BEATLES MAGAZINE: "HEY BULLDOG" WAS ORIGINALLY CALLED "HEY BULLFROG"

Sunday, 16 November 2025

"HEY BULLDOG" WAS ORIGINALLY CALLED "HEY BULLFROG"

"Hey Bulldog," a track featured on The Beatles' 1969 Yellow Submarine soundtrack LP, is officially credited to the Lennon–McCartney writing partnership, though John Lennon was its main author.

The final version was completed by Lennon and Paul McCartney collaboratively in the studio. The song's recording coincided with the filming of a promotional video for "Lady Madonna," and it stands out as one of the few Beatles tracks built around a core piano riff, similar to "Lady Madonna."

John started developing the song, initially titled "Hey Bullfrog," after United Artists requested an additional song from the band for the Yellow Submarine animated film's accompanying album. Early demos recorded at his Weybridge home in the winter of 1967–68 contain the melodic ideas for the chorus and a draft of the "she can talk to me" section.

The final musical arrangement of "Hey Bulldog" is in $4/4$ time and utilizes a shifting key structure, moving between B major, A major, and B minor. Music critics have categorized the track using various genres, including hard rock, blues-based rock, psychedelic rock, pop rock, acid rock, and straightforward rock. The track begins with a piano riff played in octaves—a sound recalling the Beatles' cover of "Money (That's What I Want)"—which is then layered with higher-register guitars and a lower bass line. The structure features two bridges and two middle verses, with the bridge functioning more like a repeated refrain. The distinctive introductory riff is central to the song, reappearing at the end of the refrain and during the outro, and influencing the refrain itself. The lyrics are filled with clever wordplay, which Lennon later dismissed as "meaning nothing."

The Beatles assembled at EMI's Studio Three on 11 February 1968 to shoot a promotional clip for "Lady Madonna," but upon arrival, they chose to record a new song instead. John proposed his unfinished idea, "Hey Bullfrog," which he and McCartney quickly finalized while in the studio. Paul later recounted a misreading of Lennon's handwritten words, substituting "measured out in news" with "measured out in you," a change Lennon preferred. George Martin produced the session, with Geoff Emerick serving as the balance engineer.The camera crew stayed as the band laid down the basic track, which included piano, drums, tambourine, bass, and rhythm guitar.

Near the end of the basic track recording, Paul started barking like a dog to try and amuse John. This led John to change the song's title to "Hey Bulldog," despite the new name only appearing in the outro. After ten takes, the final one was deemed the best. The film crew departed, and the band proceeded with various overdubs onto take ten, which involved Ringo Starr's off-beat drums, George Harrison's distorted Gibson SG intro, John's doubled lead vocals, and Paul's harmony vocal. John recorded a lead guitar solo using Harrison's SG.

Following the overdubs, Martin and Emerick created two mono mixes. While the Beatles' recordings often included studio chatter or ad-libs that were faded out, the production team decided to keep the spontaneous dog barks, shouts, and screams in the final track.They even applied heavy compression to some of Lennon's dialogue and the dog noises.The track's pitch was slightly raised by running the playback faster.

The mono version was intended for the film; therefore, Emerick returned on 29 October 1968 to mix the song for stereo for the album release. Yellow Submarine was released by Apple in the US on 13 January 1969, with "Hey Bulldog" as the fourth track. The UK release followed four days later. Emerick later highly praised McCartney's bass performance, calling it his most imaginative since Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

"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." - Paul McCartney

Personnel

John Lennon – double tracked vocals, piano, lead guitar

Paul McCartney – harmony vocal, bass, tambourine

George Harrison – guitar

Ringo Starr – drums

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