Hey Bulldog

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Hey Bulldog is a song off The Beatles' 1969 album Yellow Submarine. It was written mainly by John Lennon with help from Paul McCartney.

Contents

[edit] Writing

Originally, the song was titled Hey Bullfrog, but it was changed when Paul made a barking sound during the outro to the song. To fit, John changed i The line "Some kind of solitude is measured out in you" was intended to be "measured out in news," although it was changed, Paul claims, when Paul misread John's handwriting. John recalled, "Paul said we should do a real song in the studio, to save wasting time. Could I whip one off? I had a few words at home so I brought them in."

[edit] Recording

The song was recorded during a ten-hour session on February 11, 1968, when ten takes of the basic track were recorded. This basic track included piano, drums, tambourine, lead guitar and bass. Originally, John had tried playing a sitar, strumming it like a ukelele and singing with a Lancashire accent. This idea was not used because it could not be worked into the basic track. They instead overdubbed more drums, fuzz bass, a guitar solo, double tracked vocals, and backing vocals. Paul recalls, "I remember Hey Bulldog as being one of John's songs and I helped him finish it off in the studio, but it's mainly his vibe. There's a little rap at the end between John and I; we went into a crazy little thing at the end." This entire session for Hey Bulldog was filmed, because they wanted a promo video released while they were in India. Instead of synching it to this song, though, they synched it to Lady Madonna, as Hey Bulldog would not be available on record until eleven months after it was recorded. In 1999, when the film Yellow Submarine was rereleased on video, a new promotional clip for this song was created, using the footage from the session, but this time synched to the proper song. George recalled, "When we were in the studio recording Bulldog, apparently it was at a time when they needed some footage for something else, some other record, and a film crew came along and filmed us. Then they cut up the footage and used some of the shots for something else. But it was Neil Aspinall who found out that when you watched and listened to what the original thing was, we were recording Bulldog. This was apparently the only time we were actually filmed recording something, so what Neil did was, he put it all back together again and put the Bulldog soundtrack onto it, and there it was." Engineer Geoff Emerick claims that this song was one of the Beatles' last real group efforts, with most of their later material being done individually or with less than all four members.

[edit] In The Film Yellow Submarine

The song was featured in the Yellow Submarine movie, in a scene where The Beatles and their alter egos Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band tease a bulldog by having The Beatles and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (who look exactly the same) appear together. For reasons unknown, this was only included in European versions of the film and was not seen in America until the film's released on DVD and VHS in 1999.

[edit] LOVE Mix

Though not technically designated it's own track, a recorgnisable section appears in a mix of Lady Madonna on the 2006 remix album LOVE. Organ parts from I Want You (She's So Heavy) play and Eric Clapton's solo from While My Guitar Gently Weeps play during this section featuring this song's riff.

[edit] Personnel

[edit] The Beatles

[edit] Production

[edit] Available Versions

[edit] Available On

[edit] Cover Versions

  • Boxer
  • The Chaperones
  • Alice Cooper
  • Elvis Costello
  • Die Andalusischen Hunde
  • Firewater
  • The Gods
  • The Golden Ticket
  • Gomez
  • Rolf Harris
  • Honeycrack
  • Cyndi Lauper
  • Manfred Mann's Earth Band
  • Dave Matthews
  • Eric McFadden
  • Paddy Milner
  • Ian Moore
  • The Roots
  • Jim Schoenfeld
  • Skin Yard
  • Southern Culture on the Skids
  • Tea Leaf Green
  • Toad the Wet Sprocket
  • U-Melt
  • Ween

[edit] Source

Retrieved from "http://www.beatleswiki.org/wiki/Hey_Bulldog"
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