So, I
can clean the scrambled eggs."
Believe it or not those were the provisional words of a song that would become one of the most recorded songs in music history.
The single Yesterday started its life with the provisional title of Scrambled Eggs.
It was quite common practice back then for Paul McCartney and his writing partner John Lennon to use "dummy lyrics" to a melody, before settling on the correct wording. And that is how Yesterday began.
And the melody? Paul apparently woke up one morning in his top floor room at his girlfriend Jane Asher's parents' place with the tune going around in his head. There was a piano next to the bed and he started playing.
According to Paul, he was so worried that the tune might have been subconsciously plagiarised that he spent months doing the rounds of various music houses in London asking people if they had heard the tune before. No one had and so eventually Paul set out to find the right lyrics.
The lyrics came together while Paul was holidaying in Portugal at the villa of The Shadows guitarist Bruce Welsh. Two days after returning from holiday Paul recorded the song at EMI's Abbey Road Studios. He was the only Beatle on the session.
The song surprised many in the music industry at the time because it featured a string quartet.
It was released in August of 1965 on the Help! album and as a single in the US where it went straight to the No 1 spot.
Oddly enough it was never released as a single in the UK.
"Join me do, there are lots of eggs for me and you,
I've got ham and cheese and bacon too,
I've got ham and cheese and bacon too,
So go get two and join me, do
Fried or sunny side,
Just aren't right
The mix bowl begs,
Quick, go get a pan.
And we'll scramble up some eggs, eggs, eggs, eggs."
It's amazing to think a song that started life about scrambled eggs became one of the most covered songs of all time, with more than 3000 versions recorded according to The Guinness Book of World Records.
