Still advertising Beatles 1

While many of us are looking at Beatles 1 sliding down the charts, the Beatles are still not promoting the collection on TV. But they are continuing to promote the release by uploading and publishing full music videos on their Beatles Vevo and YouTube accounts. The above "Hey Jude" video was published on December 7.
The publishing of this video may have been prompted by a December 4 article in The Guardian, who brought forth another fan's account of being present at the taping of the various "Hey Jude" films. This time, it's American fan Joel Soroka who steps forward in a piece called "That's me in the picture, Joel Soroka shakes a tambourine at the filming of Hey Jude, 4 September 1968". The article is posted online, here. You may read about Margaret Morel's account of that same event in one of our earlier blog posts.

Joel Soroka, shaking that tambourine in the center of the photo. Copyright Apple Corps Ltd.

"Hey Jude" topped the charts in Britain for two weeks and for 9 weeks in America, where it became The Beatles longest-running No.1 in the US singles chart as well as the single with the longest running time.

The Beatles did not record their promotional film until "Hey Jude" had been on sale in America for a week. They returned to Twickenham Film Studio, using director Michael Lindsay-Hogg who had worked with them on "Paperback Writer" and "Rain". Earlier still, Lindsay-Hogg had directed episodes of "Ready Steady Go!".  And a few months after the film for "Hey Jude" he made The Rolling Stones "Rock and Roll Circus" TV special that featured John and Yoko but wouldn’t be shown until 1996.

To help with the filming an audience of around 300 local people, as well as some of the fans that gathered regularly outside Abbey Road Studios were brought in for the song’s finale. Their presence had an unlikely upside for The Beatles in their long-running saga with the Musicians’ Union in that the MU were fooled into believing the band were playing live, when in fact they were miming for the vast majority of the song. Paul, however, sang live throughout the song. The video was first broadcast on David Frost’s "Frost On Sunday" show, four days after it was filmed. At that point transmission was in black and white although the promo was originally shot in colour. A version was first aired in America a month later on 6 October 1968, on "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour".