Yesterday

McCartney wrote it and the credit went to Lennon-McCartney. He has said the melody came to him in a dream at the Asher family home in Wimpole Street. It was known for a while as "Scrambled Eggs", the lyric came together on a trip to Portugal in May 1965, and he played the tune around asking if anyone knew it, as if handing something in to the police.

He recorded it on 14 June 1965, alone on guitar tuned down a whole tone and singing, in two takes. The string quartet was added on 17 June, with Tony Gilbert and Sidney Sax on violins, Kenneth Essex on viola and Francisco Gabarro on cello. Martin produced and Norman Smith engineered. Lennon said it was really a solo song.

Reach

It was number one in the United States for four weeks from 9 October 1965 and won the Ivor Novello award for outstanding song of 1965. BMI lists it as the third most-performed song of the twentieth century, with about seven million performances. Guinness counted 1,600 covers by January 1986. Matt Monro's version reached the British top ten. The band played it in G on the 1965 and 1966 tours, including the last concert at Candlestick Park, and McCartney has played it live since the Wings Over the World tour of 1975.