"Hello, Goodbye" is a song written by Lennon/McCartney and
first recorded by the English rock band The Beatles. The song
was released as a single in November 1967, and topped the
charts in both the United States and Britain.
Though the songwriting credit is Lennon/McCartney, it was
written solely by Paul McCartney.
Alistair Taylor, who worked for the Beatles' manager, Brian
Epstein, had asked McCartney how he wrote his songs, and
McCartney took him into his dining room to give him a
demonstration on his harmonium. He asked Taylor to shout the
opposite of whatever he sang as he played the instrument—black
and white, yes and no, stop and go, hello and goodbye. Taylor
later said, "I wonder whether Paul really made up that song as
he went along or whether it was running through his head
already."
Under the working title "Hello Hello", the Beatles recorded
the backing track on 2 October 1967, and added vocals and a
guitar overdub on the 19th. After further overdubs of bass
guitar and viola, recording was completed on the 2nd November,
and mixing on the 6th.
The song features a coda which came spontaneously in the
studio. Of this, McCartney said "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."
"Hello, Goodbye" was released as a single on 24 November
1967. In the US, the song was also included on the
Magical Mystery Touralbum released three days later, but
the song was not made available in the UK on an album (or in
stereo) until the release of the 1973 compilation album
1967–1970.
With the release of the song, McCartney gave an explanation
of its meaning in an interview with
Disc: "The answer to everything is simple. It's a song
about everything and nothing. If you have black you have to
have white. That's the amazing thing about life."
Three promotional films were made for the song; directed by
McCartney, they were filmed on the 10th November at the Saville
Theatre in London. The films were not aired by the BBC due to
the Musicians Union's strict rules on miming; with no such
restriction in the US, one of the films was screened on The Ed
Sullivan Show on the 26th November.
In the US, Capitol Records omitted the comma in the song’s
title in the packaging of the single (as did some of EMI’s
partners in other countries), and also the
Magical Mystery TourLP (which was subsequently adopted
for the CD release of this album).
"Hello, Goodbye" topped the charts in both the United States
and Britain where it spent seven weeks at number one, and was
the Christmas number one for 1967.
The song’s coda plays over the end titles of the Beatles’
1967
Magical Mystery Tourfilm.
Air Canada in 1993 used a cover version in their ad
campaign, while in 2006 another cover version of the song was
used to advertise Telstra's Next G mobile phone network, and in
2008, American retailer Target featured various renditions of
the song as part of its "Hello Good Buy" campaign.
The song is used as leader for a Dutch television program
(the program is called also Hello, Goodbye) from the NCRV,
where people are interviewed at the Amsterdam Airport Schiphol
in the Netherlands who are waiting for family or friends to
come home after a long period (Hello) or who have come to say
goodbye to family or friends who will leave for a long
time.
It is a playable song in
The Beatles: Rock Band.
The song was used in a commercial to welcome David Beckham
to the Los Angeles Galaxy.
The song has also been covered by Jump5 and the Jonas
Brothers. It has been recorded by the cast of Glee in the
episode "Hello".