Hello, Goodbye

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Hello, Goodbye is a song by The Beatles off their 1967 album Magical Mystery Tour. It was written by Paul McCartney and credited to Lennon/McCartney.

Contents

AKA and Working Titles

Writing

Hello, Goodbye was written when Brian Epstein's assistant, Alistair Taylor asked Paul how he wrote songs. Taylor recalled, "Paul marched me into the dining room, where he had a marvellous old hand-carved harmonium. 'Come and site at the other end of the harmonium. You hit any note you like on the keyboard. Just hit it and I'll do the same. Now whenever I shout out a word, you shout the opposite and I'll make up a tune. You watch, it'll make music'... 'Black,' he started. 'White,' I replied. 'Yes.' 'No.' 'Good.' 'Bad.' Hello.' 'Goodbye.' I wonder whether Paul really made up that song as he went along or whether it was running through his head already." The song was possibly intended to be easily understood, like All You Need Is Love. Paul later said, "Hello, Goodbye was one of my songs. There are Geminian influences here I think: the twins. It's such a deep theme in the universe, duality - man woman, black white, ebony ivory, high low, right wrong, up down, hello goodbye - that it was a very easy song to write. It's just a song of duality, with me advocating the more positive. You say goodbye, I say hello. You say stop, I say go. I was advocating the more positive side of the duality, and I still do to this day."

Recording

Work began on the song on October 2, 1967, when 14 takes of the backing track, then known as Hello Hello, were recorded. This basic track included piano, organ, drums, bongos, congas, maracas, and tambourine. On October 19, they returned to the song, adding two guitar parts and the lead and backing vocals. The next day, two violas were recorded. George Martin scored the viola parts while Paul McCartney played what he wanted on the piano. Violist Ken Essex recalls, "All of The Beatles were there. One of them was sitting on the floor in what looked like a pyjama suit, drawing with crayons on a piece of paper." Paul added a bass part on October 25, and another on November 2, therefore finishing the song. Paul recalled, "From the recording aspect I remember the end bit where there's the pause and it goes 'Heba, heba hello'. We had those words and we had this whole thing recorded but it didn't sound quite right, and I remember asking Geoff Emerick if we could really whack up the echo on the tom-toms. And we put this echo full up on the tom-toms and it just came alive. We Phil Spector'd it. And I noticed that this morning and I said to Linda, 'Wait! Full echo on the toms, here we go!' And they came in quite deep, like a precursor to Adam and the Ants."

Recording Sessions


Single Release

Hello, Goodbye ended up being The Beatles' last single of 1967 and the first onereleased after Brian Epstein's death. It was backed by I Am The Walrus, which John was not pleased about. John felt that I Am The Walrus was the better song, calling Hello, Goodbye "three minutes of contradictions and meaningless juxtapositions." The single was released on November 23, 1967 in the UK. It went to number three on the charts six days later. A week after that, it became number one, where it stayed for seven weeks; the longest for a Beatles single to be number one since She Loves You. It was released in the US on November 27, the same day that Magical Mystery Tour was released. On December 9, it entered the Top 40, later spending three weeks at the top of the charts.

Promotional Films

Three promotional films for Hello, Goodbye were made. They were filmed on November 10, in the Savile Theatre, formerly owned by Brian Epstein. Paul recalls, "I directed the promo film we made for Hello, Goodbye. Directing a film is something that everyone always wants to get into. It was something I'd always been interested in, until I actually tried it. Then I realised it was too much like hard work. Someone summed it up when they said: 'There's always someone arriving saying: "Do you want the gold pistols or the silver pistols?"' Then you think: 'Um, um...' There was so much of that going on - so many decisions to be made - that I ended up hating it. I didn't really direct the film - all we needed was a couple of cameras, some good cameramen, a bit of sound and some dancing girls. I thought, 'We'll just hire a theatre and show up there one afternoon.' And that was what we did: we took our Sgt Pepper suits along and filmed at the Saville Theatre in the West End." The first promo film featured the group wearing their suits from Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band while playing in front of a psychedelic background. Also in this film they occasionally appeared in collarless suits like the ones they wore in 1963. At the end of the song, some local dancers in grass skirts appeared in a sequenced dubbed the 'Maori finale'. The second promotional film was more straightforward, with The Beatles dressed as they normally would. In this clip, however, Ringo's drum kit featured the famous Beatles logo, whereas in the first clip, he had a blank bass drum. The thid clip was made up of outtakes from the frst two, with John Lennon dancing The Twist. Version one was played on the Ed Sullivan Show on November 26. This promo clip as it appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show (albeit in color), is featured in an episode of The Beatles Anthology TV series. The next night, it appeared on the ABC program The Hollywood Palace. The clip was never shown in Britain because the Musicians' Union banned lip-synching to songs on TV. Paul recalled, "I said, 'Look, can we get a theatre anywhere? How about Brian's? Is it ever empty for a minute or two? An afternoon? Sure, great.' So we went down there, got some girls in Hawaiian skirts, got our Sgt Pepper outfits on, and I just ran out there: 'Get a shot of this! Do this for a bit now! Let's have a shot there! Get a close-up of him! Get the girls on their own! Go back there! Get a wide angle! We'll edit it, we'll make it work.' It was very thrown away. Nice to do stuff like that." The end of the song was featured during the credit roll in the Beatles' TV movie, Magical Mystery Tour.

The Beatles LOVE

Although not designated it's own mix, some vocal overdubs from Hello, Goodbye, were featured during a mix of Glass Onion.

Personnel

The Beatles

Guest Musicians

Production

Available Versions

Available On

Source

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