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Musician McCartney on the organ: A dream in the attic

Photo: Michael Ochs Archives / Getty Images

In 2021, a two-volume, over a thousand-page work called "The Lyrics" by Paul McCartney was published, in which the singer, musician and songwriter reflects on his lyrics for the Beatles, the Wings and solo.

You would think that there wouldn't be many questions left unanswered - but now McCartney has shed additional light on one of his most famous songs in a podcast.

“Yesterday” is perhaps the most covered song in pop history.

Paul McCartney has often been amused by the fact that some of the song's more prominent performers, such as Marvin Gaye and Elvis Presley, have changed a line.

They turned “I said something wrong, now I long for yesterday” into “I

must've

said something wrong”.

McCartney's clear admission of a mistake becomes a more macho "I must have said something wrong" - without acknowledging what.

Paul McCartney repeatedly said that the melody for “Yesterday” came to him in a dream and that he then asked all the music connoisseurs around him whether they knew the song from somewhere.

Nobody knew the melody to which he initially sang a nonsense lyric with “scrambled eggs”.

On a trip to Portugal that McCartney took with his girlfriend Jane Asher in 1965, the song's lyrics came to mind.

In his "Lyrics" book, Paul McCartney reports that it was suggested to him that he was processing his mother's death in the song "Yesterday."

McCartney's mother Mary died of cancer in 1956; her son Paul was only 14 years old.

It only became clear to him years later that a line like “Why she had to go, I don’t know, she wouldn’t say” could be about his mother.

“Not ‘arsk’ – ‘ask’, Mum!”

For the podcast “A Life in Lyrics,” McCartney, together with the Northern Irish poet Paul Muldoon, once again delved into the genesis of “Yesterday” in detail.

(Listen to the episode here) The Liverpool man also talks about what the wrong thing he said was.

Accordingly, as a child he once mocked his mother for her accent being too high-spoken and too “posh”.

“It’s not called ‘arsk’!

“Just ‘ask’, Mum!” he said.

She was a little embarrassed, and later he thought, "God, I wish I hadn't said that." The thought stuck with him, even after his mother died.

"Sometimes so much has thrown at you in your young, formative years that you don't even appreciate it," says Paul McCartney, looking back today at the 24-year-old who wrote "Yesterday" for the Beatles.

“I have a few of these little things that I know I'd be forgiven for because they're nothing big.

But still I think: 'If only I had an eraser!

“To be able to erase this moment would be better.”

As the podcast continues, McCartney asks himself: “Does something like that happen?

Do you unconsciously write lines in a song about a girl that are actually about your dead mother?" And the songwriter answers himself: "I suppose that could be so.

It somehow fits when you look at the text.«

Feb