The painful regret Paul McCartney hid in a classic Beatles song
It’s hard to measure one’s entire career on their time in the spotlight. Most of the biggest rockstars in the world only get into the industry when they are in their 20s, and when there are that many eyes on you at the peak of stardom, there are bound to be moments where things start to look a little bit dicey in retrospect. While Paul McCartney didn’t have much to cringe at when going through his Beatles career, he was able to sneak a few of his most difficult memories into some of the band’s greatest hits.
Because, for all the optimism that is spilling out of McCartney every time he plays, not everything was sunshine and roses for him starting out. He had grown up working class and had struggled through many parts of his life, but losing his mother before reaching adolescence was always going to be a body blow for any kid trying to figure out what the world is supposed to be like.
And despite John Lennon having the same problem when he reached 17, his reaction was a lot more visceral. Macca had a fair bit of family to look back on for support, but since Lennon grew up without a father, seeing him re-establish a relationship with his mother and then see it taken away so quickly was always going to be traumatic. But trauma often shows itself in different ways when it comes to McCartney.
Looking at how he has dealt with grief in the past, McCartney has always tried to put up a bit of an optimistic front. When Brian Epstein died, he was the one trying to rally the rest of the band together to keep things going, and when Lennon passed away, he figured the best thing for him to do was go to work and try his best to ignore some of the signs of what was happening on every news station.
But for someone who had so many optimistic songs, ‘Yesterday’ is pure melancholy. After bouncing around in his head for years, McCartney finally fleshed out the idea by coming upon the word ‘Yesterday’, eventually framing it as a sad breakup song centred around someone who said the wrong thing to his other half. But as he recalled, some of the lines had a much deeper meaning behind them.
“I remember later thinking ‘God, I wish I’d never said that’. And it stuck with me.”
Paul McCartney
When discussing his mother, McCartney remembered that the line ‘I said something wrong’ could have come from him embarrassing his mother, saying, “I know that she said something like ‘Paul, will you ask him if he’s going … ’ I went ‘Arsk! Arsk! It’s ask mum.’ And she got a little bit embarrassed. I remember later thinking ‘God, I wish I’d never said that’. And it stuck with me. After she died, I thought ‘Oh f***, I really wish … ’ They’re little things, but they’re little things that I just think, ‘If I could just take a rubber, just rub that moment out it would be better.’”
At the same time, the line works because it’s so universal. For being one of the most covered songs of all time, it’s all about how the line strikes everyone who listens to it. Whether it’s an old flame, a family member, or someone else that we treated poorly, it’s easy for everyone to see those times when they said something wrong and how they wish they could rewrite history.
But that’s the key to why ‘Yesterday’ is so melancholic. Whether it makes us sad or ends up cheering us up in times of trouble, it’s a dose of reality. So instead of anyone walking away with the melancholy of having said something wrong, why not try to use it as a lesson to appreciate the time that you have left?
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