An excerpt from author Kenneth Womack has revealed that when recording “Hey Jude,” Paul McCartney “wasn’t open to suggestions.”
Womack’s new book is about the Beatles producer George Martin. It is titled “Sound Pictures: The Life of Beatles Producer George Martin — The Later Years, 1966 – 2016” and will be released on September 4th.
In preparation for the book’s arrival, a new excerpt has been released from the book, detailing the recording process of the band’s famous hit “Hey Jude.”
“‘Hey Jude’ was quickly taking shape as a Beatles song of inordinate length,” it reads. “In the case of ‘Hey Jude,’” George later recalled, “when we were recording the track, I thought that we had made it too long. It was very much a Paul song, and I couldn’t understand what he was on about by just going round and round the same thing. And of course, it does become hypnotic.”
“Personally, I’d found that for the last couple of albums,” Harrison later observed, “the freedom to be able to play as a musician was being curtailed, mainly by Paul.” In situations such as the “Hey Jude” session, said Harrison, “Paul had fixed an idea in his brain as to how to record one of his songs. He wasn’t open to anybody else’s suggestions.”
Nonetheless, the track has been named the 10th biggest song of all time by Billboard and spent nine weeks at number one when it was released. Perhaps it’s not all that bad that Paul had his way.
