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“Hey Jude” is one of The Beatles’ greatest songs, yet the track has plenty of secrets attached to it. It sounds like a perfectly recorded track, but there were a few hiccups, including a curse word that was left in the song. Paul McCartney revealed that Ringo Starr wasn’t there at the beginning of the first recording session as he had “slipped out” to use the bathroom. 

‘Hey Jude’ is one of The Beatles’ longest tracks

Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr perform during the 30th Annual Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony
Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr | Mike Coppola/Getty Images

The Beatles typically released shorter hits that ranged from two to four minutes. However, they exceeded expectations with “Hey Jude,” a song over seven minutes. For a while, the track was the longest song to reach No. 1 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100. In the 2015 book Conversations with McCartney, Paul shared that he and John Lennon were inspired to create an extended song after listening to Bob Dylan. 

“We were cross-pollinating each other,” Paul recalled. “He’d bring out a long record, so we knew it’d be OK to do ‘Hey Jude’ long. ‘What d’you mean, man? ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ is six minutes 30 [seconds]. Why can’t we have one seven minutes?’ You started breaking boundaries, questioning previous values.”

Paul McCartney said Ringo Starr went to the bathroom before his part started in ‘Hey Jude’

“Hey Jude” begins with Paul McCartney lightly playing the piano and singing. Ringo Starr doesn’t enter on the drums for a while, giving him time to rest before joining in. In an interview with The Washington Post, McCartney said Starr took advantage of this and “slipped out” to the bathroom before his part in the song. Fortunately, he made it back in time because McCartney didn’t know that Ringo had left. 

“‘Hey Jude’ was a very special take when we did it,” McCartney shared. “I started the song without drums, not realizing he was in the toilet. I thought he was in his drum booth, but he’d slipped out. He heard me starting, ‘Hey Jude, don’t make me…’ Ringo… sneaks back into the studio, he’s creeping past me, I’m doing this take, realizing the drummer is trying to make his way back to the booth … He got there just in time for his entrance, so it was kind of a magic take. I think he just didn’t want to try recreating that magic again, he wasn’t up for that.”

Starr never wanted to recreate this magical take

In 1984, Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney teamed up once again for the soundtrack of the film Give My Regards to Broad Street. The album included new recordings of classic Beatles songs, including “Here, There, and Everywhere,” “Yesterday,” and “Eleanor Rigby.” McCartney shared they were going to do “Hey Jude,” but Starr refused because he believed he couldn’t do it any better. 

“We were going to do ‘Hey Jude’ in a studio sequence, and Ringo said, ‘Oh no, I don’t want to do that.’ I asked why and he said, ‘I’ve done it. I’ve done me drum thing on that.’ He wasn’t into trying to recreate it or bring it back,” McCartney explained. “I think his basic theory was he didn’t think he could do it better or as well as he did then, and I don’t think he wanted that to be evident. Also, a little bit of the sacrilege — it’s been done, we did it with the Beatles, why try again.”

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