Hey Jude

• 1. Introduction

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  "Hey Jude" began as a car journey and a father's absence. In June 1968, Paul McCartney drove out to Weybridge to visit a five-year-old boy named Julian Lennon, whose parents had just separated. By the time McCartney arrived at Kenwood, the family home, a song had taken shape in his head. He had composed it on the way. What started as private comfort for a child caught between two famous, fractured parents became something the world would not stop singing: a number-one hit across dozens of countries, a nine-week run at the top of the American charts, a song that sold approximately eight million copies and that Billboard magazine, in 2013, ranked the 10th "biggest" song of all time by chart success. But the questions worth asking are subtler than the statistics. Who, exactly, was the song written for? Why did a recording session end in a heated argument over a guitar part? And how did a band visibly falling apart manage to film a performance that critics would call a quintessential moment of sixties togetherness?

• 2. Writing for Julian

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  Cynthia Lennon had been part of the Beatles' social circle since before their rise to fame in 1963. When John Lennon left her for the Japanese artist Yoko Ono, McCartney felt the exclusion acutely. He later said he found it "a bit much for them suddenly to be personae non gratae and out of my life." Cynthia recalled McCartney's surprise visit to Kenwood with particular warmth, noting that on the journey down he composed the song in the car, and describing it as a gesture of care and concern.

  The song's original title was "Hey Jules." McCartney said he changed it from "Jules" to "Jude" because, as he put it, he "thought that sounded a bit better." In the weeks that followed, according to music journalist Chris Hunt, McCartney tested the new composition on anyone who crossed his path. On the 30th of June, after a recording session in Yorkshire for the Black Dyke Mills Band, he stopped at the village of Harrold in Bedfordshire and performed the song at a local pub. He played it for members of the Bonzo Dog Band while producing their single, and he interrupted a session by the Barron Knights to do the same. Ron Griffiths of the Iveys, a group soon to be known as Badfinger, recalled that McCartney gave them a full concert rendition on one of their first days in the studio.

  When McCartney finally presented the song to Lennon on the 26th of July, he flagged one line he intended to fix: "the movement you need is on your shoulder." He called it "a stupid expression; it sounds like a parrot." Lennon's reply became part of the song's lore: "You won't, you know. That's the best line in the song." McCartney kept it.

• 3. Whose Song Was It

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  Lennon, in a 1980 interview, stated that he had "always heard it as a song to me." He contended that McCartney was, on one level, giving his blessing to the Lennon-Ono relationship, while on another level expressing disappointment at being displaced as Lennon's creative partner. When McCartney denied this reading and told Lennon he had written the song about himself, neither account fully closed the question.

  Others staked similar claims. Judith Simons, a journalist with the Daily Express, believed the song had been written for her. Lennon and others have speculated that McCartney's own failing relationship with actress Jane Asher provided an unconscious "message to himself"; McCartney and Asher had announced their engagement on the 25th of December 1967, yet by June 1968 he had begun an affair with Linda Eastman. Still others read the lyrics as directed at Bob Dylan, then semi-retired in Woodstock.

  Author Mark Hertsgaard noted that many of the song's lines seem directed more at a grown man on the verge of a powerful new love than at a child. Music critic Tim Riley offered a different frame altogether: he wrote that if the song is about self-worth and self-consolation in hardship, the vocal performance conveys the journey from comforting someone else, to weighing one's own feelings, to finally believing in oneself. Author Robert Christgau, writing in The Village Voice in 1971, called it "one of McCartney's truest and most forthright love songs."

• 4. Building the Recording

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  The Beatles recorded 25 takes of "Hey Jude" over two nights, the 29th and the 30th of July 1968, at EMI Studios in London, with George Martin producing. These were treated as rehearsals. The plan was always to cut the master at Trident Studios in central London, where an eight-track recording machine was available; EMI at the time was still limited to four tracks.

  The 30th of July rehearsals were filmed by a crew working on a short documentary called Music!, produced by the National Music Council of Great Britain. It was the first time the Beatles had permitted cameras to observe them developing a song in the studio. Only three Beatles appeared on camera that day. George Harrison stayed in the control room, where the disagreement over his guitar idea also took place. Harrison wanted to play a phrase in response to each line of the vocal. McCartney vetoed it. Author Simon Leng read this as a sign of how little room Harrison was given on McCartney's compositions, compared with the latitude he enjoyed on Lennon's songs. In a 1994 interview, McCartney reflected: "looking back on it, I think, Okay. Well, it was bossy, but it was ballsy of me, because I could have bowed to the pressure."

  The master track was recorded at Trident on the 31st of July. The basic line-up placed McCartney on piano and lead vocal, Lennon on acoustic guitar, Harrison on electric guitar, and Ringo Starr on drums. McCartney began the first take unaware that Starr had stepped out for a toilet break; Starr returned - in McCartney's words, "tiptoeing past my back rather quickly" - and performed his cue perfectly. That first take was selected as the master.

  On the 1st of August, overdubs followed at Trident: McCartney's lead vocal and bass guitar, backing vocals from all three of his bandmates, and tambourine from Starr. Martin scored a 36-piece orchestra for the coda, comprising ten violins, three violas, three cellos, two flutes, one contra bassoon, one bassoon, two clarinets, one contra bass clarinet, four trumpets, four trombones, two horns, percussion and two string basses. Some of the orchestral musicians were initially resistant. According to Trident's founder Norman Sheffield, McCartney secured their cooperation by demanding: "Do you guys want to get fucking paid or not?" When the orchestra's energy still fell short, McCartney climbed onto the grand piano and conducted from there.

  All but one of the orchestra members agreed to clap hands and sing the coda's refrain, doing so for a double fee. The holdout was reported to have said: "I'm not going to clap my hands and sing Paul McCartney's bloody song!" Trident charged EMI £25 per hour for the sessions, earning approximately £1,000 in total. Sheffield later said the financial sum was beside the point - having the Beatles record there, and rave about the facility, made the studio's reputation.

• 5. Shape and Sound

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  Musicologist Walter Everett identifies the song's most discussed feature as its length: 7 minutes and 11 seconds. At that length it was, at the time of release, the longest single to have topped the British charts. Both McCartney and Martin worried that radio stations would refuse to play it. Lennon's response was direct: "They will if it's us." Ken Mansfield, Apple's US manager, confirmed the calculation when he previewed the record for American disc jockeys and reported back that their enthusiasm was high.

  Everett notes that McCartney's piano pattern in the verses draws on three chords - F, C and B flat - and that the melody borrows in part from John Ireland's 1907 liturgical piece Te Deum. Musicologist Alan Pollack describes the overall structure as a "binary form that combines a fully developed, hymn-like song together with an extended, mantra-like jam on a simple chord progression." The coda consists of nineteen rounds of the song's double plagal cadence, repeating the phrase "Na-na-na na" followed by the words "hey Jude" until the song fades.

  Tim Riley writes that the coda's repeated chord sequence "answers all the musical questions raised at the beginnings and ends of bridges," and that it gives McCartney a foundation to improvise freely, turning the final minutes into, in Riley's phrase, "a tour of Paul's vocal range: from the graceful inviting tones of the opening verse, through the mounting excitement of the song itself, to the surging raves of the coda." McCartney himself later described the improvised shrieks in the coda as "Cary Grant on heat!"

  The mixing at Abbey Road hit an unexpected obstacle. The Trident master tape sounded murky on EMI's playback equipment. The problem was resolved with help from Geoff Emerick, who happened to be visiting Abbey Road despite having recently refused to work with the Beatles any longer, citing the tension and abuse that had become routine at their sessions. The stereo mix was completed on the 2nd of August, and the mono version on the 8th of August. One other feature of the mix attracted notice long after release: at 2:58, a spoken phrase - "Fucking hell!" - is audible in the final bridge. McCartney, in his 2021 book The Lyrics, claims he uttered it after missing a piano chord. Recording engineer Ken Scott attributes it to Lennon.

• 6. Apple's Debut

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  "Hey Jude" was released on the 26th of August 1968 in the United States and the 30th of August in the United Kingdom, backed with "Revolution." It was one of four singles issued simultaneously to launch Apple Records, alongside Mary Hopkin's "Those Were the Days," Jackie Lomax's "Sour Milk Sea," and the Black Dyke Mills Band's "Thingumybob." Apple declared the 11th through the 18th of August to be "National Apple Week" in the UK, dispatching gift-wrapped boxes of the records - marked "Our First Four" - to Queen Elizabeth II, other members of the royal family, and Prime Minister Harold Wilson.

  In the US, the single was the first Capitol-distributed Beatles release issued without a picture sleeve, presented instead in a black sleeve bearing the words "The Beatles on Apple." Lennon had wanted "Revolution" on the A-side and still said so in interviews in 1970 and 1980, though he acknowledged "Hey Jude" deserved its place.

  The release landed in a turbulent moment. It coincided with the violent suppression of Vietnam War protesters at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, and with Western condemnation of the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia. Lennon's "Revolution," with its critique of violent confrontation, drew heavy criticism from New Left activists. "Hey Jude," with its broader message, was adopted as an anthem by Czech citizens resisting Soviet rule. Author Peter Doggett described the single as one that "glowed with optimism after a summer that had burned with anxiety and rage."

  McCartney previewed the song at a party hosted by Mick Jagger at Vesuvio's nightclub in central London, held to celebrate the completion of the Rolling Stones' Beggars Banquet album. According to author John Winn, the song "reportedly ruined" the party by upstaging it entirely.

• 7. Filming the Coda

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  Michael Lindsay-Hogg, who had previously directed the Beatles' promotional clips for "Paperback Writer" and "Rain" in 1966, was hired to shoot clips for both "Hey Jude" and "Revolution." For "Hey Jude," the band settled on shooting with a live but controlled audience. The Beatles performed the opening sections alone before the crowd moved in to sing the coda alongside them.

  The clip was filmed at Twickenham Film Studios on the 4th of September 1968. Tony Bramwell, a friend of the group, described the simple set: "the piano, there; drums, there; and orchestra in two tiers at the back." The live vocal approach was chosen to work around the Musicians' Union's ban on miming on television, though the Beatles otherwise performed to a backing track.

  The filming marked Ringo Starr's return after he had walked out during sessions for the White Album track "Back in the U.S.S.R.," following criticism of his drumming from McCartney. He had been absent for two weeks. The final edit combined two different takes and included introductions by David Frost - who described the Beatles as "the greatest tea-room orchestra in the world" - and Cliff Richard, for their respective television programmes.

  The clip first aired in the UK on Frost on Sunday on the 8th of September 1968, two weeks after Lennon and Ono had appeared on the same programme to discuss performance art. Commentators noted the contrast: Lennon now in a supporting role, Ono absent from the screen. Author Mark Hertsgaard described the audience as "young, old, male, female, black, brown, and white," and called the clip a "quintessential sixties moment, a touching tableau of contentment and togetherness." The clip was broadcast in the United States on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour on the 6th of October. McCartney has continued to perform "Hey Jude" in concert ever since, including at the White House in June 2010 and at the closing of the opening ceremony of the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, each time leading the audience through the coda that the Beatles filmed with a studio crowd in September 1968.