Paul McCartney Names The Beatles Song He’s ‘Gotta Do’ on Every Tour Because It’s ‘Such Fun’
Paul McCartney is fortunate enough to have many recognizable songs from The Beatles and his solo career with which his audiences can interact. “Hey Jude” is a song he wrote with The Beatles that features a lengthy ending people can easily sing along to. While McCartney has been performing the song since the late 1960s, he still performs it on every tour because it’s “such fun.”
Paul McCartney wrote ‘Hey Jude’ for John Lennon’s son
“Hey Jude” debuted in 1968 as an A-side single with “Revolution.” Paul McCartney wrote the song for The Beatles after John Lennon and Cynthia Lennon separated. In an interview with GQ, McCartney said he wrote “Hey Jude” to comfort Lennon’s son, Julian. Initially, the song was titled “Hey Jules,” but he later changed it.
“John and his wife Cynthia had divorced, and I felt a bit sorry for their son, who is now a child of a divorce,” McCartney explained. “I was driving out to see their son and Cynthia one day, and I was thinking about the boy whose name’s Julian. I started this idea ‘Hey Jules. Don’t make it bad. It’s gonna be ok,’ like a reassurance song. So that was the idea that I got driving out to see them, I saw them, and then I came back and worked on the song some more.”
Paul McCartney performs the Beatles song on every tour
The ending of “Hey Jude” is a lengthy series of “Na-na-na” that is infectious to sing and gets stuck in one’s head. Seeing a crowd of thousands of people all singing the same tune and harmony is glorious, and McCartney enjoys bringing people together at that moment.
“Whenever I do a new tour, I think, ‘Well, I’ll just switch up all the songs,’ but then I go, ‘I’ve got to do ‘Hey Jude,’ because it’s such fun,” McCartney told GQ. “It’s great handing that over to the audience. You know what the greatest thing is? You feel this sense of community. And in these times when it’s a little dark, and people are sort of separated by politics and stuff, it’s so fantastic to see them all come together, singing the end of ‘Hey Jude.’ I’m really happy about that, so I keep it in the show.”
John Lennon believed ‘Hey Jude’ was about him
Shortly after his divorce, John Lennon began a relationship with Yoko Ono, who would later become his wife. In a 1980 interview with Playboy, Lennon told David Sheff that he believed “Hey Jude” was written about him. He interpreted it as McCartney telling him to be happy with Ono.
“I always heard it as a song to me,” Lennon stated. “If you think about it … Yoko’s just come into the picture. He’s saying, ‘Hey Jude,’ or ‘Hey, John.’ The words ‘go out and get her’ — subconsciously, he was saying ‘Go ahead, leave me.’ I know I’m sounding like one of those fans who reads things into it. But you can hear it as a song to me.”
