The Movement You Need Is On Your Shoulder

The Beatles' "Hey Jude" is one of those songs like "Stairway to Heaven," "Satisfaction" or "Like a Rolling Stone" that is so ingrained in the public consciousness that it's impossible to hear it objectively.

But a couple weeks ago I picked up the freshly remastered version of the 2-CD Fab compilation Past Masters, which features "Hey Jude," and enjoyed the song as I hadn't in years. In fact I played it pretty much constantly for a few days. It's a true epic, their most popular song, and one of their best. To pretend you are immune to its charms is a fool's errand.

Back in the Beatle days, John Lennon spent most of his time on tour, on LSD, or on Yoko. Ironically, the bachelor Paul McCartney spent more time with John's son Julian than John did. Not long after John cooly told his wife Cynthia he was leaving her and the boy for good, (Yoko was sitting at the kitchen table in a bathrobe when he broke the news), Paul drove out to the country to cheer up 5-year old Julian.

On the drive, the tune "Hey Jules, don't make it bad, take a sad song and make it better" sprang into his head. He changed "Jules" to "Jude" and the group, in the midst of recording The White Album, immediately went to work on "Hey Jude," as a freestanding single, knowing they had something big on their hands.

Here is some pretty amazing footage of the boys working on "Hey Jude" in the studio, salvaged from an out-of-print BBC documentary:



Lennon, who was fond of writing off McCartney's tunes as overly fussy, loved the immediacy of "Hey Jude." When McCartney first sang the song to him, Lennon said Paul's nonsense lyric "The movement you need is on your shoulder" was "the best bloody line in the song" and refused to let perfectionist Paul change it.

John also thought the song, with lyrics like "You have found her, now go and get her," was a secret message to him and not his son. McCartney, who was also in the midst of romantic upheaval, having left his longtime bird Jane Asher for Linda Eastman, thought maybe he was subconsciously writing to himself. And if you have ever had your spirits lifted by the song's beautiful, effortless melody, you may have thought it was written to you, too. And maybe it was.

In fact, the endless "Na Na Na Na"s at the end somehow seem to sum up the entire 60s, a loss of innocence or something like that. In any case, they take a sad song and make it better.

The "Hey Jude" single, released in September of 1968, was a huge smash, topping the Billboard US chart for a whopping nine weeks. The boys made their first TV appearance in years to mark the event, playing an incredible live version on the David Frost Show, surrounded by fans, that is one of their greatest moments.


Besides being the Beatles biggest hit and arguably most beloved song, "Hey Jude" also has the distinction of being the first 45 on the band's new label Apple Records. In typical Beatle yin-yang fashion, its B-side was its polar opposite, Lennon's raw, political, supercharged "Revolution." They played this on the Frost show as well.

You can get both songs, along with many other Beatles classics, on Past Masters. Those guys were pretty talented. Turn it up.