Original subtitles

[crowd cheering]

GEORGE HARRISON: We'd like to carry on now with a song featuring just Paul,

and it's called Yesterday.

[cheering continues]

♪

♪ Yesterday ♪

♪ All my troubles seemed so far away ♪

♪ Now it looks as though they're here to stay ♪

♪ Oh, I believe ♪

♪ In yesterday ♪

♪ Suddenly ♪

♪ I'm not half the man I used to be ♪

PAUL MCCARTNEY: I dreamed this.

I was in a little top floor flat at my girlfriend's house.

I, I woke up with this tune.

I thought, "I love this tune.

"Oh, this must be from my dad's era

or just like some old tune."

So I just started

[humming Yesterday]

♪

So I had that, but I couldn't carry the piano with me.

So, you know, I, I transposed it onto a guitar.

Said to peoplefirst of all, John.

Yeah. Said, "What's this?"

You know? He said, "I don't know."

I said, "No, this tune, it must be something.

Wewe've heard it." He said, "I don't know."

So I took it to George Martin, our producer,

and George has got a wider knowledge

of particularly older songs.

So I said, "What's this?" He said, "I don't know."

I said, "Well, I've called it Yesterday."

He said, "Well, there is a song called Yesterdays."

I said, "I'm not worried about the title.

It's this melody, you know, because I, I can't have written it..."

Yeah.

'Cause I didn'tthere was no conscious effort involved.

Yeah. I just woke up and it was there.

So, you know, people later would say to me, you know,

"Do you believe in magic?"

I said, "Well, I have to."

You know? I mean, how did that happen?

Yeah. I'm sleeping.

[snoring]

[humming] Going "oh..."

I love this song. I love it.

Wake up. Now the difference is, I remembered it.

Yes.

I think a lot of people hear beautiful music in their dreams.

Yes. But don't necessarily remember it.

I wonder if you didn't have a piano there,

if you would have been able to remember it.

Yeah.

You know, waking up, and luckily, there was a piano.

Yeah, it's true. It was very lucky, yeah.

But in those days, you had to remember a lot of things... You have to! Yeah.

...because you didn'twe weren't able to record things so easily.

You weren't able to record things. At all.

There was, like, no phones to do it, obviously. Yeah.

The only things were these big Grundig tape recorders

with a green eye on them.

Which you wouldn't always have in your pocket.

[chuckles]

You wouldn't even have in your home. Really?

Because, yeah, you've got to have a bit of money to have them.

PAUL [on recording]: ♪ Why she had to go ♪

♪ I don't know, she wouldn't say ♪

♪ I said ♪

PAUL: I'd recorded it just with the guitar and vocal.

And I'd said to the guys in the band, I said,

"What are you going to do," you know?

And they all said, "No, I don't think we need to do anything.

You should just do it on your own."

So it's like the first time, I think,

I'd ever done like a solo thing.

So I just played on guitar.

And George Martin said, "For safety, let's just do one more,"

and this was the second take that they used.

And then we're sitting around listening to it.

♪ I don't know ♪

And I'm thinking...

♪ She wouldn't say ♪

"Yeah." You know, "sounds nice."

RICK RUBIN: Yeah.

And George said, he's got this idea to put strings on it.

He said, "I think it'd be great with a string quartet."

I'm going, "No." I mean...

And you guys had never used strings before this.

No. And plus we're a rockandroll band.

You don't use strings.

So George being very smart, he said, "Well, let's try it."

Yeah.

"And if you hate it, we can take it off."

So he did try it.

♪ Love was such an easy game to play ♪

♪ Now I need a place to hide away ♪

♪ Oh, I believe in yesterday ♪

PAUL: Yeah, so I loved it. I loved the session.

RICK: Right away, like right away.

When you first heard it, was it jarring or good experience?

No, it was great, you know, 'cause it's just me

with George up in the control room. Yeah.

And we go down and we sit and meet the string players,

just a little quartet. Mmhmm.

And I was really excited. Yeah.

Because we'd never done anything like this,

and it suddenly made it feel whole.

George Martin was a huge help in that... RICK: Yeah.

...in as much as he could write it,

you know, normally you, you've got a song

and you have to get an outside arranger in.

Yeah.

And then he sort of goes off into a cupboard somewhere,

and you don't quite know what it's going to be.

But with George, you knew that we read each other well enough.

The funny thing was when we were shown notation,

it didn't mean anything to us,

still doesn't really mean anything to me.

Even though I work with a classical orchestra

and do a huge orchestral piece,

I will have to talk it through with them rather than say,

"Um, the B flat in bar 14,

that should be a B, not a B flat."

You know? After going, "No, that note there should be"

Uh, you know, I know Lower or higher.

[laughs] Yeah. Lower or higher.

But, um, that's how we did it.

And my excuse, there is an excuse,

because coming from Liverpool,

there's a lot of sort of Irish Celtic influence.

And the Celts never wrote anything down.

It's the bardic tradition. Yeah.

So that's our excuse. Yeah.

Me and John used to say, "Yeah, it was the bardic tradition."

[both laugh]

When you were kids starting to write songs,

what would you hear on the radio typically?

In the early days, there wasn't much on radio.

There was just one or two cool DJs,

but we were listening to records

and it'd be a lot of R&B,

things like Ray Charles,

and Little Richard,

Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, Isley Brothers,

we'd cover all those.

♪ Ah, Kansas City ♪

♪ Going to get my baby one time ♪

♪ Yeah, yeah ♪

♪ I'm going to Kansas City ♪

♪ Going to get my baby one time ♪

♪ Yeah, yeah ♪

♪ It's just a one, two, three, four ♪

♪ Five, six, seven, eight, nine ♪

♪ Whoa ♪

PAUL: I thought I was Ray Charles, in my head.

RICK: Were records easy to come by?

Was it a popular thing at the time?

Yeah. I mean, you could go to a record shop

and you'd go in the booths and you'd listen.

The main thing was finance.

You didn't have that much money.

So you'd have to save up to buy an LP

or concert tickets.

♪ Hey, child ♪

♪ I said now, now, huh ♪

♪ Goodbye ♪

♪ Yeah, tell me, baby ♪

♪ What's been wrong with you? ♪

♪ Yeah ♪

We all started, all the bands, started off doing covers

when we were in Hamburg and in The Cavern in Liverpool,

it was pretty much all covers.

So I would do Long Tall Sally by Little Richard.

But so did one of the other groups.

There was a group called Derry and the Seniors.

And, and Derry, he could do

[imitating Little Richard]: ♪ Gonna tell Aunt Mary ♪

[normal voice]: He could do that, you know, and so it was like,

"Well, I want to do it better." Yeah.

Because if you were backstage

and you were going to be on after them... Yeah.

and you suddenly heard... ♪ Gonna tell Aunt Mary ♪

You'd go, "Ugh," you know,

"Well, I was going to do that." Yeah.

And you actually didn't have time to change,

so you would do that.

You'd go on and just hope your version was better.

I remember we used to do a threefour thing,

♪ If you gotta make a fool of somebody ♪

[humming]

♪ If you gotta make a fool of someone ♪

[humming]

The original version was by James Ray.

JAMES RAY: ♪ If you got to make a fool of somebody ♪

♪ If you gotta make a fool of someone ♪

It was a real cool little thing,

and I said, we'd never heard this beat.

[imitating drumbeats]

Uh, like a waltz, a rockandroll waltz,

so we did this.

And I remember a couple of the London bands coming up,

"Play If You Gotta Make a Fool of Somebody."

Because it was they'd not heard anything like this.

Yeah. Where would you have heard it?

On record. George had the album, James Ray album.

And he tookhe later, much later, he got,

♪ Got my mind set on you ♪ Yeah.

That was a James Ray, off that album. Wow! Wow!

So George remembered that.

But we'd have these little oddball songs that we'd put in

because we were playing so many hours. Yeah.

We didn't want to get bored. Yeah.

Just keep it interesting. We justwe could not have handled it

if we'devery set we played the same lot of songs.

So we started to think, "Well, you know what?

If we wrote stuff, they wouldn't know it."

Nobody would be able to access it. It'd be private to us.

So that's actually what started Yeah.

It wasn't a great light bulb went off.

It was sheer necessity

to have something the other bands couldn't play.

JOHN LENNON [on recording]: Quite, quite brisk. Moderate Alto Fox Trot.

MAN: [indiscernible] ...the red light's on.

JOHN: Is it? Oh, of course, I couldn't see.

One, two, three, four!

♪ And Your Bird Can Sing playing ♪

♪

♪ Tell me that you've got everything you want ♪

♪ And your bird can sing ♪

♪ But you don't get me ♪

♪ You don't get ♪

♪ Me ♪

♪

Wow.

♪

Wow.

♪

♪ When your bird is broken ♪

♪ Will it bring you down? ♪

♪ You may be awoken ♪

♪ I'll be 'round ♪

The two of them are cooking!

Like Yeah.

Cooking.

♪ And your bird can swing but you can't hear me ♪

♪ Me ♪ RICK: Yeah.

♪ You can't hear ♪

♪ Me ♪

♪

[humming]

♪

And we're listening with the drums out,

and it's still fullon cooking. Yeah.

It's good, innit? Yeah.

Wow. Well, that's the thing.

You can hear the excitement of us just making stuff up.

For sure. For sure. Can't you?

It's just like, "Yeah. Let's do that." "Oh, okay."

You know? It, it sounds thrilling.

Like, and I think what it is,

is you guys were excited making it. Mm, mm.

And we get to feel your excitement. Yeah.

You canIt's a human feeling that's in that performance.

Yeah.

Clearly, these guys are going for it. Yeah.

Really. Yeah. And you feel it.

Because it all had to be done so quickly.

Yeah, it's contagious, you know. Like, the energy is contagious.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

♪ And Your Bird Can Sing continues ♪

♪

It hasTo me, it has a Celtic flavor.

I don't know why that is.

Well, you know, I mean, we're Liverpool boys,

and they say Liverpool is the capital of Ireland.

So it's likely that there's all those influences, you know.

But we would just make up the solo, in this case,

and just learn the harmony and the solo and then play the two live.

SoBut technically, this isn't what you think of as the song.

This was a musical choice you made in the studio.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. The song would have been more

♪

♪ You tell me that you heard every sound there is ♪

♪ And your bird can swing but you can't hear me ♪

Yeah. Really straightforward.

♪ You can't hear ♪

[singing along] ♪ Me ♪

♪

Yeah. This is more traditional until we get to

Yeah! The solo, yeah. Yeah.

♪

♪ song ends ♪

Yeah. It's amazing.

Good group. [both chuckle]

Was there ever a time where you guys would sing unison

as opposed to harmony?

Yeah. Always on the early records.

That was the thing because we'd written the song together.

Yeah.

And we'd sing it together.

Just, just kind of remember it and just sing it.

And George Martin would say, "Who's the lead singer?"

We'd say, "Well, me and John." Yeah.

So it was like early double tracking.

Yeah, yeah.

And also, it might just have been

that both of us wanted to do the vocal.

Yeah.

So there's only one answer to that, both do it.

[Paul laughs] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Would you sit down to write a song

or... does it just happen?

With John and I, we'd sit down. Yeah.

And you would know, "I'm coming over tomorrow at noon.

We're going to meet at this time and let's write."

Yeah, yeah. And we'll just write something.

♪ To lead a better life ♪

♪ I need my love to be here ♪

♪ Here ♪

♪ Making each day of the year ♪

♪ Changing my life with the wave of her hand ♪

♪ Nobody can deny ♪

♪ That there's something there ♪

I wrote this song while waiting for John to get up.

I used to go out to his house to write.

He wasn't always ready, shall we say.

So I'm just sitting out with my guitar

and started working on this one.

And then when John had come,

I said, "Look, I've got this." "Great, let's finish it up."

And so we'd finish it up together.

This was a tune I was always very pleased with, you know.

People say, "Which is your favorite tune of yours?"

Yeah.

And I'm kind of tempted to say Yesterday because it arrived so magically.

But I like this one. I like Here, There, and Everywhere.

And in fact, John liked this one.

And John was not one to praise.

Yeah.

Because, you know, we've talked about him being a little bit shielded.

Yeah.

You know, he just wouldn't praise anything unless he really liked it.

After we'd made this record,

we were going to film in Austria for the film Help.

Yes. [Paul mutters]

And me and John shared a ski chalet,

so we were taking our boots off and stuff as we were playing the album.

I remember him saying, "Oh, I like this one."

And you know what? That was, like, enough.

Yeah.

That was a great praise coming from John.

♪ ...everywhere ♪

♪ Knowing that love is to share ♪

It's pushing the bass notes too.

Yeah. And the guitar.

Cool.

♪ That love never dies ♪

Incredible harmony.

[singing along] ♪ Watching her eyes ♪

Incredible.

♪ And hoping I'm always there ♪

♪ I will be there ♪

♪ And everywhere ♪

♪ Here, there ♪

♪ And everywhere ♪

♪ song ends ♪

RICK: Did you take turns, like John would do a song

and then you would do a song and back and forth,

that's how it would work? PAUL: Yeah. Often. Yeah.

It would be his song, my song, his song, my song.

RICK: Yeah.

I mean, I say this a lot, but as a Beatles' fan now,

it is astounding to me

that, I think, all in all,

I think John and I wrote just short of 300 songs,

and every session, we finished the song.

You'd think that there'd be at least ten

where we just couldn't get it.

But there was something about the work ethic

or just theknowing each other so well,

that we would spur each other on

and we just didn't like to leave it.

"We haven't done it. We haven't finished it."

So we would, we would go till we, till we finished stuff,

um... and we did.

We pretty much did.

It's amazing.

It was, it was great. you know, I say, I look back,

at the time I was just working with this bloke called John.

Yeah.

Now I look back, and I was working with John Lennon.

♪ A Day in the Life playing ♪

I knew this was like a, a big song

from the minute John brought it in

and we started working on it.

♪ music intensifying ♪

♪

♪ piano music playing ♪

Yeah.

So I mean, that was like, I'd been, by that time,

this is, this is quite late in The Beatles.

And I'd been listening to, like, a lot of avant garde music.

Yeah. I was in London.

I was hanging out,

and, you know, we're getting quite artsy

and going to a lot of arts exhibitions.

And I was, you know, reading about crazy composers,

like John Cage. Yeah.

The concepts were like, wow, very freeing.

John Cage and Water Walk.

♪

[pops]

[hisses]

[clatters]

[audience laughs, cheers]

♪

[quacks]

PAUL: I don't want to do that,

but I love the idea that he did it.

I said to George Martin,

"George, we need a symphony orchestra."

And George originally said, "I don't thinkWe don't need that many."

He said, "It's a full symphony, which is like over 40 people or something."

I said, "Yeah, this song, we, we, we want it."

So then the original thing that I put down was,

from a certain point,

all the musicians were allowed to break free.

And now these are session musicians.

They're not used to doing this kind of stuff,

and it kind of frightens them a bit.

So I sort of said, "Okay, here's the instruction.

I said, "Each instrument,

"you start on your lowest note

"and you're going to reach your highest note,

"but you go at your own speed.

"So if you want, you can go,

[trilling] and you're done." Yeah.

"Or you can go... [humming]

and you can just play with it."

The strings wouldn't really move without each other.

They all went... [humming]

They're following the first guy.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

♪ music intensifying ♪

Whereas the brass, the trumpets, you'll notice they're a bit more free.

They're a bit more, the lads

Yeah. They tend to have that personality in real life.

Their personality showed. [laughs]

Let's listen to the It's very exciting doing that piece of

Beautiful.

PAUL: So this, uh, John brought it in.

RICK: Yeah. PAUL: Guitar and vocals.

♪ Day in the Life playing ♪

The Kenwood basses together support it. Yeah.

JOHN [on recording]: ♪ I read the news today, oh, boy ♪

He's working hard.

Moving again.

♪ About a lucky man ♪

♪ Who made the grade ♪

♪ And though the news was rather sad ♪

♪ Well, I just had to laugh ♪

♪ I saw the photograph ♪

♪ He blew his mind out in a car ♪

♪ He didn't notice that the lights had changed ♪

Yeah.

It's, it's just so interesting that the

Listening to the vocal and the guitar,

it's a very laidback, dreamy energy. Mmm.

Yeah.

And then the bass comes in and it's

And the drums. Yeah. And the drums.

But it's driving in an entirely different direction

than the song might suggest.

Yeah.

You know, it's great that I felt that freedom.

Absolutely. Absolutely.

You know, the band was a very free band. Yeah.

We would allow each other pretty much anything.

Yeah.

Unless it was, like, really stunk and it was, like, "Oh no, forget it."

Um, then we'd all gang up on whoever that was and stop it.

Yeah.

PAUL [on recording]: ♪ Found my way downstairs and drank a cup ♪

♪ And looking up ♪

And this is my childhood experiences.

♪ Found my coat and grabbed my hat ♪

You know, going to school. Oh.

[singing along] ♪ In seconds flat ♪

I used to go to school on the bus, you know.

♪ Found my way upstairs and had a smoke ♪

Maybe I didn't have a smoke on the way to school.

Yeah.

But Yeah.

For the purposes of the song, yeah, exactly, yeah.

Poetic license. Yep.

♪ vocalizing ♪

Was thatDid you write this piece to go with what John brought in,

or did you already have this?

No. I already had the little middle thing. Yeah.

Is this the first time you guys put two songs together?

Could be.

It makes it new music.

If you just started with what would ordinarily accompany

that kind of song, Yeah.

it would be a ballady, a folky ballad.

Mm. Yeah.

You know? But to hear it come

in this other direction, unexpected...

Yeah.

it feels like we've never heard music like this before by anybody,

you know, that's the thing about it.

It's like it takes a traditionally written song

and turns it into, essentially, avant garde music,

even using traditional instruments.

Yeah. Normally, you know, it sort of worked like that.

You could get away with a lot of free playing.

♪ piano music playing ♪

RICK: Oh, piano. Who's playing piano, do you know?

That's got to be me. [Rick laughs]

It does sound avant garde as well.

♪

Ha! Wow.

♪ sustained note ♪ Boom!

And then this piano end, this [plays note]

I'd realized, I'd noticed that with the piano,

how long,

if you hold down a loud pedal on the piano,

how long the chord lasts.

And I just do it like a party piece with friends.

Yeah. I say, "Listen to this."

♪ plays note ♪

♪

I brought the idea in, "Hey, man, it goes on forever.

We should do this at the end of a song, where it's justhave it go on."

And of course, George Martin, being a clever producer,

magnified the idea.

And he took the raw thing that I'd showed him.

♪

George then added another chord on top of it. Yeah.

But it goes on forever.

A really long time, and if you listen,

it almost sounds like it changes.

Yeah, you start to hear a little harmonica and things.

Yeah. You know, there's the magic again.

♪ piano note continues ♪

♪

♪ Oh yeah ♪

♪ Alright ♪

♪ Are you gonna be in my dreams ♪

♪ Tonight? ♪

♪

♪ Love you ♪

♪ Love you ♪

♪ Love you ♪

♪ Love you ♪

♪ Love you ♪

♪ Love you ♪

♪ Love you ♪

♪ Love you ♪

♪ Love you ♪

♪ Love you ♪

♪ Love you ♪

♪ Love you ♪

♪ Love you ♪

♪ Love you ♪

♪ Love you ♪

♪ Love you ♪

♪ Love you ♪

♪ Love you ♪

♪ Love you ♪

♪ Love you ♪

♪ Love you ♪

♪ Love you ♪

♪ Love you ♪

♪ Love you ♪

♪ piano music playing ♪

♪ And in the end ♪

♪ The love you take ♪

♪ Is equal to the love ♪

♪ You make ♪

♪