下面的大段英文是从beatlesbible上摘过来的，《Hey Jude》的来龙去脉，有兴趣的朋友可以慢慢看。
觉得有意思的是：
1.这首歌是Paul在开车时打的腹稿，Paul边想着新旋律新歌词，边开车，一心二用也够危险的。不过那是在1968年的英格兰，路上车肯定很少，不像现在。(Paul当时开的可是阿斯顿马丁啊～)
2.在最终录音时，Ringo Star跑去上厕所，录音已经开始好一会了，他才匆匆赶回来，刚好赶上需要鼓声的副歌部分。
3.在单曲即将发行之前，Paul看到Apple shop门口的墙是白的，就上去写了“Hey Jude”几个字---因为他觉得这儿的位置好，车水马龙人来人往，可以打个免费广告，结果被一个熟食店的伙计看到了，以为他写的是什么种族歧视的文字，跑来想干架。
Hey Jude, the first release on The Beatles' own Apple Records label, was a ballad by Paul McCartney. It was written to comfort John Lennon's son Julian during the divorce of his parents.
It was written in June 1968,as McCartney drove his Aston Martin to Weybridge to visit Cynthia Lennon and her son. On the journey he began thinking about their changing lives, and of the past times he had spent writing with Lennon at the Weybridge house.
“I thought, as a friend of the family, I would motor out to Weybridge and tell them that everything was all right: to try and cheer them up, basically, and see how they were. I had about an hour's drive. I would always turn the radio off and try and make up songs, just in case... I started singing: 'Hey Jules - don't make it bad, take a sad song, and make it better...' It was optimistic, a hopeful message for Julian: 'Come on, man, your parents got divorced. I know you're not happy, but you'll be OK.'
I eventually changed 'Jules' to 'Jude'. One of the characters in Oklahoma is called Jud, and I like the name.”
----Paul McCartney
Anthology
McCartney recorded a piano demo of Hey Jude upon his return to his home in Cavendish Avenue, London. On 26 July 1968 played the song to Lennon for the first time.
“I finished it all up in Cavendish and I was in the music room upstairs when John and Yoko came to visit and they were right behind me over my right shoulder, standing up, listening to it as I played it to them, and when I got to the line, 'The movement you need is on your shoulder,' I looked over my shoulder and I said, 'I'll change that, it's a bit crummy. I was just blocking it out,' and John said, 'You won't, you know. That's the best line in it!' That's collaboration. When someone's that firm about a line that you're going to junk, and he said, 'No, keep it in.' So of course you love that line twice as much because it's a little stray, it's a little mutt that you were about to put down and it was reprieved and so it's more beautiful than ever. I love those words now...
Time lends a little credence to things. You can't knock it, it just did so well. But when I'm singing it, that is when I think of John, when I hear myself singing that line; it's an emotional point in the song.”
----Paul McCartney
Many Years From Now, Barry Miles
The lyrics struck an immediate chord with the record-buying public, who related to the hopeful sentiments. Its universality was demonstrated when John Lennon later revealed that he felt the song had been directed at him.
“Paul said it was written about Julian. He knew I was splitting with Cyn and leaving Julian then. He was driving to see Julian to say hello. He had been like an uncle. And he came up with Hey Jude. But I always heard it as a song to me. If you think about it... Yoko's just come into the picture. He's saying, 'Hey Jude' - 'Hey John.' 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. The words 'go out and get her' - subconsciously he was saying, 'Go ahead, leave me.' On a conscious level, he didn't want me to go ahead. The angel in him was saying, 'Bless you.' The devil in him didn't like it at all because he didn't want to lose his partner.”
----John Lennon
Playboy, 1980
It wasn't until 1987 that McCartney came to discuss Hey Jude with Julian Lennon, after a chance encounter in a New York hotel.
“He told me that he’d been thinking about my circumstances all those years ago, about what I was going through. Paul and I used to hang out a bit - more than dad and I did. We had a great friendship going and there seem to be far more pictures of me and Paul playing together at that age than there are pictures of me and dad.”
----Julian Lennon
Mojo magazine, February 2002
The recording notes for Hey Jude were bought at auction by Julian Lennon in 1996 for £25,000. In 2002 a sale of the original handwritten lyrics was announced by Christie's in London, with an estimated price of £80,000. Paul McCartney took out a court order to prevent the auction, saying the paper had disappeared from his London home.
Anthology 2 contained take two of Hey Jude, recorded on 29 July 1968. The Love album, meanwhile, contained a subtly remixed version of the final version.
Although by 1968 The Beatles had stopped performing live, Hey Jude's anthemic ending was perfect for crowd participation. It was fitting, then, when later years McCartney made it a key part of his live shows.
In the studio
The Beatles started recording Hey Jude on 29 July 1968. That first session was more of a rehearsal than a proper session: The Beatles knew it would be their next single, and dedicated the time to perfecting the arrangement.
Paul McCartney sang and played piano, John Lennon was on acoustic guitar, George Harrison played electric guitar and Ringo Starr was on drums. They recorded six takes, only three of which were complete, and each notably shorter than the final version. One of these was later released on Anthology 3.
“On Hey Jude, when we first sat down and I sang 'Hey Jude...', George went 'nanu nanu' on his guitar. I continued, 'Don't make it bad...' and he replied 'nanu nanu'. He was answering every line - and I said, 'Whoa! Wait a minute, now. I don't think we want that. Maybe you'd come in with answering lines later. For now I think I should start it simply first.' He was going, 'Oh yeah, OK, fine, fine.' But it was getting a bit like that. He wasn't into what I was saying...
I did want to insist that there shouldn't be an answering guitar phrase in Hey Jude - and that was important to me - but of course if you tell a guitarist that, and he's not as keen on the idea as you are, it looks as if you're knocking him out of the picture. I think George felt that: it was like, 'Since when are you going to tell me what to play? I'm in The Beatles too.' So I can see his point of view.”
----Paul McCartney
Anthology
The next evening The Beatles continued working on the track, recording takes 7-23. George Harrison didn't perform, so waited in the studio control room. The session was filmed for a documentary by the National Music Council of Great Britain, who captured the group playing and chatting for a short colour film called Music!
At the end of the session George Martin made a rough mix of the song, in order to score it for the orchestra that was booked for 1 August.
“Hey Jude has become a classic. It felt good recording it. We put it down a couple of times - trying to get it right - and, like everything else, it just clicked. That's how it should be.”
----Ringo Starr
Anthology
On 31 July The Beatles decamped to Trident, a studio in London's Wardour Street, which had eight-track recording facilities. They began re-recording Hey Jude, laying down four takes of the song's rhythm track.
“There is an amusing story about recording it. We were at Trident Studios in Soho, and Ringo walked out to go to the toilet and I hadn't noticed. The toilet was only a few yards from his drum booth, but he'd gone past my back and I still thought he was in his drum booth. I started what was the actual take, and Hey Jude goes on for hours before the drums come in and while I was doing it I suddenly felt Ringo tiptoeing past my back rather quickly, trying to get to his drums. And just as he got to his drums, boom boom boom, his timing was absolutely impeccable. So I think when those things happen, you have a little laugh and a light bulb goes off in your head and you think, This is the take! And you put a little more into it. You think, oh, fuck! This has got to be the take, what just happened was so magic! So we did that and we made a pretty good record.”
----Paul McCartney
Many Years From Now, Barry Miles
The song was completed the next day. McCartney added his bass and lead vocals, and the other Beatles contributed backing vocals. Then the 36-strong orchestra added backing for Hey Jude's lengthy four-chord coda The classical musicians were also offered a double fee for clapping and singing along to the 'nah nah nah' chant.
“Most of the musicians were happy to oblige, especially as it meant a doubled fee, but there was one dissenter who reportedly walked out, saying "I'm not going to clap my hands and sing Paul McCartney's bloody song!"
----The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions
Mark Lewisohn
Hey Jude contains an unedited expletive, which is often played by radio stations to this day. In the final verse, John Lennon sang "Let her into" instead of "Let her under your skin". His cry of "Oh!", followed by "Fucking hell", remains in the final mix.
“I was told about it at the time but could never hear it. But once I had it pointed out I can't miss it now. I have a sneaking suspicion they knew all along, as it was a track that should have been pulled out in the mix. I would imagine it was one of those things that happened - it was a mistake, they listened to it and thought, 'doesn't matter, it's fine'.”
----Ken Scott, engineer
The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions, Mark Lewisohn
“I went into the Apple shop just before Hey Jude was being released. The windows were whited out, and I thought: 'Great opportunity. Baker Street, millions of buses going around...' So, before anyone knew what it meant, I scraped 'Hey Jude' out of the whitewash.
A guy who had a delicatessen in Marylebone rang me up, and he was furious: 'I'm going to send one of my sons round to beat you up.' I said, 'Hang on, hang on - what's this about?' and he said: 'You've written "Jude" in the shop window.' I had no idea it meant 'Jew', but if you look at footage of Nazi Germany, 'Juden Raus' was written in whitewashed windows with a Star of David. I swear it never occurred to me.”
----Paul McCartney
Anthology
Promotional film
On 4 September 1968 The Beatles made promotional films for Hey Jude and Revolution, at Twickenham Film Studios in London.
At least three performances of Hey Jude were filmed; the most commonly-seen is an edit of two of these. Only the vocals were live: during the first part of the song Paul McCartney sang along with the studio vocals, and ad-libbed during the end.
“We made a film in front of an audience. They had brought people in for Hey Jude. It wasn't done just for David Frost, but it was shown on his show and he was actually there when we filmed it.”
----George Harrison
Anthology
The clip was first shown on Frost On Sunday on 8 September. Frost was at Twickenham for the recording; The Beatles taped a version of the programme's George Martin-penned theme tune, By George! It's The David Frost Theme, before the host introduced Hey Jude.
“Magnificent! A perfect rendition! Ladies and gentlemen, there you see the greatest tea-room orchestra in the world. It's my pleasure to introduce now, in their first live appearance for goodness knows how long in front of a live audience, The Beatles!
----David Frost”
Frost On Sunday, 1968
Following this introduction, The Beatles improvised a parody of Elvis Presley's It's Now Or Never, which was never seen by television viewers.
Chart success
Hey Jude was released just a few weeks after The Beatles finished its recording. It was backed with John Lennon's Revolution, and was the first single released on the group's Apple Records.
“I wanted to put [Revolution] out as a single, I had it all prepared, but they came by, and said it wasn't good enough. And we put out what? Hello, Goodbye or some shit like that? No, we put out Hey Jude, which was worth it - I'm sorry - but we could have had both.”
----John Lennon
Rolling Stone, 1970
At over seven minutes, Hey Jude was the longest single ever to have topped the British charts. Its lengthy fade-out purposefully lasted one second longer than Richard Harris' MacArthurPark, a hit earlier in 1968.
“We recorded Hey Jude in Trident Studios. It was a long song. In fact, after I timed it I actually said, 'You can't make a single that long.' I was shouted down by the boys - not for the first time in my life - and John asked: 'Why not?' I couldn't think of a good answer, really - except the pathetic one that disc jockeys wouldn't play it. He said, 'They will if it's us.' And, of course, he was absolutely right.”
----George Martin
Anthology
Hey Jude was released on 26 August 1968 in the United States. It swiftly rose to the number one spot, where it remained for the next nine weeks - the longest run achieved by any Beatles single. The single sold five million copies in six months, and a further million by the end of 1968. Altogether it spent 19 weeks in the charts.
In the UK it was released on 30 August. The single began its 16-week chart run on 7 September 1968, rising to the top spot a week later. It spent two weeks at number one before being deposed by another Apple single, Mary Hopkin's Those Were The Days.
Hey Jude is the biggest-selling debut release ever for a label, and remains The Beatles' most commercially-successful single. It has sold an estimated eight million copies worldwide and has topped the charts in 11 countries.