Paul McCartney reveals John Lennon inspired him to keep one lyric in ‘Hey Jude’

“‘The movement you need is on your shoulder’. Now, I thought that was just me blocking in,” confessed Paul.

He shared that the late icon convinced him not to alter a line in the song when he played it for him for the first time.

“When I played it for John in my music room on my psychedelic piano — I’m sitting facing this way and he was standing behind me, almost on my shoulder and he’s listening,” recalled the musician.

Paul continued, “I’m so pleased with myself playing this new song.”

The musician remembered changing the line in the song but John didn’t want to, saying, “I turn around to John, ‘Don’t worry. I’ll change that,’” he shared. “And he looked at me and said, ‘You won’t, you know? It’s the best line, innit?’”

Meanwhile, Paul added that the line stayed in the song, which later became the longest song to reach number one on the Hot 100 at the time.

Reflecting on the meaning behind the 1968 track, Paul explained, “I know when I’ve been going through bad times, I don’t know, like wife Linda’s illness and consequent death and the breakup of the Beatles… All these sorts of things, these moments in your life, I know you really feel lousy. You’ve got a pit in your stomach all the time.”

“So, to me, the idea sometimes behind songs is to try and reach that person and say, ‘Look, how about this thought?’” stated the musician.

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