Paul McCartney shares painful childhood memory behind lyrics of Beatles’ Yesterday

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.

He added: “I went ‘Arsk! Arsk! It’s ask mum.’ And she got a little bit embarrassed. I remember later thinking ‘God, I wish I’d never said that’. And it stuck with me. After she died I thought ‘Oh, I really wish… ”

The musician’s mum died in 1956 when he was just 14 and he went on to write Yesterday with bandmate John Lennon a decade later when he was 24.