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Hey Jude! One of the Beatles’ most recognizable and spectacular songs. Really interesting things about the song and what was going on with the Beatles at the time. It was written by Paul in 1968, June of 1968 he said as he was driving down a country road and thinking about various things and so kind of composed in his head and what was going on at the time, they were just about to spend some time in the studio, they had been recording the white album around the time, an album called The Beatles. I just happened to have it handy here and an album that looked like this and our fab four guys including pictures of all of them I think came with this album, that’s great.

There were pictures of everyone: John Lennon, George Harrison (I think that was him), Ringo Starr, and of course Paul McCartney. There were also cutouts included in the article — not really cutouts, but a poster with the White album. (The cutouts came with Sergeant Pepper.) George Martin had recorded certain songs to be singles or albums, and almost never put those songs designated to be singles on albums.

Now, he hasn’t been at-this was one of the biggest mistakes he made as he helped out with the Beatles career, but his philosophy on that was that he didn’t want people paying twice for the same song. If they bought the single, they buy the album, you get different stuff. Now, there were definitely some exceptions to this, but nowadays, people don’t buy singles or at least by the middle of the Beatles career nowadays, 4 years ago is what I’m really talking about now. By the middle of the Beatles’ career, people were buying more albums than singles and not worried about picking up the album if they already had the single, they’d pick up the single to see if they like it and then pick up the album-

What was the single, for those uninitiated folks? A single was a vinyl record, about 7 inches across, called the “45,” with a big hole in the middle of it. It can be part of Hey Jude guitar lesson now, but it was supposed to be a single about the same time as the White album was going to be out, too. The White album (or, officially, The Beatles) had some great tunes on it. My guitar is gently weeping right now, but let’s take a look at a few others. George wrote Piggies, a song; Savoie Truffle, a song about candy, Dear Prudence… but back to the subject of Hey Jude.

In Hey Jude, Paul had kind of come up with this little idea of trying to console John’s five year old son, Julian, now John was going through a divorce at the time with his first wife, Cynthia and it was still before he met Yoko, but Paul kind of put this song together as just a little pat on the back, it’s okay things will be fine and everything else will-the world will stay together for you, young man! And he demoed the song for the band in late June, played it for John at least and sang it and this is a great example of the way they work together because Paul was not a hundred percent confident in the lyrics. There was a lyric that really bugged him and he thought, this line is just not very good and it’s the line that goes, “The movement you need is on your shoulder.” And he said, he looked at John and said, don’t worry, I’ll change that.

But John said that it was the best line in the song and that he had to keep it, not to take it out. So Paul thought about it, and he thought that yes, John saw something in that lyric, so that it was going to stay.

So a good example of cooperative song writing between a couple of great songwriters. So they got together and they practiced it a few times, Paul worked on some harmonies and stuff like that and they planned on recording it, they started working on it towards the end of August in the 1968-29th, 30th or so of August and knew that-George Martin decided they wanted to put strings on it and choired. They needed to have all kinds of big stuff in it and they had tried before to squeeze in some-an orchestra and a lot of people when they were recording A Day in the Life at Abbey Road Studios and it didn’t work. It was just not cut out for something that big.

Because of that, they took the whole project and went to another location, Soho Trident Studios, which had also been used by Jackie Lomax and James Taylor. They hired an orchestra, something like 40 people strong, with cellos, 20 pieces, violins, and then asked those people to stay put and sing at the end of Hey Jude, the “Nah, nah, nah, nah-nah-nah-nah, nah-nah-nah-nah” line. (Wrong key, but that’s okay.)

The musicians were really happy to do this because it meant they got double pay for doing two different things — playing and singing as part of the choir, too. It was a good deal for everyone and everyone did pretty well at these recording sessions for Hey Jude.

There are other interesting things about this, too. The United States was used to having a hit song on albums, so they didn’t buy singles as much; they just bought the albums and thought they could have everything. Capitol Records, though, released the album a little bit later, and it was 1970 when Hey Jude came out (you can play Hey Jude guitar lesson links, too). Hey Jude (and you can learn Beatles hey Jude guitar lesson playing easily) had some songs on it that had not been on other albums and had been singles, because that’s how Capitol Records did things. Revolution and Paperback Rider were on there, though Revolution had been on the single and not on the Camp White album. A Hard Day’s Night’s, I Should Have Known Better was on there too, but it was subsequently cut from the soundtrack when it was released.

Later songs were included, too, such as the Ballad of John and Yoko, and George’s song, Old Brown Shoe. This item is highly prized by collectors and these days, but you can also take most of these songs up on Past Masters Volume 2, which is another great way to get all of the old Beatles tunes you’re missing.

With the fade out at the end, this is one of the longer Beatles tunes available, probably second longest not counting Revolution. There is an anthem-like fade out at the end, where the Beatles are just singing and Paul just kind of improvises over things that haven’t always mixed. There were other songs, too, like those by Donovan Leech, the English folk singer. At that time, he had a song called Atlantis that had something like that ending, so that Paul said to himself that he should try to do that, with a bigger ending. Paul thought that about a lot of songs because he had also heard P-towns; they had just made what I think was My Generation, and Paul thought that he had to beat P’s “raunchy rock ‘n roll song.”

Helter Skelter, Paul’s idea of topping everybody in raunchiness. Reasonably successful probably in that regard, but another example of Paul or everybody trying to top things was there was a song that was popular here in the United States at the same time called MacArthur Park written by Jimmy Web and sung by Richard Harris, I believe, a long song and actually up until that point, really the longest song that had been a hit on the radio.

Anyway, back to our Hey Jude guitar lesson (and remember, you can learn Beatles Hey Jude guitar lesson, too). Hey Jude goes into a fade out, and it’s just one second longer than Jimmy Webb’s MacArthur Park. Is that an accident? Probably not, according to Jimmy, at least. Of course, Jimmy wrote some great songs, like By the Time I Get to Phoenix and Galveston, songs that Glen Campbell had done back in the late 1960s, and that had done really well in the United States. The moral of this story on Hey Jude was that this is one of the most requested songs — still — that people love to play and sing come including for a Hey Jude guitar lesson. The cord progression is very simple, I to V. Learn Beatles Hey Jude guitar lesson here is that it’s really simple; this is in the key of G, but the original was in E or F, depending on the recording you’re listening to. The final goes to F, but after chords I and V, it goes to V, and then vii, D7, here in G, back to IV, the sub dominant C.

That’s a really simple chord progression for this Hey Jude guitar lesson, but Paul’s melody was just spectacular, almost hymn like. Everything that went into this added up to what was a great song. Hey Jude is still popular, on everybody’s iPod, pretty much, and on their playlists; it’s also popular for playing, so much so that it could be called the Hey Jude guitar lesson — and you can learn to play with the Beatles Hey Jude guitar lesson — or the piano; the piano for Hey Jude is also pretty simple, just a chord and bass note, like so.

A couple of examples there of what the chords one, five and five seven sound like in the key of F, but Hey Jude should be on everybody’s heavy rotation list. That was the word I was looking for. If you were a radio station, you should be playing Hey Jude just about everyday!

Bob Smith has been playing and teaching guitar for over 30 years. For guitar lessons visit TotallyGuitars.com. You can find the Hey Jude Guitar Lesson Preview there as well.