Paul McCartney asked creator of Dr Who theme to remake Yesterday
Paul McCartney has revealed how he once asked electronic music pioneer Delia Derbyshire – creator of the Doctor Who theme music – to remake one of the Beatles’ most famous songs, Yesterday.
The former Beatle said that as a fan of experimental music he wanted the BBC Radiophonic Workshop composer to create a different version of the song. “I even found out where Miss Derbyshire lived, and went round to visit her,” McCartney told Q magazine. “We even went into the hut at the bottom of her garden. “It was full of tape machines and funny instruments. My plan in meeting her was to do an electronic backing for my song Yesterday. “We’d already recorded it with a string quartet, but I wanted to give the arrangement electronic backing.”
Derbyshire is hailed as one of the most important figures in the history of electronic music in the UK. As part of the Radiophonic Workshop – the avant-garde wing of the BBC’s sound effects department – she created the distinctive signature tune for new TV series Doctor Who in 1963, using musique concrète techniques and sine- and square-wave oscillators to realise Ron Grainer’s score. In 1967 Derbyshire’s work as a member of electronic outfit Unit Delta Plus shared a bill with that of the Beatles at a happening at the Roundhouse in north London. The Beatles created a 14-minute track called Carnival of Light for the Million Volt Light and Sound Rave that has never been officially released.
McCartney did not explain why nothing ever emerged from his encounter with Derbyshire in her garden hut, but said: “The Radiophonic Workshop, I loved all that, it fascinated me, and still does.” Living in London in the mid-60s, the young Beatle developed an interest in the work of composers including Cornelius Cardew (who he saw perform with the group AMM in 1966) and Karlheinz Stockhausen (whose image appeared on the cover of Sgt Pepper).
“There came a time when John [Lennon], because of his association with Yoko and the avant garde, became thought of as the one who turned us all on to that. But that early era was more mine.” Derbyshire stopped making music in the 1970s, only rekindling her interest after working with Pete Kember (once of the group Spaceman 3) shortly before her death in 2001 at the age of 64. Yesterday originally appeared on the Beatles’ 1965 album Help!. It is one of the most covered songs in the history of popular music, with more than 2,200 versions thought to exist.
Source: The Guardian
