JfDI!
How to sell brilliantly
Unplugged
He awoke at Wimpole
Street at the home of his girlfriend’s parents. Jane Asher was a serious relationship
and her world, coupled with the twenty-two year old’s natural curiosity was taking
him to new horizons of literature, theatre and art; all very different from
the Liverpool of his youth. The
London location had given the young man a real place to hide away and he awoke
with a tune in his head. It came suddenly. Many of us do that-but it’s usually someone
else’s tune; more often than not a very unimaginative take of the current
number one. Paul McCartney, though, has a gift that when he finds a tune, it’s
one he’s created. And now at three times that age, he’s still doing it: there’s
absolutely no way he is half the man he used to be.
That tune, that day, however was causing Paul a little concern. The song was so right, so attractive
and so fully-formed, well, to be honest was it someone else’s? It took on a working
lyric: scrambled eggs, oh my baby how I love your legs. Paul loved it; he knew
the tune was here to stay. Fully-formed lyrics were eventually teased out
during a holiday to Portugal with Jane. Simple, direct. Perfect.
His continuing versatility
is displayed by the fact that on the very same day he recorded his calm, detached
vulnerable yet simple version he
had also screamed I’m Down and the gorgeous I’ve Just Seen A Face.
Yesterday has been such
an important song for so many reasons, many of them ‘firsts’. It was a first
real Beatle solo. It drew on classical music approaches which once the band really stopped touring would take them down some fascinating avenues. It was
outside the then Beatles rock’n roll brand, so much so that its release was
delayed, especially in the UK. It
has a lovely universality: anyone of any age or culture or sex can understand
and relate to the song. And despite being played and covered so many times, its power - in the original - has never been reduced. To hear Sir Paul play it live in concert today
is to hear its beguiling simplicity totally afresh.
Play the original again, now.
That’s another reason we
love the Beatles
Mm
mm mm mm mm.