How Jimmy Fallon Got Paul McCartney to Finish His Original Version of ‘Yesterday’
“Yesterday is one of The Beatles’ most iconic songs. However, the version Beatles fans know originally included different lyrics. Paul McCartney chose to leave these words out of “Yesterday,” but late-night host Jimmy Fallon was able to convince the former Beatle to finish his original version years later.
Paul McCartney used ‘scrambled eggs’ as dummy words to remember the tune of ‘Yesterday’
In an interview with BBC, Paul McCartney revealed how he came up with “Yesterday.” The song is labeled as The Beatles track, but it really belongs to McCartney. The singer said he discovered the tune for it and the chords. To memorize it, he put in some dummy words that would register the tune to his memory.
“I fell out of bed and the piano was right there just to the side,” McCartney said. “I just had this tune. And now I had some chords. And to solidify it in my memory, I blocked it out with some dummy words. ‘Scrambled eggs. Oh my baby, how I love your legs. Scrambled eggs.’ Using dummy lyrics wasnt something I did a lot.”
Jimmy Fallon convinced McCartney to finish his original version of ‘Yesterday’
In an interview with Sirius XM, Fallon talked about how he got McCartney to perform a version of “Yesterday” that used “scrambled eggs.” The late-night host said he met McCarthy and pitched him the idea, with additional lyrics to make a full song out of nonsense words.
“I just go up, and I said, ‘Hey, Paul, ’ and I can already tell he doesn’t want to do it. He says, ‘Hey, Jimmy. How are you? I heard you have an idea,” and I go, ‘Yeah, you know, I was thinking ‘Yesterday,’ he goes, ‘Yeah, I know that song.’ I go, ‘I know you do.’ So, I’m already intimidated. ‘What if we wrote it as scrambled eggs and finished the song and he goes ‘Let me hear it. Can you sing it?’ Now I gotta sing to Paul McCartney the song he made famous. He pulls out the guitar that he actually wrote ‘Yesterday’ on in his dressing room and I’m like, ‘What is going on?’
The two then began to sing a song about scrambled eggs in the tune of “Yesterday.” They also added a second verse that was about waffle fries.
McCartney says the song is about losing his mother
Many believe “Yesterday” is a song about Paul McCartney losing his mother to cancer eight years prior. Mccartney initially denied this, but later he came to believe the song unconsciously was about that. All the grief he felt came to be embodied in “Yesterday.”
“Some people find it hard to believe that I was 22 when I wrote ‘Yesterday,’” McCartney told BBC. “I’d lost my mother about eight years before that. It’s been suggested to me that it’s a losing my mother song, to which I’ve always said ‘No, I don’t believe so.’ But, you know, the more I think about it, I can see that might’ve been part of the background.”
“The unconsciousness behind the song after all. It was so strange, the loss of our mother to cancer was simply not discussed. We barely knew what cancer was, but I’m not so surprised that the whole experienced surfaced in this son. Where sweetness competes with a pain you can’t quite describe.”
