Hey Jude

Story

Recording

Equipment

Recording Timeline

• 29–30 July 1968 — rehearsal, Studio Two (Abbey Road) — takes 1–6, Ken Scott engineering, no producer credited; these rehearsal takes were abandoned.¹
• 31 July 1968 — re-make, Trident — takes 1–4 with George Martin producing and Barry Sheffield engineering; the band started afresh with a basic rhythm track of piano (Paul), electric guitar (George), acoustic guitar (John) and drums (Ringo).¹
• 1 August 1968 — overdubs, Trident — 5–8 pm Paul overdubbed bass and lead vocal while the others supplied backing vocals; 8–11 pm the 36-piece orchestra recorded the build-up under the long refrain, the earlier bass overdub wiped to free a track. The players were paid double-scale to clap and sing the “Na, na, na” on the run-out.¹
• 2 August 1968 — stereo remixes, Trident — stereo remixes 1–3 from take 1, the third chosen “best.”¹
• 6 August 1968 — mono remix, Trident — mono remix 1 made from stereo remix 3 rather than from the eight-track; Lewisohn explicitly flags this as unusual practice.¹
• 7–8 August 1968 — mono re-cut, Studio Two — the mono was re-cut “in the more conventional manner” as remixes 2–4 from take 1, with Ken Scott and George Martin spending an evening on the EMI UTC RS56 “Curve Bender” restoring the high-frequency content the Trident→Abbey Road monitor transition had erased.^1,2

Studio Notes

• Trident’s Ampex 440 eight-track — the Sheffield brothers chose the Ampex 440 (over 3M’s M23, the model Abbey Road would later acquire), then the most popular eight-track machine in America, making Trident the first eight-track studio in London. Until Abbey Road’s 3M M23 was put into use on 3 September 1968, every other Beatles track in production stayed on the four-track Studer J37.^1,2
• Trident’s Sound Techniques 20/8 console — the custom desk installed in September 1967, designed by Geoff Frost with 20 input channels and eight output groups (linear EMT input faders, quadrant Painton group faders) — not the later A-Range desk of the early 1970s.²
• The Tannoy / Altec monitoring trap — Trident’s control room ran Tannoy “Red” drivers in Lockwood cabinets with far more high-frequency response than Abbey Road’s Altecs. The mix Ken Scott heard at Trident sounded “phenomenal”; the same tape over Studio Two’s Altecs the next day had “absolutely no high end on it whatsoever” — the monitor gap added a deceptive brightness to a muddy mix.^1,2
• UTC RS56 “Curve Bender” — the EMI valve tone-control unit Scott used in Studio Two on 8 August to restore the missing high end for the released mono; its most famous use in the Beatles catalogue.²
• NAB vs CCIR tape EQ mismatch — Trident’s Ampex machines used the American NAB tape-EQ standard, Abbey Road’s the European CCIR; the mismatch surfaced at mastering, where the “banded” LP master had to conform entirely to CCIR, so Trident-originated tapes were converted NAB→CCIR at Abbey Road.²
• The 36-piece orchestra and the long fade — tracked 8–11 pm on 1 August; the earlier bass overdub was wiped to free a track. The orchestra rides the four-minute coda from 3:09, where the chorus first lands, to the fade-out at 7:11.¹
• Trident’s 1898 Bechstein grand piano — the house piano McCartney played on the rhythm track, distinct in colour from Abbey Road’s Steinway and the EMI tack piano.²
• The undeleted expletive at 2′59″ — Lewisohn flags an “undeleted expletive” in the released record; Emerick’s memoir attributes the off-mic curse to McCartney (a reaction to a piano clunker) and names Lennon as the Beatle who insisted it stay “buried just low enough so that it can barely be heard.” Emerick is first-person memoir and is treated here as anecdotal rather than archival.^1,3

Releases

• 1968 UK mono single (Apple/Parlophone R 5722, 30 August 1968) — the reference release; one of the 8 August Studio Two mono remixes 2–4 with the Curve Bender high-frequency restoration (NOT the 6 August Trident mono-from-stereo fold). Paul’s undeleted off-mic curse at 2′59″ is preserved.^1,3
• 1968 US stereo single (Apple 2276, 26 August 1968) — based on the 2 August Trident stereo remix 3; the American single carried stereo from day one while the UK 7″ stayed mono.¹
• 1970 Hey Jude US compilation LP (Apple SW-385, 26 February 1970) — Emerick recalls running off fresh stereo mixes from the original multitrack tapes for this US Capitol release, rather than the pseudo-stereo processing applied to earlier mono-only singles; a separate stereo object from the 1968 Trident remix.³
• 1973 1967–1970 (Blue Album, Apple PCSP 718) — uses the available stereo mix of the early 1970s; a compilation source distinct from the original single.
• 2009 stereo remaster (The Beatles Stereo Box, Allan Rouse / Guy Massey) — flat transfer of the closest available stereo master, preserving the 1968 Trident spatialisation.
• 2015 1+ Giles Martin remix — new stereo and 5.1 mixes from the eight-track tape; the orchestral build is rebalanced and the off-mic curse sits at a different level relative to the vocal than on the 1968 mono.
• 2023 1967–1970 50th-anniversary edition (Giles Martin / Sam Okell) — a stems-separation remix using Peter Jackson’s de-mixing technology; the orchestra, backing vocals and long-fade coda are isolatable as discrete objects.