The extraordinary songwriting partnership between the Beatles’ John Lennon and Paul McCartney gave birth to approximately 180 jointly credited songs, most of which became the band’s classics. It is the best known and most financially successful musical collaboration ever, with the band selling over 600 million records worldwide.
While there are numerous hits created by Lennon-McCartney, one of the most well-known tracks of the duo is, without a doubt, ‘Hey Jude.‘ The song was released as a non-album single in August 1968, and it was a No. 1 hit in many countries around the world. Even years after its release, it is still frequently included on music critics’ lists of the greatest songs of all time.
There are several fan opinions regarding the meaning and the song’s source of inspiration, and many people think it’s about John Lennon’s wife, Yoko Ono. The primary songwriter of ‘Hey Jude,’ Paul McCartney, once revealed his true inspiration and that the muse behind their hit isn’t Ono.
Paul McCartney Revealed The Identity Of ‘Jude’
For those of you who may not know, John Lennon married his girlfriend Cynthia Powell on August 23, 1962, and the couple welcomed their son, Julian, on April 8, 1963. Eventually, the couple got divorced in November 1968 due to their problematic relationship and John’s growing substance addictions.
Julian had a pretty close relationship with his father’s bandmate Paul McCartney. Therefore, the musician saw the little child’s world during the divorce process and wrote a song about it called, ‘Hey Jules.’ As he mentioned in his memoir, McCartney always felt a deep sadness whenever he saw kids witnessing their parents’ divorce.
McCartney also noted that he changed the track’s name to ‘Hey Jude‘ after finishing it since it sounded better. As a result, the brilliant songwriter came up with one of the greatest songs and probably gave Julian one of the best gifts one could ask for.
In the book, McCartney penned:
“I started with the idea ‘Hey Jules,’ which was Julian, don’t make it bad, take a sad song and make it better. Hey, try and deal with this terrible thing. I knew it was not going to be easy for him. I always feel sorry for kids in divorces… I had the idea for the song by the time I got there. I changed it to ‘Jude’ because I thought that sounded a bit better.”
You can listen to ‘Hey Jude’ below.
