I'd like to believe what the article mentions- “Hey Jude,” which Paul McCartney wrote to comfort Julian when John Lennon was separating from Julian’s mother, Cynthia. Julian was only 5 years old at the time and didn’t grasp the message of the song — which was originally titled “Hey Jules"- as at least some inspiration for the song.
|
@mattmiller It’s common knowledge, uttered many times by Paul and John over the last 50-odd years, that “Hey Jude” was inspired by Paul’s empathy for Julian (a young boy who never really saw his dad that much to begin with) having his dad go be with another woman in lieu of maintaining the nuclear family. |
Another possibility for the inspiration for "Brown Sugar" is that it was about the singer Claudia Lennear. There’s a segment in the documentary "Twenty Feet From Stardom" where she talks about her relationship with Jagger. And she appeared in the August 1974 issue of Playboy magazine in a pictorial entitled "Brown Sugar." |
In McCartney's recent 2 volume set called "The Lyrics", he confirms that Hey Jude was inspired by his sympathy for Julian as John was going through a divorce from his mother. Indeed, the song started as "Hey Jules". Heroin is not mentioned in McCartney's long narrative about the lyrics to Hey Jude. As most Beatle followers know, McCartney only tried heroine once and it did not do anything for him. It would therefore seem highly unlikely that he would write an ode to heroine. |
