Hello, Goodbye" is a song by
The Beatles. The song was released as a single in
November 1967, and topped the charts in the United States,
the United Kingdom, France and Norway. The song also was a
number two hit in both
Austria and
Switzerland.
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 2 November, and mixing on the 6th. "Hello Goodbye" is in
the key of C Major and in 4/4 time.
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.
One of the notable features in the song is
Ringo Starr's busy drumming.