Sir Paul McCartney has shared the painful childhood memory behind the lyrics to Beatles song Yesterday.
The 81-year-old music legend has opened up about how his past inspired his music by revealing a particular line in the band’s 1965 classic hit — “I said something wrong, now I long for yesterday” — is actually a reference to a time when he was young when he “embarrassed” his mum Mary and he wishes he’d said sorry before she died.
McCartney explained on his A Life in Lyrics podcast: “Sometimes it’s only in retrospect you can appreciate it. I remember very clearly one day feeling very embarrassed because I embarrassed my mum.
“We were out in the backyard and she talked posh. She was of Irish origin and she was a nurse, so she was above street level. So she had something sort of going for her, and she would talk what we thought was a little bit posh.
“And it was a little bit Welshy as well — she had connections, her auntie Dilys was Welsh. I know that she said something like ‘Paul, will you ask him if he’s going’ … ”
McCartney explains he then called his mum out over her “posh” accent and has regretted it ever since.
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