Paul McCartney wrote “Hey Jude” with John Lennon’s son Julian in mind. Years later, Julian shared why he has a love-hate relationship with the song.
Julian Lennon was the first Beatles child and the inspiration for several songs, including “Hey Jude.” Paul McCartney wrote the song for him in the midst of John Lennon’s tumultuous divorce from Cynthia Lennon. “Hey Jude” is a classic Beatles song. While Julian says he likes it, it also reminds him of a dark period in his family’s history.
Julian Lennon said ‘Hey Jude’ brings up bad memories
Not long after Lennon told Cynthia he’d cheated on her multiple times and insisted he wanted to make their marriage work, she came home to find him sitting in a bathrobe with Yoko Ono. This was a fatal blow to their marriage, and they divorced. The split devastated Cynthia and put a great deal of distance between the three-year-old Julian and his father.
McCartney was the only Beatle who stayed in contact with Cynthia after the divorce. He decided to write “Hey Jude” for her young son. Decades later, Julian said that while he can understand why people love the song, it brings up painful memories. It was a “stark and dark reminder of actually what happened, the fact that dad walked out … left mum and I.”
“That was a point of complete change and complete destruction and complete darkness and sadness,” he said on the Club Random podcast, per Gold Radio. “I mean, I was only three, but I recognized something was up. But for mum … it was heartbreaking. It’s a reminder of that time and that place. I get both sides of it, but a lot of people don’t necessarily understand there’s a dark, yin and yang, of that song.”
Still, he has said that he finds it touching that McCartney wrote the song for him.
Paul McCartney explained why he wrote ‘Hey Jude’ for Julian Lennon
McCartney spent a great deal of time with Julian during his early years, and he empathized with him through the divorce. The inspiration for the song came to him as he drove out to visit Cynthia and Julian.
“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,” he said in The Beatles Anthology, adding, “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 Jools — 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.’”
He eventually changed Jules to Jude.
What did John Lennon think of ‘Hey Jude’?
While the song was about a situation Lennon caused, he thought it was beautiful. He could be harsh on McCartney’s music, so his praise of the song was genuine.
“‘Hey Jude’ is one of his masterpieces. He said it was written about Julian, my child,” Lennon said in the book All We Are Saying: The Last Major Interview With John Lennon and Yoko Ono by David Sheff, adding, “He knew I was splitting with Cyn and leaving Julian. He was driving over to say ‘hi’ to Julian. He’d been like an uncle to him. Paul was always good with kids. And so he came up with ‘Hey Jude.’”
Lennon believed that the song was also a message to him, though.
“If you think about it, Yoko’s just come into the picture,” he explained. “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.’ But on a conscious level, he didn’t want me to go ahead. The angel inside him was saying, ‘Bless you.’ The devil in him didn’t like it at all, because he didn’t want to lose his partner.”
