The Beatles, album "Yesterday and Today"

Studio albums - Studio Capitol Records - 1966

Yesterday and Today

1. 02:28 Drive My Car (John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 13.10.1965

   GEORGE 1977: 'If Paul had written a song, he'd learn all the parts and then come in the studio and say 'Do this.' He'd never give you the opportunity to come out with something.
   But on 'Drive My Car' I just played the line, which is really like a lick off 'Respect,' you know, the Otis Redding version.
   And I played the line on the guitar and Paul laid that with me on the bass.
   We laid that track down like that.
   We played the lead part later on top of it.'

   JOHN 1980: 'His (Paul's) song, with contributions from me.'

   PAUL circa-1994: 'This is one of the songs where John and I came nearest to having a dry session.
   The lyrics I brought in were something to do with golden rings, which are always fatal (to songwriting).
   'Rings' is fatal anyway, 'rings' always rhymes with things and I knew it was a bad idea.
   I came in and I said, 'These aren't good lyrics but it's a good tune.' Well, we tried, and John couldn't think of anything, and we tried, and eventually it was, 'Oh let's leave it, let's get off this one.' 'No, no.
   We can do it, we can do it.' So we had a break… then we came back to it, and somehow it became 'drive-my-car' instead of 'gol-den-rings,' and then it was wonderful – because this nice tongue-in-cheek idea came.'

2. 03:00 I'm Only Sleeping (John Lennon – John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 06.05.1966

   JOHN 1980: 'It's got backwards guitars… that's me dreaming my life away.'

   PAUL circa-1994: 'It was a nice idea – 'There's nothing wrong with it.
   I'm not being lazy, I'm only sleeping, I'm yawning, I'm meditating, I'm having a lay-in.' The luxury of all that was what it was all about.
   The song was co-written but from John's original idea.'

3. 02:43 Nowhere Man (John Lennon – John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 22.10.1965

   JOHN 1980: 'I'd spent five hours that morning trying to write a song that was meaningful and good, and I finally gave up and lay down.
   Then 'Nowhere Man' came, words and music… the whole damn thing, as I lay down.
   So letting it go is what the whole game is.
   You put your finger on it, it slips away, right? You know, you turn the lights on and the cockroaches run away.
   You can never grasp them.'

   PAUL 1984: 'That was John after a night out, with dawn coming up.
   I think at that point in his life, he was a bit wondering where he was going.'

   PAUL 1988: 'I remember we wanted very treble-y guitars – which they are – they're among the most treble-y guitars I've ever heard on record.
   The engineer said, 'Alright, I'll put full treble on it,' and we said, 'That's not enough.' He said, 'But that's all I've got.' And we replied, 'Well, put that through another lot of faders and put full treble up on that.
   And if that's not enough we'll go through another lot of faders.' They said, 'We don't do that,' and we would say, 'Just try it… if it sounds crappy we'll lose it, but it might just sound good.' You'd then find, 'Oh it worked,' and they were secretly glad because they had been the engineer who put three times the allowed value of treble on a song.
   I think they were quietly proud of those things.'

4. 02:14 Doctor Robert (John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 19.04.1966

   JOHN 1972: 'Me.
   I think Paul helped with the middle.'

   JOHN 1980: 'Another of mine.
   Mainly about drugs and pills.
   It was about myself.
   I was the one that carried all the pills on tour… later on the roadies did it.
   We just kept them in our pockets, loose, in case of trouble.'

   PAUL circa-1994: 'John and I thought that was a funny idea – the fantasy doctor who would fix you up by giving you drugs.
   It was a parody on that idea.'

5. 02:05 Yesterday (Paul McCartney – John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 14.06.1965

6. 02:30 Act Naturally (Voni Morrison and Johnny Russell) - 17.06.1965

7. 02:00 And Your Bird Can Sing (John Lennon – John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 26.04.1966

   JOHN 1972: 'Another horror.'

   JOHN 1980: 'Another of my throwaways.'

   GEORGE 1987: 'I think it was Paul and me, or maybe John and me, playing (guitar) in harmony – quite a complicated little line that goes through the middle-eight.'

   PAUL 1995: 'One of my favorites on the Anthology is, 'And Your Bird Can Sing,' which is a nice song, but this take of it was one we couldn't use at the time.
   John and I got a fit of the giggles while we were doing the double-track.
   You couldn't have released it at the time.
   But now you can.
   Sounds great just hearing us lose it on a take.'

8. 02:22 If I Needed Someone (George Harrison) - 18.10.1965

   GEORGE 1980: ''If I Needed Someone' is like a million other songs written around a D chord.
   If you move your finger about you get various little melodies.
   That guitar line, or variations on it, is found in many a song, and it amazes me that people still find new permutations of the same notes.'

9. 02:15 We Can Work It Out (John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 29.10.1965

   JOHN 1980: 'Paul did the first half, I did the middle-eight.
   But you've got Paul writing, 'We can work it out/ We can work it out' real optimistic, you know.
   And me, impatient, 'Life is very short and there's no time/ for fussing and fighting, my friend.''

   PAUL circa-1994: 'I wrote it as more of an up-tempo thing, country and western.
   I had the basic idea, the title, had a couple of verses… then I took it to John to finish it off and we wrote the middle together, which is nice – 'Life is very short/ And there's no time for fussing and fighting my friend.' Then it was George Harrison's idea to put the middle into waltz time, like a german waltz… The lyrics might have been personal.
   It is often a good way to talk to someone or to work your thoughts out.
   It saves you going to a psychiatrist, you allow yourself to say what you might not say in person.'

10. 02:48 What Goes On (Richard Starkey, John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 04.11.1965

    RINGO 1966: 'I contributed about five words to 'What Goes On.' (laughs) And I haven't done a thing since!'

    JOHN 1972: 'A very early song of mine.
    Ringo and Paul wrote a new middle-eight together when we recorded it.'

    JOHN 1980: 'That was an early Lennon, written before the Beatles when we were the Quarrymen or something like that.
    And resurrected with a middle-eight thrown in, probably with Paul's help, to give Ringo a song… and also to use the bits, because I never liked to waste anything.'

11. 02:49 Day Tripper (John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 16.10.1965

    JOHN 1972: 'Me.
    But I think Paul helped with the verse.'

    JOHN 1980: 'That's mine.
    Including the guitar lick, the guitar break, and the whole bit.
    It's just a rock 'n roll song.
    Day trippers are people who go on a day trip, right? Usually on a ferry boat or somethng.
    But it was kind of – you know, you're just a weekend hippie.
    Get it?'

    PAUL circa-1994: 'Acid was coming on the scene, and we'd often do these songs about 'the girl who thought she was it.' Mainly the impetus for that used to come from John – I think John met quite a few girls who thought they were it… But this was just a tongue-in-cheek song about someone who was a day tripper, a sunday painter, a sunday driver, somebody who was committed only in part to the idea.
    Where we saw ourselves as full-time trippers, fully committed drivers, she was just a day tripper.
    That was a co-written effort – we were both making it all up but I would give John the main credit.'