Written by: Lennon-McCartney
Recorded: 29-31 July, 1 August 1968
Producer: George Martin
Engineers: Ken Scott, Barry Sheffield
Released: 30 August 1968 (UK), 26 August 1968 (US)
Paul McCartney: vocals, piano, bass
John Lennon: backing vocals, acoustic guitar
George Harrison: backing vocals, lead guitar
Ringo Starr: backing vocals, drums, tambourine
Uncredited: 10 violins, 3 violas, 3 cellos, 2 double basses, 2 flutes, 2 clarinets, 1 bass clarinet, 1 bassoon, 1 contrabassoon, 4 trumpets, 2 horns, 4 trombones, 1 percussion
Available on:
Past Masters
1
Anthology 3
Love
Hey Jude, the first release on The Beatles' own Apple Records label, was a ballad by Paul McCartney. It was written to comfort John Lennon's son Julian during the divorce of his parents.
Hey Jude is a damn good set of lyrics and I made no contribution to that.
All We Are Saying, David Sheff
It was written in June 1968,as McCartney drove his Aston Martin to Weybridge to visit Cynthia Lennon and her son. On the journey he began thinking about their changing lives, and of the past times he had spent writing with Lennon at the Weybridge house.
I thought, as a friend of the family, I would motor out to Weybridge and tell them that everything was all right: to try and cheer them up, basically, and see how they were. I had about an hour's drive. I would always turn the radio off and try and make up songs, just in case... I started singing: 'Hey Jules - don't make it bad, take a sad song, and make it better...' It was optimistic, a hopeful message for Julian: 'Come on, man, your parents got divorced. I know you're not happy, but you'll be OK.'
I eventually changed 'Jules' to 'Jude'. One of the characters in Oklahoma is called Jud, and I like the name.
Anthology
McCartney recorded a piano demo of Hey Jude upon his return to his home in Cavendish Avenue, London. On 26 July 1968 played the song to Lennon for the first time.
I finished it all up in Cavendish and I was in the music room upstairs when John and Yoko came to visit and they were right behind me over my right shoulder, standing up, listening to it as I played it to them, and when I got to the line, 'The movement you need is on your shoulder,' I looked over my shoulder and I said, 'I'll change that, it's a bit crummy. I was just blocking it out,' and John said, 'You won't, you know. That's the best line in it!' That's collaboration. When someone's that firm about a line that you're going to junk, and he said, 'No, keep it in.' So of course you love that line twice as much because it's a little stray, it's a little mutt that you were about to put down and it was reprieved and so it's more beautiful than ever. I love those words now...
Time lends a little credence to things. You can't knock it, it just did so well. But when I'm singing it, that is when I think of John, when I hear myself singing that line; it's an emotional point in the song.
Many Years From Now, Barry Miles
The lyrics struck an immediate chord with the record-buying public, who related to the hopeful sentiments. Its universality was demonstrated when John Lennon later revealed that he felt the song had been directed at him.
Paul said it was written about Julian. He knew I was splitting with Cyn and leaving Julian then. He was driving to see Julian to say hello. He had been like an uncle. And he came up with Hey Jude. But I always heard it as a song to me. If you think about it... Yoko's just come into the picture. He's saying, 'Hey Jude' - 'Hey John.' I know I'm sounding like one of those fans who reads things into it, but you can hear it as a song to me. The words 'go out and get her' - subconsciously he was saying, 'Go ahead, leave me.' On a conscious level, he didn't want me to go ahead. The angel in him was saying, 'Bless you.' The devil in him didn't like it at all because he didn't want to lose his partner.
Playboy, 1980
It wasn't until 1987 that McCartney came to discuss Hey Jude with Julian Lennon, after a chance encounter in a New York hotel.
He told me that he'd been thinking about my circumstances all those years ago, about what I was going through. Paul and I used to hang out a bit - more than dad and I did. We had a great friendship going and there seem to be far more pictures of me and Paul playing together at that age than there are pictures of me and dad.
Mojo magazine, February 2002
The recording notes for Hey Jude were bought at auction by Julian Lennon in 1996 for £25,000. In 2002 a sale of the original handwritten lyrics was announced by Christie's in London, with an estimated price of £80,000. Paul McCartney took out a court order to prevent the auction, saying the paper had disappeared from his London home.
Anthology 2 contained take two of Hey Jude, recorded on 29 July 1968. The Love album, meanwhile, contained a subtly remixed version of the final version.
Although by 1968 The Beatles had stopped performing live, Hey Jude's anthemic ending was perfect for crowd participation. It was fitting, then, when later years McCartney made it a key part of his live shows.
Related articles:
- Promotional films for Hey Jude and Revolution
- US single: Hey Jude
- Television: A Degree Of Frost
- UK single: Hey Jude
- Mr Moonlight
It might be their most commercially successful single but not their best seller. That is I Want To Hold Your Hand. See Wikipedia, Beatles.com or any list of world top selling singles.
My favourite McCartney song with the Beatles. Sounds brand new everytime I play it, which is a lot.
Right after the lyric "Remember, to let her under your skin.."
at 2:57 you can faintly hear a "OHHH!" followed by "Wrong chord! Fucking hell!"
'Scuse my language, but I think it's fun to listen for.
Hi Mark. On page two of this article I mentioned that:
"Hey Jude contains an unedited expletive, which is often played by radio stations to this day. In the final verse, John Lennon sang "Let her into" instead of "Let her under your skin". His cry of "Oh!", followed by "Fucking hell", remains in the final mix."
Was it a wrong chord or a wrong lyric? I can't make out the words "wrong chord", but listening to it again, I'm not convinced he gets the lyrics wrong either.
My understanding is that it is Paul McCartney who utters the expletive because he got the piano part wrong. Because John was regarded as the "rebel" he was rather amused by this and asked the engineers to leave it in. However, they mixed it very low and you can hear it only if you listen closely. Wikipedia says that Paul says "Hit the wrong chord!" before he utters the expletive. The cited source for its information is Geoff Emerick in 2006, one of the audio engineers present during the recording. I think this should be researched because this site is the first time I've read that it was John who said it.
George doesnt play anything on this song. Just backin vocals
Not true - he's there, playing his Telecaster, though it's only a minor part. You can hear him between 1'23 and 1'28, and playing subsequent fills, though his pride was hurt when McCartney told him not to play the answering lines in the verses. That's why he took a back seat during rehearsals on 30 July (he was in the control room with George Martin while the other three worked on the song), and only played a small role in the recording.
George really should've been given an extended solo so he could wail away with Paul for the last two minutes or so of the track. I'm thinking of something like the solo on the Velvet Underground's "Oh, Sweet Nothin'" - or, closer to home, Clapton's gently weeping solo. That would've fit nicely, and George really could've used the ego boost. As it is, it really does get a bit tedious, but I guess Paul didn't think so, since he had the full structurea all mapped out beforehand.
George did give himself the opportunity to "wail away" on the extended fade-out of the not completely dissimilar Isn't It a Pity (which, coincidentally, is just a couple of seconds longer than Hey Jude).
Yeah, that's a good comparison, but George was certainly entitled to indulge himself on his own album! My point is that it would've been a nice gesture if Paul had been less control-freaky and devised some way of allowing George to make some kind of notable contribution. Even if there was no room for a lead guitar at all in the arrangement, George was certainly capable of handling the bass guitar duty while Paul stuck to piano, if Paul had thought to ask.
At 5:37 someone says in portuguese "Pega o Cavaquinho" wich in english means "take the cavaquinho".
OMFG. I speak portuguese, and I never noticed this, but now, I listened it again, and I noticed it too. It's SO weird. Maybe it's just a bunch of indecipherable words in english, we listen to it and it seems something that our mind assimilates to a word we know.
At 5:37 Paul says, "The pain won't come back Jude.” In English (which is far more likely to be uttered by an English singer) this means "the pain won't come back, Jude."
It makes sense, but I think that my mind is already used to "pega o cavaquinho", so I just can't hear what you said.
Paul does seem at times to have been too bossy in the studio but I think the writer of a song does have the right to final say as to how it should be done. Axing the answering back guitar idea was a good one.
Yeah, that answering wouldn't have worked well at all in the verses. I still think it would've worked really nicely during the final minutes, though, right to the fade-out. It's a free-for-all, Paul's testifying, George joins in - it'd be just like what George and Eric Clapton did during the "...Gently Weeps" fade, except the mood is celebratory rather than mournful. (Think of George's Leslie-speaker soloing in "Let It Be" - that's very close to the sound I'm thinking about.)
Well, someone had to fill the leadership void left by Lennon, and Paul was the better equipped to do it. A group without a leader or moderator gets nothing accomplished.
I also agree with you in that the writer of a song should get the final word. I mean, no one could have talked George out of all the sitars.
Still, I can't believe that the song was written for Julian, John Lennon's son. It's an amazing song, and a very great inspiration.