What was the inspiration for yesterday by the beatles?

Answer 1

He didn't, Paul McCartney did. He woke up one day with a tune in his head and he couldn't place it and he went around asking people if they knew it. No one did so he used it and wrote yesterday.

Answer 2

I have heard... that Paul McCartney first heard the music in a dream. In order to remember it, he quickly put some lyrics on it. Then he later changed them for something more... presentable.

Those first lyrics are said to have been: scrambled eggs, oh my dear baby I love your legs.

(...) :)

Answer 3

The tune for the song that would become 'Yesterday' came to Paul in a dream. He woke up one morning at the home of Jane Asher's parents home (his then current girlfriend and where he was living at the time) with a tune for a song in his head. He immediately went to the piano and began writing it down before he forgot it. He was unsure if this was a song that he had heard before and didn't remember it or if he had actually come up with it himself, so for several months he played the tune to everyone he knew asking if they had heard it before. Because it was just a tune in his head, there were no lyrics for it so Paul began calling it 'Scrambled Eggs' as a way of remembering it. The first line that is now "Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away" was originally "Scrambled eggs, oh my baby how I love your legs" before he had written the lyrics to it.

Paul McCartney was recently on jimmy fallon's show where the two of them performed the "original version" of Yesterday with the scrambled eggs lyrics.