Hey Jude

In May 1968 John Lennon and his wife Cynthia separated after his affair with the artist Yoko Ono. The following month Paul McCartney drove out to the family home in Weybridge to visit their five-year-old son, Julian, and worked the song out in the car on the way. It began as “Hey Jules”, meant to comfort a small boy through his parents' split. McCartney later said he changed the name to Jude simply because it sounded better. In the weeks that followed he played it to almost anyone who would listen, including the regulars of a village pub in Bedfordshire. When he showed it to Lennon, he promised to fix a line about movement on your shoulder, which he thought sounded like a parrot talking. By McCartney's account, Lennon told him it was the best line in the song, so it stayed. Lennon also came to believe the song was really addressed to him. The master was taped at Trident Studios on eight-track equipment, a first for the Beatles, in the middle of the tense White Album sessions, and McCartney and George Harrison argued over the guitar part. Released in August 1968 as the first Beatles single on their own Apple label, it ran over seven minutes, the longest single to top the British charts up to that time, and held number one in the US for nine weeks. Its long sing-along coda turned a private act of kindness into a song for crowds, and McCartney still leads audiences through that refrain in concert.