The first Beatles song to not feature John Lennon
In the early days of The Beatles, there was no doubt that John Lennon ruled the group. As far back as the days of The Quarrymen, Lennon was the main boss of the Fab Four, steering them through the most challenging times of their career before they became one of the most successful musical acts in history. Although Lennon could turn anything into gold when working with Paul McCartney, some of the band’s trademark tunes didn’t feature him at all.
As the band started to fracture in the late 1960s, Lennon not appearing on a track he didn’t like was nothing new. Although everyone may have begrudgingly worked through songs like ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’, Lennon was forthright when he thought something was terrible, even calling several McCartney tunes “granny-shit”.
When the band were still honing their act as the lovable moptops, though, there was nothing off the table when working alongside McCartney, with Lennon often filling in the gaps in his writing partner’s songs whenever he had the chance. Although Lennon could easily have kept up his creative streak with McCartney for years, one of his partner’s compositions came to him fully formed without any help.
While living in the upstairs loft of actor Jane Asher, McCartney had an idea come to him in the middle of the night that demanded to be written down. Finding the notes he remembered on a nearby piano, McCartney had hit upon one of the most sophisticated chord progressions he had ever come up with, using the placeholder words ‘Scrambled Eggs’ to remember everything.
Even though McCartney had written an outstanding melody, he was also hesitant to even give it a shot. Since most of the band’s material centred around straight-head rock and roll, the drastic turn to a syrupy ballad like this could have been embarrassing for the rest of them at the time. When Lennon heard the song, he knew it was something special, though, with the band turning the rechristened ‘Yesterday’ into one of the greatest melodic moments in the group’s career.
Working outside of the traditional instrument roles for the first time, ‘Yesterday’ marked the first time that Lennon didn’t appear on a Beatles track. Outside of McCartney’s voice and acoustic guitar, much of the song’s power comes from the string section, added by producer George Martin with McCartney’s guidance on what he wanted it to sound like.
Still, the band were never sure how to work the song into their live set whenever they took to the stage. Even though ‘Yesterday’ was a popular track at the time, the band would often get befuddled trying to translate it to their usual audience, usually putting bits and pieces of tongue-in-cheek humour to the performance, like Lennon thanking Ringo Starr for the performance once McCartney was finished.
Despite not having anything to do with the final product, Lennon still had massive respect for the song, not even dragging it through the mud when bashing McCartney on his solo track ‘How Do You Sleep’. The track may have been credited to Lennon and McCartney, but Lennon would easily give McCartney his due credit most of the time, later recalling, “I have so much accolade for ‘Yesterday’. Beautiful – and I never wished I’d written it.”
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