TL;DR:
- Mick Jagger’s girlfriend, Marianne Faithfull, had one hit and then turned down a Paul McCartney song.
- Paul hoped Faithfull’s people could improve the track.
- Paul speculated the song ended up in a tape bin.
Mick Jagger’s girlfriend, Marianne Faithfull, had the opportunity to record a Paul McCartney song. Instead, she recorded The Beatles’ “Yesterday.” Subsequently, Paul’s song was lost forever, and Paul said that’s a good thing.
Mick Jagger’s girlfriend had 1 hit before Paul McCartney gave her a song
According to the 1997 book Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now, Paul was friends with Faithfull. She was most known for her version of “As Tears Go By,” a song Mick Jagger and Keith Richards wrote together. Paul made a vague promise to write a song for Faithfull.
All Paul came up with was a song called “Etcetera.” “I think it’s a good job that it’s died a death in some tape bin,” he said. “Even then, I seem to remember thinking it wasn’t very good. There was always the temptation to keep your better songs for yourself and then give your next-best songs to other established people, so when it was someone like Marianne, who at that time was a newcomer, those people would tend to end up with fairly dreadful offerings of mine.”
Paul McCartney felt Marianne Faithfull’s people could make his song better
The Beatle said Faithfull’s management might have wanted a song similar to “As Tears Go By.” “I suppose, thinking back on it, after ‘As Tears Go By,’ maybe they were looking for more sort of a ‘Yesterday,’ something more poignant, more baroque,” he recalled.
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Paul hoped Faithfull’s people would improve “Etcetera.” “I probably thought, ‘Well, this is really all I’ve got at the moment,’” he remembered. “‘I’ll send it round and hope it’s all OK, and maybe they’ll put a baroque thing on it and that’ll make it OK.’ She probably did ‘Yesterday’ because they figured, ‘Well, at least it’s better than ‘Etcetera.’”
Paul went to watch Faithfull record “Yesterday.” He didn’t remember if he helped out with the recording process in some way. Notably, he often felt going to other musicians’ studio sessions was unserious fun.
Marianne Faithfull’s ‘Yesterday’ was a flop song in the United States and a hit elsewhere
Faithfull’s “Yesterday” went nowhere in the United States, failing to appear on the Billboard Hot 100. The tune appeared on the album Go Away from My World. That album reached No. 81 on the Billboard 200, staying on the chart for 16 weeks. While it wasn’t a huge hit, Go Away from My World was more popular in the U.S. than any of Faithfull’s subsequent albums.
On the other hand, The Official Charts Company says Faithfull’s “Yesterday” became a modest hit in the United Kingdom. The cover reached No. 36 in the U.K. and stayed on the chart for four weeks. Meanwhile, Go Away from My World never charted in the U.K.
Faithfull’s “Yesterday” is great, but we’ll never know what “Etcetera” sounded like.
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