UK single release: Hello, Goodbye

The Beatles’ third and final single of 1967 was issued in the UK on this day: ‘Hello, Goodbye’, with ‘I Am The Walrus’ as its b-side.

The single was their 16th for EMI, and had the catalogue number Parlophone R 5655.

‘Hello, Goodbye’ was an instant hit, entering the charts at number three, and climbing to the top spot the following week. Within three weeks of being on sale the single had sold over 500,000 copies, and it became the nation’s Christmas number one single for 1967.

Due to unexpected demand EMI sub-contracted Decca to press a number of singles at their pressing plant. These can be identified by a four-pronged push-out centre of the 7″ disc; the EMI version had a solid label. The Decca version is the slightly rarer of the two.

‘Hello, Goodbye’ shows off a binary that we took great advantage of in The Beatles. With regard to John Lennon and myself, the great attraction we had for each other was that we each had a bit the other didn’t have. John could be quite cynical. I was his opposite, in that respect. So, for the single release, on the A-side, we had ‘Hello, Goodbye’, one of my songs where I’m trying to see the positive side. On the B-side, we had John’s song ‘I Am the Walrus’, a lyric full of uncertainties. And that opposite worked well creatively, but also commercially: ‘Hello, Goodbye’, at its heart, is a fun and catchy song and it stayed at number one in the UK for seven weeks.