Recording "Hey Jude"

There was no session on Friday, July 26, as Paul McCartney and John Lennon finished writing “Hey Jude“, as reported by The Beatles Monthly Book, September 1968, N°62:

On Friday, July 26, John and Paul spent most of the day at Paul’s house putting the final touches to their latest composition, “Hey Jude”. The following Monday evening at EMI they began to rehearse it with George and Ringo.

Mal Evans

Paul McCartney in "Many Years From Now", by Barry Miles:

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.

On this day, July 29, The Beatles started recording “Hey Jude“, which would become the A-side of their next single (The B-side, “Revolution“, had been recorded in July).

The session lasted from 8:30 pm to 4:00 am. George Martin did not attend it, and this was the first Beatles session for engineer John Smith.

Six takes of “Hey Jude” were recorded, but overall those were more rehearsals than proper attempts. Only Take 1, 2 and 6 were complete takes. Take 1 was released on The Beatles reissue in 2018. Take 2, faded out at 4’17”, was released on Anthology 3 in 1996.

Live-in-the-studio outtake. While the master version – issued at the end of August 1968 – was long and lavish, this studio run-through of Hey Jude, taped four days earlier, is comparatively abbreviated and purposely stripped-down: live piano and vocal from Paul, live drums, acoustic and electric guitars. The take begins in a jestful manner: John speaks of “the heart of the Black country”, the name of the old smoke-stack industrial region in the middle of England, and Paul responds with a mention of Boston Place, a small London street where the Beatles’ company Apple had just installed an electronics laboratory. (Also, the Beatles had been filmed running along Boston Place for the title sequence of A Hard Day’s Night.)

From the liner notes of Anthology 3

At this stage, the lyrics were not final, and one can notice variations compared to the final recording (“She has found you now go and get her” would become “You have found her now go and get her“; “Remember to let her into you heart” would become “Remember to let her under your skin” in the latest verse).

The Beatles would continue working on “Hey Jude” on the next day.

Session activities

1. Hey Jude

   Written by Lennon - McCartney

   Recording • Take 1

   AlbumOfficially released on The Beatles (50th anniversary boxset)

2. Hey Jude

   Written by Lennon - McCartney

   Recording • Take 2

   AlbumOfficially released on Anthology 3

3. Hey Jude

   Written by Lennon - McCartney

   Recording • Take 3

4. Hey Jude

   Written by Lennon - McCartney

   Recording • Take 4

5. Hey Jude

   Written by Lennon - McCartney

   Recording • Take 5

6. Hey Jude

   Written by Lennon - McCartney

   Recording • Take 6

Staff

Musicians on "Hey Jude"

Production staff

Going further

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