“Hey Bulldog” is a Beatles’ song which is on their 1968 soundtrack album, “Yellow Submarine”. It is also on their “Yellow Submarine Songtrack” album too
In Detail
Albums
Release Date: 13th January, 1969
Recorded: 11th February, 1968
Studio: EMI Studios, London
Genre: Psychedelic rock, pop rock, hard rock, acid rock
Track Duration: 3:14
Record Label: Apple
Songwriters: Lennon-McCartney
Producer: George Martin
Engineer: Geoff Emerick
Performers
John Lennon: double-tracked vocal, piano, guitar, talking
Paul McCartney: harmony vocal, bass, tambourine, barks, talking
George Harrison: lead guitar
Ringo Starr: drums, also spoken word
Track Sources
Yellow Submarine
Yellow Submarine Songtrack
Hey Bulldog
Yellow Submarine Album (1969)
Yellow Submarine Songtrack Album (1999)
Written mostly by John Lennon but given a helping hand off Paul McCartney in the studio, it’s one of the few Beatles’ songs based on a piano riff.
“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. We always tried to make every song different because we figured, ‘Why write something like the last one? We’ve done that.’ We were on a ladder so there was never any sense of stepping down a rung, or even staying on the same rung, it was better to move one rung ahead”.
Paul McCartney
The original song title started out as “Hey Bullfrog” but this changed after Paul McCartney started to make some bark noises for no apparent reason. A few days earlier, McCartney played the drums on a Paul Jones song called “The Dog Presides”. That song included dogs barking so perhaps he was thinking about that at the time. Be that as it may, the title of the song changed mid-way through it with the consent of Lennon.
Recording Studio
The Beatles began recording “Hey Bulldog” on the 11th February, 1968, in Studio Three of the EMI Studios, London during the 4.00pm-2.00am session. They recorded 10 takes that day with the last of those being suitable for the master copy. They overdubbed, mixed and completed the song during the same session.
George Harrison was using a new fuzz box and his amp was full blast making his guitar scream. Then, as the song ends, the band members ad-lib thereby creating the crazy fade out.
On the soundtrack album, the song is the fourth track on side one, between “All Together Now” and “It’s All Too Much” while on the songtrack album it sits in second place in between “Yellow Submarine” and “Eleanor Rigby“.
“Hey Bulldog” features in a segment of the animated film “Yellow Submarine” from 1968.
