SONGBOOK
HEY JUDE/REVOLUTION
It might be the first record I ever listened to . . . I remember that night, laying in my sleeping bag and singing along to the na-na-na’s at the end of the song.
– Dave Grohl on ‘Hey Jude’
A-side:
Hey Jude (Lennon-McCartney)
B-side:
Revolution (Lennon-McCartney)
Released: 30 August 1968 (Apple)
Highest chart position: 1
Weeks in chart: 19 (2 at number 1)
FAB FACT
Paul composed ‘Hey Jude’ as he was driving to Weybridge to comfort Cynthia and Julian Lennon, soon after John had left the family to live with Yoko. The song started as ‘Hey Jules’, but was changed to ‘Jude’ because Paul liked the name of the brooding farmhand Jud Fry in the film Oklahoma!
Julian bought the song’s recording notes in auction in 1996 for £25,000.
FAB FACT
In March 2020, in California, Paul’s handwritten lyrics for ‘Hey Jude’ sold for £731,000 in auction.
FAB FACT
‘Hey Jude’ was the first release from Apple Records, and the most successful debut song from an independent label. It was knocked off the top spot in the UK by Apple’s second release, the McCartney-produced ‘Those Were The Days’ by Mary Hopkin. ‘Hey Jude’ was even more successful in America where it topped the chart for nine weeks – the longest chart-topping run in the US for any Beatles single – and sold six million copies by the end of 1968. The song reached number one in eleven different countries.
FAB FACT
Though The Beatles started the year in the tranquil surroundings of Rishikesh, 1968 was a year of violence and political unrest. John started writing ‘Revolution’ while in India, demoed it with other Rishikesh compositions at the end of May, and worked on its recording throughout June and July. During this time, he was aware of the Tet Offensive and Mai Lai massacre in Vietnam, the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy, the escalating tension between the USSR and Czechoslovakia, the shooting of Andy Warhol and bloody riots in Paris, London and, later, Chicago. The song was originally earmarked as the next Beatles single, but this was vetoed by Paul and George. They deemed it too slow for a single (the original, laid-back version later featured on the White Album). By the time The Beatles had recorded the faster, more raucous version, Paul had brought in ‘Hey Jude’.
FAB FACT
The lyrics for ‘Revolution’ show Lennon’s ambivalence towards political revolution, and he agonised over the lyric: ‘Don’t you know that you can count me out.’ In the White Album version, and in some performances, he would replace ‘out’ with ‘in’. This ambivalence was criticised by many on the left at the time as a decadent viewpoint, and Nina Simone even wrote and recorded her own answer song. Lennon liked it, yet, with Yoko by his side, he strengthened his beliefs in pacifism.
FAB FACT
The Beatles made promotional videos for ‘Hey Jude’ and ‘Revolution’, directed once more by Michael Lindsay-Hogg and performed in front of an audience at Twickenham Studios. The first airing of the video was to be on The David Frost Show, and so Frost was invited down to film an introduction to make the performance seem live when broadcast. He joked that they were ‘the best tea-room orchestra in the world’.