Yesterday, and its incredible recording process revealed here and now:

June 14th, 1965 turned out to be ‘Paul McCartney’ day in the recording studio.  The Beatles were in EMI Studio Two from 2:30 to 5:30 pm recording two Paul songs in their entirety, namely “I’ve Just Seen A Face” and the rock’n’roll screamer “I’m Down.”  After an hour-and-a-half break, they returned at 7 pm for another three-hour session, the only recording accomplished during this session being two takes of “Yesterday” by only Paul on acoustic guitar and vocals.

“I brought the song into the studio for the first time and played it on the guitar,” Paul remembers, “but soon Ringo said, ‘I can’t really put any drums on – it wouldn’t make sense.’  And John and George said, ‘There’s no point in having another guitar.’  So George Martin suggested, ‘Why don’t you just try it by yourself and see how it works?’  I looked at all the others:  ‘Oops.  You mean a solo record?’  They said, ‘Yeah, it doesn’t matter, there’s nothing we can add to it – do it.’”

The decision may not have materialized fully until after the first acoustic take was recorded.  Just before the first take, which was included on the “Anthology 2” album, we can clearly hear George Harrison repeatedly ask Paul “what key is it in?”  Paul then quickly instructs George in the basic chord sequence before jumping right into ‘take one’ as George Martin suggested.  It’s possible that the verdict was still out as to whether the other Beatles, or maybe just George, would still be included in the recording.  “We didn’t have much time to work out an arrangement,” George Harrison remembers, this being nearly the last session booked to finish the “Help!” album.  In any event, the matter was dropped shortly thereafter.

This first take is interesting because of the somewhat lackadaisical approach Paul had in its’ recording.  His awkward rhythmic chording in the introduction was dropped after the first few measures, replaced by what we’re used to hearing in the final product.  He transposes two lines in the second verse, namely “there’s a shadow hanging over me” and “I’m not half the man I used to be.”  Realizing he had done this, a slight chuckle can be detected.  Also, he ends the first bridge with descending notes (“long for yesterday-ay-ay-ay”) and, when he gets to the second bridge, reluctantly repeats the process with a hesitancy that suggests he knows he shouldn’t do it both times.  This take is a little rough but still beautifully performed.

Now that he had gotten his bearings, the second attempt is done far more professionally.  The straightforward rhythmic chording appears right from the beginning, he sings the lines correctly in the second verse, and he holds out the last syllable of the word “yesterday” at the end of the first bridge, saving the descending notes for the second bridge.  Two takes verified all that was needed.

The next point of business for the rest of the evening session that day was what else could be done to the song.  George Martin recalls how Paul “sat on a high stool with his acoustic guitar and sang ‘Yesterday.’  That was the master to begin with.  Then I said, ‘Well, what can we do with it?’”  Several different approaches were suggested and possibly tried out, reportedly even adding John on organ.  George Martin then told Paul, “’The only thing I can think of is adding strings, but I know what you think about that.’  And Paul said, ‘I don’t want Mantovani.’  I said, ‘What about a very small number of string players, a quartet?’  He thought that was interesting.”

Paul begs to differ.  “George Martin had the idea to put the string quartet on it and I said, ‘No, I don’t think so.’  He said, ‘I’ve really got a feeling for it.  I can hear it working.’  I said, ‘’Are you kidding?  This is a rock group!’  I hated the idea…But he cleverly said, ‘Let’s try it,’ and I thought, that’s fair enough.  ‘If we hate it,’ he said, ‘we can take it off.  We’ll just go back; it’s very nice just with the solo guitar and your voice…Look, why don’t you come ‘round to my house tomorrow?  I’ve got a piano, and I’ve got the manuscript paper.  We’ll sit down for an hour or so, and you can let me know what you’re looking for.”  With that decided, the recording session was over for the night.

The next day, June 15th, 1965, Paul met up with George Martin at his house as suggested.  As Paul remembers: “We’d sit down and it would be quite straightforward because I’d have a good idea of how I wanted to voice it.  Or George would show me possibilities: very wide apart or very gungy and very close, and we’d choose.  He would say, ‘This is the way to do the harmony, technically.’  And I’d often try to go against that.  I’d think, ‘Well, why should there be a proper way to do it?’"  Shortly before his passing, George Martin commented on the score that he wrote for the song:  "If you look at that 'Yesterday' score, it's pretty naive, but it does work...I hadn't been, kind of, over-educated in music, and so that I had a nativity as well...It's very, very simple writing, but it couldn't be anything else.  If it were, it would destroy what the point of the song is, which is utter simplicity.  I did this in an afternoon.  I had it in my mind what I had to do, and it's just straightforward.”

Paul continues:  "There was just one point in it where I said, ‘Could the cello now play a slightly bluesy thing, out of the genre, out of keeping with the rest of the voicing?’  George said, ‘Bach certainly wouldn’t have done that, Paul, ha ha ha.’  I said, ‘Great!’  That was what we often used to do, try and claim our one little moment.  I mean, obviously it was my song, my chords, my everything really, but because the voicing now had become Bach’s, I needed something of mine again to redress the balance.  So I put a 7th in, which was unheard-of.  It’s what we used to call a blue note, and that became a little bit well known.  It’s one of the unusual things in that arrangement.”

Concerning this “blue note,” which is heard after the words “she wouldn’t say” in the second bridge, George Martin comments:  “John listened to (the finished song), and there’s a particular bit where the cello moves into a bluesy note which he thought was terrific, so it was applauded.”

On June 17th, 1965, a 2 to 4 pm recording session was held in EMI Studio Two to record the string quartet overdub to Paul’s acoustic performance of “Yesterday.”  Paul also had some say in how these musicians were to play.  George Martin remembers:  “He insisted, ‘No vibrato, I don’t want any vibrato!’  If you’re a good violin player it’s very difficult to play without vibrato.  Paul told the musicians he wanted it pure.  But although they did cut down the vibrato, they couldn’t do it pure because they would have sounded like schoolboys.  I think Paul realized in later years that what he got was right.”

These musicians were Tony Gilbert (first violin), Sidney Sax (second violin), Francisco Gabarro (cello) and Kenneth Essex (viola).  “George was very good that way,” Paul explains, “He got a very good, competent quartet, and they played and I really liked the result, I thought it was smashing.”  In fact, Paul ran into Francisco Gabarro a week later in the EMI canteen and thought to say something to him.  Gabarro recalls, “He came up to me and said, ‘We have a winner with that ‘Yesterday.’  I said, well, good luck!  Congratulations!”

One last overdub needed to be added, and this was to double-track Paul’s vocals at the end of the first bridge in order to extent his final high note on “yester-dayyyyyyy.”  The double-tracking begins on the words “something wrong” and then completes the bridge.  (While George Martin insists that no double-tracking was used on the song and that the effect heard was due to Paul’s vocals being piped in for the quartet to hear during the recording, it’s obvious from listening that there are two distinct vocal tracks on top of each other at this point.  Also, since both vocal tracks are heard together in the center of both stereo mixes and not just on the left channel where the quartet is panned, this indicates that the two voices weren’t the result of bleed-through from the studio monitor as is claimed.)  With the song then complete, and after the string quartet had gone, The Beatles commenced recording Ringo’s contribution to the album, namely “Act Naturally.”

Two mono mixes were performed at the end of this session (June 17th) in the control room of EMI Studio Two by George Martin and engineers Norman Smith and Phil McDonald.  The second mix was the one released, which is unique in a couple of ways.  First, the overdubbed vocals in the first bridge have a noticeable amount of extra reverb applied to it, which stands out in comparison to the rest of the vocals which is almost devoid of any reverb whatsoever.  Also, the quartet does not fade out at the end, so we can hear the full release of the violins as the final moment of the song.

The first stereo mix of “Yesterday” was made on June 18th, 1965 in the control room of EMI Studio Two by the same EMI staff members.  Paul’s vocals are centered in the mix, the guitar is mostly panned to the right, and the strings are panned mostly to the left channel.  Unique features of this mix include hearing a faint squeak from a violinist in the first verse just after the words “I believe.”  Also, the overdubbed vocal in the first bridge has minimal reverb just as the main vocal has.  A fret noise from the acoustic guitar is heard in the right channel just before the words “now I need a place,” this being heard quietly in nearly all of the released mixes of the song.  Finally, the strings are now faded out at the end just before their actual conclusion.

A second stereo mix was made by George Martin in 1986 in preparation for the first compact disc release of the British “Help!” album.  The difference from the original stereo mix is negligible, still containing the faint violin squeak in the introduction, which could have easily been omitted since the quartet had yet to start playing.

The Beatles did record the song one further time at EMI Studios, but not as a serious attempt.  On November 8th, 1965, just after finishing up the recording of “Think For Yourself” for their “Rubber Soul” album, they recorded “The Beatles’ Third Christmas Record” in EMI Studio Two, with George Martin, Norman Smith and 2nd engineer Ken Scott at the controls.  From approximately 2 to 3 am (which would actually make it November 9th), the tired group gathered around some microphones and, with Paul on acoustic guitar, they performed a silly impromptu version of “Yesterday,” which more appropriately became “Christmas Day.”  This very humorous recording, with all four Beatles singing (kind of), was released exclusively to members of their fan club in December of 1965.

An interesting recording of “Yesterday” sung by John Lennon has surfaced in bootlegs, reportedly recorded during Lennon's 31st birthday party on October 9th, 1971. This rough recording, featuring Lennon on acoustic guitar along with various voices and percussive sounds, depicts a combination of John poking fun at the song as well as his admiration for it..

The actual master tape was pulled out of the archives in the mid 2000’s by George Martin and son Giles Martin to create a whole new stereo mix of the song for the Cirque du Soleil show entitled “Love.”  Not only did they think to tack on some instrumental bars of “Blackbird” at the beginning, but the end result presents a flawless production that corrected all of the anomalies of the previous stereo mixes.  No more violin squeak in the first verse and no more fret noise in the final verse.  The positioning of the elements ran nearly identical though, except that both the acoustic guitar and the quartet were panned slightly more toward center.

Sometime in 2015, Giles Martin revisited the original master tape once again with Sam Okell in Abbey Road Studios to create another new stereo mix for inclusion on a re-released version of the compilation album "Beatles 1" that came out that year.

Not to be forgotten in a true “Recording History” of the song are the live recordings done by Paul throughout the years.  Sometime in May or June of 1976, Wings recorded a live version that appears on “Wings Over America.”  On the Deluxe Edition Box Set of this album, a different live version of the song recorded on June 14th, 1976 at Cow Palace in Daly City, California is included on a bonus CD.  On September 2nd, 1990, a live recording of the song was recorded for his “Tripping The Live Fantastic” album.  Sometime in April or May of 2002, the song was recorded for his album “Back In The US.” And finally, during his performances at New York City’s “Citi Field” between July 15th and 22nd, he recorded a version for his “Good Evening New York City” album.

Song Structure and Style

As for the structure, a typical Beatles model of ‘verse/ verse/ bridge/ verse/ bridge/ verse’ (or aababa) is utilized with a brief introduction and conclusion thrown in.  While that sounds usual and a bit boring at this stage of The Beatles game, the style of the song is anything but usual or boring.

The intricate nuances Paul had already worked into the arrangement, as heard on his acoustic guitar track, were undoubtedly a big part of what inspired George Martin to suggest strings for the song, saying, “I’ve really got a feeling for it.  I can hear it working.”  In his book “All You Need Is Ears,” Martin explains:  “The turning point probably came with the song ‘Yesterday’…That was when, as I can see in retrospect, I started to leave my hallmark on the music, when a style started to emerge which was partly of my making.  It was on ‘Yesterday’ that I started to score their music…The added ingredient was no more nor less than a string quartet; and that, in the pop world of those days, was quite a step to take.”

A simple two-measure introduction of vamping acoustic guitar sets the stage, Paul thumping the bass notes on the one- and three- beat of both measures.  This anticipatory intro gives you a sneaky suspicion that something extraordinary is about to happen which, if you can possibly remember the first time you heard the song, doesn’t fail to satisfy.

The verse is an unusual seven measures long but, because of the rhythmic phrasing, it doesn’t come across as awkward at all.  The thumping bass notes of Paul’s guitar work are deliberate in their strategic placements, showing that he was well rehearsed beforehand.  He even fits the final word with a planned syncopated beat (“yes-ter-day”) that breaks the rhythmic pattern found in the rest of the verse.  The overall effect, lyrically and musically, is stunning – a vivid depiction of absolute loneliness as a result of an illusionary romance.

Coincidentally (or maybe not), the second seven-measure verse begins with the word “suddenly” just as we suddenly hear the string quartet immerge to add a deeper sense of heartache to the already dour landscape.  The instrumentalists stay relatively within the parameters of the chords with one notable exception being the subtle melody line that dances as a harmony with Paul’s lyric “yesterday came suddenly.”

The first eight measure bridge occurs next, a notable feature being Paul’s strategic falling bass notes while his vocal melody line rises on the words “had to go,” the quartet allowing his finesse to be the focal point.  This occurs again as the double-tracked vocal comes in on the lyric “something wrong,” followed by a descending viola line in the last measure.  George Martin, possibly by suggestion from Paul, purposely wrote this viola line into the score to mimic what we would soon hear Paul sing in the previously recorded second bridge.

A third verse is then heard which is identical in structure except for a new set of lyrics.  The quartet nearly plays the same arrangement as in the second verse.  The repeat of the bridge, however, reveals some interesting building in the score, a violin harmony to Paul’s line “had to go, I don’t know…” stands out as a classy touch.  This is quickly followed by the “blue note” as insistently included by Paul as described above.  The violin harmony continues through the rest of the verse, which then ends with Paul taking center stage singing the descending line solo.

The quartet pulls out all the stops during the repeat of the third verse.  A violin holds a single high note for the first five measures and the viola joins in midway through the third measure to begin a subtle lower harmony to Paul’s vocal melody.  A repeat of the final two measures acts as a conclusion for the song although Paul chooses to hum instead of sing.  He also dispenses with the thumping bass notes and sticks to a few higher strings played in a falling pattern.  The quartet follows him down and then punctuates the final two notes as it then fades away.  History is made!

John had some interesting commentary on the lyrics in 1980: “Paul wrote the lyrics to ‘Yesterday.’  Although the lyrics don’t resolve into any sense, they’re good lines.  They certainly work, you know what I mean?  They’re good, but if you read the whole song, it doesn’t say anything, you don’t know what happened.  She left and he wishes it were yesterday – that much you get – but it doesn’t really resolve.”

The story may not be complete, but it appears to be the expression of the emotion that is the song’s intent.  She left and caught him totally off guard, him thinking that “love was such an easy game to play,” a game that he was winning.  But since “she wouldn’t say” the reason for her leaving, he can only assume that he “said something wrong,” leaving him with feelings of regret.  Rather than being proud, he now needs “a place to hideaway” as a loser in love.  While the same sentiments have just recently been expressed in Paul’s “The Night Before” earlier in the year, this is hardly a re-write.  You could more accurately say that the former song was a first draft at expressing this surprising experience.

The lyrics’ simplistic depiction is found to be totally suitable to this beautiful piece of music, no doubt becoming a template for love songs to this day.  Right down to beginning and ending each verse with the same word, whether it be “yesterday” or “suddenly,” the intricate complexity was perfected by the composer.  Nearly perfected, anyway.  Call me a stickler but, since he was still with his girl 24 hours ago, shouldn’t it read “today came suddenly” instead of “yesterday came suddenly”?

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