The Remarkable Story Behind One of the World’s Best Loved Songs
‘Scrambled eggs, oh my baby, how I love your legs.’
If I were to tell you that these were the original lyrics to one of the greatest songs of the 20th century, recorded by artists as diverse as Elvis Presley, Marvin Gaye, Billie Eilish and Aretha Franklin - as well as 2200 others - you’d probably wonder what I’d been smoking.
Yet these are the original lyrics to ‘Yesterday’ by the Beatles.
The story of how this much loved song came into being is not just a remarkable one, it’s an almost perfect template for the creative process.
Paul McCartney was staying at the family home of his girlfriend Jane Asher when he awoke one morning with a song stuck in his head. He’d heard it in a dream and it seemed so familiar that his first thought was to try and work out who it was by. Fred Astaire? Cole Porter? Sinatra?
Fortunately, there was a piano in the room, so Paul, still bleary with sleep, first established the chord sequence and — maybe mindful of his breakfast — jotted down those placeholder lyrics about scrambled eggs. Later that day he met John Lennon and asked him if he knew who the song was by. But John — of course — had no idea. Nor did Paul’s friend Alma Coogan, normally an encyclopaedia of musical…
