of top note we'll go
Speaker 10: to the top volum.
Speaker 4: So he spread it out and he said, you know
Speaker 4: that's how 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 corde to just play
Speaker 4: the whole chord straight as a clutch kind of thing.
Speaker 4: And so he'd spread it out and that was a
Speaker 4: bit of an eye opener to me.
Speaker 1: Oh, yesterday, gainsaidly, relying as it does on Paul's voice
Speaker 1: his guitar. Yesterday was the first Beatles song that featured
Speaker 1: just one of the band members.
Speaker 7: Thank you, thank you very much.
Speaker 2: We'd like to carry on now with a song from.
Speaker 5: Our new album in England and it'll be out in
Speaker 5: America shortly, and it's a song with featuring j just Paul,
Speaker 5: and it's called Yesterday.
Speaker 1: One of the things that makes it such a great song,
Speaker 1: surely is that it's presented in simple terms. But it's
Speaker 1: 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 someone
Speaker 4: rather like yourself, you know what I'm saying. Yeah, but
Speaker 4: the song, you know, I think the thing that you
Speaker 4: want to try and get is complex simplicity or simple complexity.
Speaker 4: You want it to seem easy, and yet if anyone
Speaker 4: gives it a second thought, you want there to be
Speaker 4: a little bit of depth in it, you know, we're
Speaker 4: talking about that.
Speaker 1: The magic of this in a strange way, the ease
Speaker 1: of it. What do you make though of those who
Speaker 1: believe as many seem to then writing a song, actually
Speaker 1: he must be a pretty 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
Speaker 4: before all the stuff that you put into it before
Speaker 4: you try to write a song. I was looking at
Speaker 4: a Saisan exhibition with a friend of mine and the
Speaker 4: first picture in it was an academic drawing. He'd done
Speaker 4: almost photographic, beautiful, nile nude, and he's just like jaw dropping.
Speaker 4: Then as you go through he appears to go off
Speaker 4: and in the end you come out. My friend came
Speaker 4: out thinking he couldn't draw it off. He said, why
Speaker 4: didn't 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 lying
Speaker 4: to myself with saysan, but I think there's a lot
Speaker 4: goes into it before you arrive at the song. All
Speaker 4: the little songs you whistled as a kid, all the
Speaker 4: little poems you read, all the little poems. You made
Speaker 4: up all the little things you did, and now you're
Speaker 4: going to write a song, and you do it and
Speaker 4: it seems very easy. But it's easy because there's a
Speaker 4: lot of stuff point before.
Speaker 3: Yesterday. All my trouble seems so far away, that.
Speaker 5: Looks as though there here to stay. Oh, I believe
Speaker 5: in Yesterday.
Speaker 1: Suddenly Yesterday from the Beatles nineteen sixty five album Help.
Speaker 1: In our next episode, McCartney responds to adair from the
Speaker 1: actor Dustin Hoffman.
Speaker 4: Tree to me.
Speaker 3: To take to ma.
Speaker 1: Gje Picasso's last words, drink to me next time on
Speaker 1: McCartney A Life in Lyrics. McCartney A Life in Lyrics
Speaker 1: is a co production between Iheartmeat Media NPL and Pushkin
Speaker 1: Industries