Paul McCartney Said Ringo Starr 'Slipped Out' to Use the Bathroom During the First Take of ...
“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.
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.”
Source: Ross Tanenbaum/cheatsheet.com
