Scrambled Egg

Paul McCartney…I just don’t know what else to say about this amazing talent and wonderful human being.

 

Like me, you’re probably saying to yourself “where has the summer gone”.  Here we are in mid- August – schools reopening, kids off to college, talk of football training camp and fewer and fewer days for me to think I can sneak off and get in “a quick nine” with my buds.  When I was younger, the summer never really had days or weeks to it – we just woke up, grabbed our bikes and headed out, hardly worrying how many days “were left”.  That usually ended when Mom made us go school clothes shopping – ugh.  That “going to the mall” torture has certainly not carried over into my adult life – Jackie knows the girls love to hear that Dad is going shopping, as it usually means everybody is getting something! Especially at Costco and my beloved “samples”!  Today marks a special date in music history, when The Beatles released their hit song “Yesterday” to the American public– you know – “yesterday, all my troubles seem so far away” – when things we’re easy, carefree (and Covid Free).  I jumped online, and found some fun history on the song, the group, and the endearing legacy of Paul’s solo song.  Click on the link to enjoy the music, courtesy of You Tube, and harken back to some easier times by the group, and the magic of creating a classic.  And be sure to get “nine” in soon, as the window is closing fast.  Thanks to writer Paul McGuinness from udiscovermusic.com. Enjoy!

Yesterday sound track

Yesterday (from back in the day) (With Spoken Word Intro / Live From Studio 50, New York City / 1965)

As the most-covered song in The Beatles’ catalogue, “Yesterday”’s origins have been pored over many times. It was written at 57 Wimpole Street, London, where Paul lived in attic rooms at the top of the family home of his girlfriend, the English actress Jane Asher. As Paul has testified many times over, he wrote it in his sleep: “I woke up with a lovely tune in my head. I thought, That’s great, I wonder what that is? There was an upright piano next to me, to the right of the bed by the window. I got out of bed, sat at the piano, found G, found F sharp minor seventh – and that leads you through then to B to E minor, and finally back to G.”

Paul spent some time not quite believing that he had in fact written it. He would play it to everyone he met, asking if they recognized it, thinking maybe it was some obscure old standard. Of course, nobody did. “Eventually it became like handing something into the police. I thought that if no one claimed it after a few weeks then I would have it.”

As to when this all happened, however, opinions are divided. Some, including Paul’s friend and biographer Barry Miles, claim that it was written just a few weeks before it was recorded. John Lennon, however, remembered the song kicking around for months: “Paul wrote nearly all of it, but we just couldn’t find the right title. Every time we got together to write songs or for a recording session, this would come up. We called it ‘Scrambled Egg’ and it became a joke between us. We almost had it finished when we made up our minds that only a one-word title would suit and, believe me, 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 know it sounds like a fairy tale, but it is the plain truth.”

George Martin’s memory was that the song had existed in some form or another for well over a year: “I first heard ‘Yesterday’ when it was known as ‘Scrambled Egg’ – Paul’s working title – at the George V Hotel in Paris in January 1964.”

Paul was still working on it when they were filming their second movie, Help!, in 1965, as director Richard Lester recalls: “At some time during that period, we had a piano on one of the stages and he was playing this ‘Scrambled Egg’ all the time. It got to the point where I said to him, ‘If you play that bloody song any longer, I’ll have the piano taken off stage. Either finish it or give it up!’”

Finish it he did. After completing filming, Paul and Jane took a holiday at the Portuguese villa of their friend, Bruce Welch of The Shadows. It was on the 180-mile journey from the airport that Paul finally nailed it. “It was a long hot, dusty drive,” Paul recalled. “Jane was sleeping but I couldn’t, and when I’m sitting that long in a car I either manage to get to sleep or my brain starts going. I remember mulling over the tune ‘Yesterday,’ and suddenly getting these little one-word openings to the verse.

“I started to develop the idea: ‘Scram-ble-d eggs, da-da da.’ I knew the syllables had to match the melody, obviously: ‘da-da da,’ ‘yes-ter-day,’ ‘sud-den-ly,’ ‘fun-il-ly,’ ‘mer-il-ly,’ and ‘yes-ter-day,’ that’s good. ‘All my troubles seemed so far away.’ It’s easy to rhyme those ‘a’s: say, nay, today, away, play, stay, there’s a lot of rhymes and those fall in quite easily, so I gradually pieced it together from that journey. ‘Sud-den-ly,’ and ‘b’ again, another easy rhyme: e, me, tree, flea, we, and I had the basis of it.”

Welch confirmed this: “I was packing to leave and Paul asked me if I had a guitar. He’d apparently been working on the lyrics as he drove to Albufeira from the airport at Lisbon. He borrowed my guitar and started playing the song we all now know as ‘Yesterday.’”

Once the song was taped that Monday in June 1965, The Beatles and their producer, George Martin, began to wonder what to do with it. Martin remembers saying to 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’s own version differs slightly, in that he claims he was initially against the idea, that they were a rock’n’roll band. But he trusted Martin, and the pair worked on the arrangement together at Martin’s house.

With their string quartet arrangement recorded in an afternoon session on June 17, “Yesterday” was complete. This was the first time that a Beatles song had been augmented by such an ensemble, but it wouldn’t be the last.

“Yesterday” was included on the Help! album in the UK (though it didn’t feature in the movie), in summer 1965, and given a US single release on September 13 that year. Spending four weeks at No.1 (the song did not receive a UK single release until March 8, 1976, when it made No.8 in the charts), it would go on to be arguably The Beatles’ most famous song. So much so, that John Lennon remarked in a 1980 interview, “I go to restaurants and the groups always play ‘Yesterday.’ Yoko and I even signed a guy’s violin in Spain after he played us ‘Yesterday.’ He couldn’t understand that I didn’t write the song. But I guess he couldn’t have gone from table to table playing ‘I Am The Walrus.’”

Enjoy a full history of the song at http://www.beatlesebooks.com/yesterday

 

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DO YOU LIKE CONTESTS?
Me, too.

As you may know the Kowalski Heat Treating logo finds its way
into the visuals of my Friday posts.
I.  Love.  My.  Logo.
One week there could be three logos.
The next week there could be 15 logos.
And sometimes the logo is very small or just a partial logo showing.
But there are always logos in some of the pictures.
So, I challenge you, my beloved readers, to count them and send me a
quick email with the total number of logos in the Friday post.
On the following Tuesday I’ll pick a winner from the correct answers
and send that lucky person some great KHT swag.
So, start counting and good luck!  
Oh, and the logos at the very top header don’t count.
Got it? Good.  :-))))
Have fun!!

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Just let it be.

(top) Paul on the left, his mother Mary and brother Michael.  (row 2 l) Paul and his dog Martha;  (row 2 r) Paul taking a selfie…in the mirror.  (row 3) Paul in leather (row 4) Paul in bathrobe on the fence with the kids in Wales. Photo by Linda McCartney. (row 5) Cool stage photo. (row 6 l) Another cool stage photo. (row 6 r) Teenage Paul.  (bottom) Sir Paul with his fashion designer daughter Stella. 

 

Ever find yourself singing out loud in the car?  I’ve done it more times than I can remember, especially when I’m by myself. (Jackie and the girls let me know when it’s time to stop) USUALLY AFTER THE FIRST NOTE!!!.  The other day I was singing one of my favorite Beatles songs – Let It Be.  It’s one of those songs you just never get tired of.  I did some trivia digging and found some fun stuff about the original, the recording session and the interpretations of the song by other artists. Here’s a link to this great classic celebrating 50 years of entertaining us.  Enjoy!

Push the sound up and listen to Let It Be remastered in 2009 HERE.
Did you know that Aretha Franklin recorded and released Let It Be before the Beatles?? I didn’t either. Listen to the 2019 remastered recording HERE. It’s really amazing!

 

  1. Paul McCartney wrote this song, inspired by his mother, Mary, who died when he was 14. Many people thought “Mother Mary” was a biblical reference when they heard it.
  2. According to McCartney, this is a very positive song, owing to its inspiration. One night when he was paranoid and anxious, he had a dream where he saw his mother, who had been dead for ten years or so – she came to him in his time of trouble, speaking words of wisdom that brought him much peace when he needed it. It was this sweet dream that got him to begin writing the song.
  3. He told the story to James Corden when he appeared on his Carpool Karaoke segment. “She was reassuring me, saying, ‘It’s going to be OK, just let it be.’ I felt so great. She gave me the positive words. I woke up and thought, ‘What was that? She said ‘Let It Be.’ That’s good.’ So I wrote the song ‘Let It Be’ out of positivity.
  4. Since Let It Be was The Beatles last album, it made an appropriate statement about leaving problems behind and moving on in life. The album was supposed to convey an entirely different message. It was going to be called “Get Back,” and they were going to record it in front of an audience on live TV, with another TV special showing them practicing the songs in the studio. It was going to be The Beatles getting back to their roots and playing unadorned live music instead of struggling in the studio like they did for The White Album.
  5. When they started putting the album together, it became clear the project wouldn’t work and George Harrison left the sessions. When he returned, they abandoned the live idea and decided to use the TV footage as their last movie. While the movie was being edited, The Beatles recorded and released Abbey Road, then broke up. Eventually, Phil Spector was given the tapes and asked to produce the album, which was released months after The Beatles broke up. By then, it was clear “Let It Be” would be a better name than “Get Back.”
  6. Many have been moved by the song on a deeply personal level, including Corden, who broke down when they sang it together. “I remember my granddad, who was a musician, sitting me down and telling me, ‘I’m going to play you the best song you’ve ever heard,’ and he played me that,” he said. “If my granddad was here right now he’d get an absolute kick out of this.” McCartney replied, “He is.”
  7. John Lennon hated this song because of it’s apparent Christian overtones. He made the comment before recording it, “And now we’d like to do Hark The Angels Come.” Lennon saw to it that “Maggie Mae,” a song about a Liverpool prostitute, followed it on the album.
  8. You’ll hear different guitar parts on different versions on this song, as there were several overdubs of the solo. On April 30, 1969, George Harrison overdubbed a new guitar solo over the best take from the January 31, 1969 session. Harrison overdubbed another one on January 4, 1970, but there’s a possibility that it was actually McCartney on that overdub. The first overdub solo was used for the original single release, and the second overdub solo was used for the original album release. The Let It Be… Naked version is the one from the movie.
  9. The Beatles weren’t the first to release this song – Aretha Franklin was. The Queen of Soul recorded it in December 1969, and it was released on her album This Girl’s In Love With You in January 1970, two months before The Beatles released their version (she also covered The Beatles “Eleanor Rigby” on that album).
  10. Aretha recorded it with the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, who were a group of musicians that owned their own studio in Alabama, but would travel to New York to record with Aretha. David Hood, who was their bass player, told us that Paul McCartney sent demos of the song to Atlantic Records (Franklin’s label) and to the Muscle Shoals musicians. Said Hood, “I kick myself for not grabbing that demo. Because I think they probably dropped it in the garbage. Our version was different. We changed it a little bit from his demo, where their version is different from that demo and from Aretha’s version, as well. Just slightly, but little things.”
  11. In April 1987, this was released as a charity single in aid of the The Sun newspaper’s Zeebrugge ferry disaster fund. Featuring Paul McCartney, Mark Knopfler, Kate Bush, Boy George and many others, it was called “Ferry Aid” and spent 3 weeks at #1 in the UK.
  12. Sesame Street used this with the title changed to “Letter B.” The lyrics were changed to list words that begin with B.
  13. This was the first Beatles song released in The Soviet Union. The single made it there in 1972.
  14. The album had the largest initial sales in US record history up to that time: 3.7 million advance orders.
  15. This song was played at Linda McCartney’s funeral.
  16. On July 18, 2008, Paul McCartney joined Billy Joel onstage at Shea Stadium in New York and played this as the final song of the final concert at Shea. As a member of The Beatles, McCartney played the first stadium rock concert when they performed at Shea on August 15, 1965.
  17. According to Ian Macdonald’s book Revolution in the Head, McCartney wrote “Let It Be” and “The Long and Winding Road” on the same day.
  18. John Legend and Alicia keys performed this song on the tribute special The Beatles: The Night That Changed America, which aired in 2014 exactly 50 years after the group made their famous appearance on Ed Sullivan Show. Legend introduced it as “a song that has comforted generations with its beauty and its message.”

For more trivia, visit:  https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0065976/trivia