They were created in the 1960's and since 1962 the band was composed by John Lennon (guitar; vocals), Paul McCartney(bass; vocals), George Harrison (guitar; vocals) and Ringo Starr (drums; vocals).
Their short career didn't affect at all their work, pursuing after 1970 solo careers.
The Beatles released thirteen studio albums: Please Please Me (1963), With the Beatles (1963), A Hard Day's Night (1964), Beatles for Sale (1964), Help! (1965), Rubber Soul (1965),Revolver (1966), Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967), Magical Mystery Tour (1967), The Beatles [also known as "White Album"] (1968), Yellow Submarine(1969), Abbey Road (1969) and Let It Be (1970), besides several compilations and re-releases.
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Yesterday is credited to Lennon/McCartney but the song was only written by Paul McCartney, in 2000 he requested Yoko Ono to simply change the order of the credits but Yoko refused.
Appearing in Help! released in 1965, the song is about a break-up and is dedicated to McCartney's mother who died of Cancer when he was only fourteen years old.
Due to the melancholic acoustic guitar ballad followed by some string instruments like cellos and violins, the song end up being so different from The Beatles previous works that the band decided not to release it as a single, until 1976.
Starting on a dream, McCartney dreamed the entire melody and his first worry was that the melody was a unconscious plagiarism as he said "For about a month I went round to people in the music business and asked them whether they had ever heard it before. Eventually it became like handing something in to the police. I thought if no-one claimed it after a few weeks then I could have it."
The initial title was Scrambled Eggs, McCartney said "So first of all I checked this melody out, and people said to me, 'No, it's lovely, and I'm sure it's all yours.' It took me a little while to allow myself to claim it, but then like a prospector I finally staked my claim; stuck a little sign on it and said, 'Okay, it's mine!' It had no words. I used to call it 'Scrambled Eggs'.", Lennon later added "The song was around for months and months before we finally completed it. Every time we got together to write songs for a recording session, this one would come up. We almost had it finished. Paul wrote nearly all of it, but we just couldn't find the right title. We called it 'Scrambled Eggs' and it became a joke between us. We made up our minds that only a one-word title would suit, we just couldn't find the right one. Then one morning Paul woke up and the song and the title were both there, completed. I was sorry in a way, we'd had so many laughs about it."
The song was written in Portugal, on a car trip from Lisbon to Albufeira (Algarve) in May 1965 because according to Paul McCartney he "hate to waste time and the trip was long". He was going on vacation with his girlfriend at the time Jane Asher to Bruce Welch, from The Shadows, home in the South of Portugal. The couple ended up leaving early than predicted to record the song on the Abbey Road Studios in London.
"Why she had to go I don't know
She wouldn't say
I said something wrong now I long
For yesterday"
This is the end of this Themed Week related with Songs that Marked the Humanity - to check all the chosen songs click here.
