Hey Jude 40 Years Later

Where would rock be without The Beatles? Would there be Rock N Roll? I imagine there would be, but maybe it would be a bit different from what it is today? This past week The Beatles released the Hey Jude single on a 45 rpm with Revolution. The original single wasn’t released with the album cover to the right. It was released on Apple Records in a plain black sleeve. This was yet another great step in the success of The Beatles. So what inspired this song? Let’s Find out…

Like so many of Paul McCartney’s epochal Beatles compositions, the melody seemed to waft nearly fully formed from his subconscious, its lyrics rooted in the marital discord of bandmate/songwriting partner John Lennon. By the summer of ’68, Lennon’s marriage to Cynthia, his wife of five years and mother of son Julian, was all but over, casualty of a budding romance/collaboration with Japanese avant gardeartist Yoko Ono. McCartney, their oldest friend in the Beatles’ cloistered, fishbowl existence, continued to visit Cynthia and Julian in the midst of the estrangement. “I thought it was a bit much for them suddenly to be persona non grata and out of my life,” Paul would later explain of his visits.

There’s much more to read on this and it’s an interesting story to read. Check out the rest of the story over at Gibson.com.

Image source: Amazon.com