Paul McCartney has explained a line in the Beatles song “Yesterday.” Although the ballad was released in 1965, the singer had never revealed the inspiration behind it.
On his podcast “A Life in Lyrics” the musician referred to the verse “I said something wrong, now I long for yesterday”. This excerpt from the bridge appears twice in the song. Paul McCartney shared that the phrase was inspired by a conversation with his mother. This took place a few years before he wrote the song.
Paul McCartney mocked his mother’s dialect
“Sometimes you can only appreciate things in retrospect,” McCartney said. “I remember that day very clearly, feeling very ashamed because I had embarrassed my mother.” He went on to tell the story behind that statement. It was about dialects and the pronunciation of certain words. “We were in the yard and she said ‘posh,'” McCartney recalled. “Posh” refers to a genteel sociolect of British English, the language of the “upper class”. Paul McCartney explained: “She had Irish roots and was a nurse, so she didn’t speak like she was from the street. So that was fine if we thought the way they spoke was noble. She was a bit Welsh too – her aunt Dilys was from Wales.”
Here Paul McCartney played the song live before the USA release:
Then came the part of the conversation that Paul McCartney remembers as embarrassing: “She said something along the lines of ‘Paul, will you ask him if he’s going’.” The musician then claims to have corrected his mother’s pronunciation. He said this again: “‘Arsk! Arsk! It’s asking, mum.’ She was a little ashamed. I remember thinking to myself later, ‘I wish I’d never said that.’ That stuck. When she died, I was still like, ‘Oh fuck, I wish…'” His mother died when he was 14, in 1956.
The Beatles: Four biopics planned
Paul McCartney’s early years are sure to play a role in a number of planned biopics. Four films about the Beatles are to be made under director Sam Mendes. Each one should focus on a different band member. Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, as well as the families of the late Beatles John Lennon and George Harrison, have agreed to the project. The films are scheduled to be released in 2027.