I wanted to share with FamilyScholars readers a reflection by Aleks Karnick, a new member of the team here at the Institute for American Values.
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Hey, Dad
by Aleks Karnick
I think everyone’s had the same argument at one point or another.
You know how it goes. First, everybody’s sitting around chit-chatting about this and that and people start talking about music and rock bands, and pretty much everyone agrees that the Beatles are the most influential rock band in history. That just seems to be the way it goes.
Invariably, someone then poses the question: “So what, in your opinion, is the greatest Beatles’ song ever?”
This always leads to great debate and I am often shot down in my personal campaign for best Beatles’ track. So yeah, I know it’s been overplayed, overexposed, over-everything; but, for me, there is no question, it’s “Hey, Jude.”
Set aside the beauty of the music and Paul’s passionate singing for a moment (there are about a million other Beatles’ songs that share these qualities) and think about the origins of the song.
As many people know, Paul wrote this song for Julian Lennon, John’s son, in the midst of John’s divorce from his wife, Cynthia. John, who had been cheating on his wife with the infamous Yoko Ono, had moved in with Yoko in 1968 and was in the process of leaving Cynthia, when Paul came to visit Julian and Cynthia.
With John in the middle of a rock and roll life with his Fluxus girlfriend, Paul was well aware of the distance growing between John and his son. Knowing the importance of having a strong, moral influence from a grown male figure, Paul began to spend time with Julian, and during his first visit took the boy on a car trip.
During the ride Paul composed the song for the young Julian (who was unaware of its true inspiration until Paul told him in 1987) and it was soon recorded and turned into one of the most popular Beatles’ songs in history.
But listen to the lyrics and you can understand the true importance of the song for a young man without a father:
And any time you feel the pain, Hey Jude, refrain.
Don’t carry the world upon your shoulders.
For well you know that it’s a fool who plays it cool
By making his world a little colder.
To me this is a clear reference to John’s coldness toward his family, and a plea to young Julian not to follow in his father’s footsteps. But most of the lyrics seem to hint at this:
Hey Jude, don’t be afraid.
You were made to go out and get her.
The minute you let her under your skin,
Then you begin to make it better.
Hey Jude, don’t let me down.
You have found her now go and get her.
Remember to let her into your heart,
Then you can start to make it better.
So let it out and let it in.
Hey Jude begin.
You’re waiting for someone to perform with
And don’t you know that it’s just you.
Hey Jude you’ll do.
The movement you need is on your shoulder.
While the final lyrics seem to be about self-reliance and acceptance, the rest of the song refers to opening one’s heart and experiencing real love.
I could be wrong and maybe I’m overanalyzing the lyrics or putting words in Paul’s mouth; but to me, in this song Paul is teaching (not just Jude but all the fatherless) the importance of a man being with a woman to do what they are made to do—have a family—a lesson John could never teach us.
You may disagree, and I’m willing to take the heat, but without a doubt I think this is the greatest Beatles’ song ever.
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Aleks Karnick is Development Coordinator at the Institute for American Values.
Categories: Children of Divorce, Fatherhood
Good choice. Though John got a different message from it, as he said in the Playboy interview in 1980. He actually felt Paul was encouraging him to leave Cynthia and the Beatles and be happy:
PLAYBOY: Let’s go back to jogging your memory with songs. How about Paul’s song “Hey Jude?”
LENNON: He 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. Now I’m sounding like one of those fans reading things into it. . . . Think about it: Yoko had just come into the picture. He is saying. “Hey, Jude” — “Hey, John.” 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.
PLAYBOY: Yoko, the single you and John released from your album seems to be looking toward the future.
ONO: Yes, “Starting Over” is a song that makes me feel like crying. John has talked about the Sixties and how it gave us a taste for freedom — sexual and otherwise. It was like an orgy. Then, after that big come that we had together, men and women somehow lost track of each other and a lot of families and relationships split apart. I really think that what happened in the Seventies can be compared to what happened under Nazism with Jewish families. Only the force that split them came from the inside, not from the outside. We tried to rationalize it as the price we were paying for our freedom. And John is saying in his song, OK, we had the energy in the Sixties, in the Seventies we separated, but let’s start over in the Eighties. He’s reaching out to me, the woman. Reaching out after all that’s happened, over the battlefield of dead families, is more difficult this time around.