Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Foreign this is the Nathan's and Roncast, the podcast about the songcraft and musicianship behind the songs we love. I'm Aaron Nathans. When I was a kid, I took piano lessons. It was mainly classical stuff, which I tolerated, but when you're a young teenager, this isn't the kind of music you gravitate toward on your own. I wasn't much into rock and roll at the time either, but when I switched piano teachers to a young woman living in a big beautiful house in the fancy section of the Columbus, Ohio suburb where I grew up, things started to change for me. She had me playing contemporary music stuff from the last 20 years or so, and suddenly I got more interested. I began looking forward to going to piano lessons. I don't remember exactly what she had me learn to play. It was a long time ago, but I remember one comment that she made. Hey, how about hey Jude by the Beatles? Everyone knows that song, and I remember being slightly embarrassed that I'd never heard of it. These were the days before the Internet. If I had wanted to hear that song, I'd have to hunt it down at the library or the record store. I didn't have a CD player yet. I didn't even have a car. Although mom had some Beatles records, she'd been at their second concert at Chase Stadium. Hey Jude, which was released as a single in 1968, was not one of them. Most of her record collection and all the songs in the radio, in the house and in the car were classical. This has always been part of the contradiction of my musical makeup. I was not steeped in rock and roll early on. It wasn't until college that I finally got my hands on a proper recording of hey Jude. By then, my piano days were far behind me. Upon hearing the song, I wasn't initially smitten with it. It was a really basic melody written around a very simple idea. Feel better, kid? Maybe that was part of what this teacher was trying to tell me. It was a popular song and it was easy to play. I've seen hey Jude covered as a lullaby for babies to me. At first it felt kind of mushy, but something about this song has given it wings.
[00:02:16] The Beatles had a tremendous amount of top shelf content, but Rolling Stone called this the seventh best song in the Beatles catalog at 7 minutes and 11 seconds. It's really long, but it spent nine weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100, setting a record.
[00:02:32] As I'm sure you know, Paul McCartney wrote it during the White Album sessions to help buck up young Julian Lennon. Upon the divorce of his parents, Paul thought Jude sounded more songworthy than Jules.
[00:02:45] I always thought it was an awkward turn of phrase, but, you know, Paul might say it's hey Jude, shut up. So let's look at the structure of this song and what made it stand out. The beginning of the song is pretty normal. It starts out with the vocal, no introduction, much like a lot of Paul's Beatles songs do. Other songs that begin cold like this include All My Loving Penny Lane, and We can work it Out.
[00:03:10] The first two verses run back to back. Then there's a bridge, verse three, another bridge, and a final verse that calls back some of the same language used in the first two verses. And if that's where the song ended, we probably would not be talking about it today.
[00:03:26] But you know what happens next? A giant chorus of na na na na na na na that go on for longer than the main part of the song. It builds and, and it builds and it keeps going on and on, creating a coda for the ages. My piano teacher taught me that word. It's fun, it's repetitious, it's infectious, but it's also meditative. It's like the NA NA's are kind of a mantra and if you say them for long enough, you begin to zone out and then your own troubles begin to disappear. At least for a little while. Think of the time this song came out. August 26, 1968, coinciding exactly to the day with the ill fated Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
[00:04:11] Four and a half years earlier, the Beatles had arrived to help make America feel better after the assassination of President John Kennedy. And now here they were again, trying to ease the hearts of a nation and a world torn apart by war. I will note that any cover of the song that cuts this coda short to make it more radio friendly, inevitably makes it worse. Because the NA NA's are the point over the last few weeks, I've noticed a shift at folk music events. After this year's presidential election, music gatherings have become much more powerful, more meaningful. People are holding each other close and looking for opportunities to sing along and find their way through the darkness.
[00:04:53] I'll be hosting this year's Philadelphia Folk Song Society Holiday Gathering. It'll be this coming weekend and we will certainly be singing lots of holiday music. It's a fool who plays it cool by making their world a little colder. But by all rights, hey Jude should not be considered a holiday song. But in trying to figure out what song to sing at the end of the show, the big Sing Along Closer, a song that represents all of us, no matter our religious background or lack thereof. There was really only one answer for me. I was trying to find a song for this season at this time and in this place. And the song that everyone in this community needs right now is hey, Jude. Maybe we'll add some sleigh bells. But thank you, Paul, and thank you, piano teacher, for helping give me the answer.
[00:05:40] Thanks for listening. Talk with you again soon. Happy holidays and peace on earth.
[00:05:49] Sa.
