Paul McCartney and Jane Asher on holiday in Portugal

On 27 May 1965, McCartney and Asher flew to Lisbon for a holiday in Albufeira, Algarve, and he borrowed an acoustic guitar from Bruce Welch, in whose house they were staying, and completed the work on “Yesterday”.[13] The song was offered as a demo to Chris Farlowe before the Beatles recorded it, but he turned it down as he considered it “too soft”.[14] In a March 1967 interview with Brian Matthew, McCartney said that Lennon came up with the word that would replace “scrambled eggs”: Yesterday.[15]

At the request of The Beatles’ manager, Brian Epstein, Paul McCartney and Jane Asher had to shorten their holidays in Portugal, to come back to London on the day of the announcement, so that all four Beatles were in the country.

All The Beatles flew off on their holidays. Paul and Jane went to Portugal where they stayed in Bruce Welch’s villa in Albufera. Paul wrote the lyrics to ‘Yesterday’ in the car on the way from the airport and completed them over the next two weeks. Paul: “I fell out of bed. I had a piano by my bedside and I must have dreamed it because I tumbled out of bed and put my hands on the piano keys and I had a tune in my head. It was just all there, a complete thing. I couldn’t believe it, it came too easy. In fact I didn’t believe I’d written it. I thought maybe I’d heard it before, it was some other tune, and I went round for weeks playing the chords of the song for people, asking them, ‘Is this like something? I think I’ve written it.’ And people would say, ‘No, it’s not like anything else. But it’s good …”

Miles, Barry. The Beatles Diary Volume 1: The Beatles Years (Kindle Locations 5087-5094). Music Sales. Kindle Edition.

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The Beatles Diary Volume 1: The Beatles Years

With greatly expanded text, this is the most revealing and frank personal 30-year chronicle of the group ever written. Insider Barry Miles covers the Beatles story from childhood to the break-up of the group.

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