Sir. Paul McCartney’s highly anticipated Got Back tour kicked off in Australia last week and will be finishing off Wednesday night at Suncorp Stadium.
McCartney shot to fame back in the ’60s as one fourth of the forever iconic band, The Beatles.
Known as one of the most successful collaborations in music history, McCartney and fellow band member John Lennon were an unmatched song-writing duo, churning out hit after hit.
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One of the most beloved of those hits being the 1968 song Hey Jude.
Hey Jude spent nine weeks as number one – longer than any other Beatles song – and at the time, it was also the band’s longest track coming in at seven minutes and 11 seconds.
However not everyone was an immediate fan, The Beatles’ producer George Martin originally told the band that it was too long and the radio simply wouldn’t play it.
But Lennon was quick to object, saying: ‘They will if it’s us.”
But there’s another reason this song had such success.
Hey Jude was written during a tumultuous time for The Beatles, Lennon had just left his wife Cynthia Powell who he shared a five year old son, Julian, with for Yoko Ono who would later become his wife in 1969.
McCartney was also going through his own relationship breakdown, having just split with long term partner, actress Jane Asher.
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Lennon’s divorce was less than amicable, however McCartney and Lennon’s now ex-wife had been friends since the band’s early days.
So, following the split, McCartney drove out to visit Powell and Julian, and it was on that drive that the inspiration for Hey Jude hit him.
Speaking with GQ in 2018, McCartney said, “I felt a bit sorry for their son who was now a child of a divorce.
“I was thinking about [Julian] and I started this idea ‘Hey Jules, don’t make it bad it’s going to be okay’, it was like a reassuring song.”
Appearing at the Hudson Union in 2020, a now 60-year-old Julian Lennon said he ran into McCartney in New York as an adult, and asked him if the story behind the song was true.
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“You know, he just confirmed that that was the case and that was the song, and I think I’ve heard that song more than any other human on the planet,” he explained.
In an earlier interview from the time of the song’s release, McCartney says he changed the name from Jules to Jude simply because it was catchier, and went on to talk about the reception it received from Lennon and Yoko Ono.
“I liked the song a lot so I played it for John and Yoko when I’d finished it all,” he said
“Well, I actually had finished but I thought there was a little more to go because there was just one bit of the words, ‘the movement you need is on your shoulder’.
“And I’m playing it and I just looked at John and said ‘I’ll fix that, I’ll fix that'”
“He said to me ‘no you won’t, that’s the best line in the song!'”
And it was that comment that got Lennon a co-writing credit on the hit tune.
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When Lennon first heard the song, he loved it – but he didn’t quite catch on to what it was about.
In a 1980 interview with David Sheff, Lennon referred to the song as a masterpiece, and shared what he’d thought it was originally about.
“I always heard it as a song to me,” he said, “Yoko’s just come into the picture. He’s saying, ‘Hey, Jude – hey, John.’ Subconsciously he was saying, ‘Go ahead, leave me.’
“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.'”
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Hey Jude remains one of The Beatles most iconic songs, and McCartney still performs it to this day.
Thankfully, it’s even included on his Australian setlist.