HELLO GOODBYE

"Hello, Goodbye / I Am the Walrus" is a single release by UK rock act The Beatles. The single was released through Parlophone Records in the UK and Capitol Records in the US in November 1967.

The A-side track "Hello, Goodbye" is a pleasant melodic pop song penned by Paul McCartney even though it´s credited to the Lennon/McCartney songwriting team. The B-side to the single is the psychadelic John Lennon penned "I Am The Walrus". There were Supposedly disputes over which of the two tracks should be the A-side track but Paul McCartney was backed by producer George Martin who felt that "Hello Goodbye" had more commercial potential than the more experimental "I Am The Walrus". The single went number 1 in both the US and the UK charts and stayed there for 7 weeks.

Both tracks appear on the US/Canadian album release of the "Magical Mystery Tour (1967)" album, while only "I Am The Walrus" was featured on the UK double EP release of "Magical Mystery Tour (1967)". The compositional quality of both tracks are high, and as a single release "Hello, Goodbye / I Am the Walrus" is quite interesting because the two tracks are so different in sound and style. A 4 star (80%) rating is deserved.

I think that 1967 was a great musical year for THE BEATLES, having previously released two great singles ("Strawberry Fields Forever / Penny Lane", "All You Need is Love" / "Baby, You're a Rich Man") and a great album ("Sgt. Pepper's...."). In late 1967 they also were going to release in the U.K. a double-EP project with the songs from their "Magical Mystery Tour" film (with the film being very criticized, but at least the music of the film was better for some critics) and this "Hello, Goodbye" / "I Am the Walrus" single. In the U.S., all the songs from these singles and the double-EP were released in an LP titled "Magical Mystery Tour", with it being one of their best U.S. releases. All these songs have some Psychedelic influences, so they worked very well being released together in that LP in the U.S.

"Hello, Goodbye", composed by McCartney, is more accessible than "I Am The Walrus". It has a string arrangement done by George Martin. This song is a very clear example of how some songs from the band were mixed in Stereo by Martin, with the string arrangements apperaring in one channel, and the band's instruments in the other channel.

"I Am the Walrus", composed by Lennon, is more Psychedelic, more "dark" in lyrical content, more "mysterious", more heavy, and more elaborated in its recording. I prefer this song more than "Hello, Goodbye", being a very good example of Psychedelic music, even if the lyrics have no apparent sense, at least for me. It also has an orchestral arrangement done by Martin, plus some strange sound effects and other experiments used in its recording. It also became an influential song for other bands, with SPOOKY TOOTH recording their own heavy version of the song for their "The Last Puff" album in 1970, and with TEARS FOR FEARS's "Sowing the Seeds of Love" song from 1989 being very infuenced in style by "I Am the Walrus".

This is another case where Paul McCartney's song would up on the a-side, and John Lennon's on the reverse. As a business decision this almost certainly the right move insofar as 'Hello Goodbye' was a worldwide #1 song; artistically, though, 'I Am the Walrus' is easily the superior song - - and I say this as someone who ordinarily prefers McCartney's work.

'Hello, Goodbye'

That the b-side is better, however, says little about 'Hello, Goodbye,' which is a nice pop song itself, though not quite a Beatles classic in my opinion. Lyrically it's a little thin; both the verses and the chorus are little more than a repetition of 'you say x, I say not x.' Its lack of a real bridge (I'm not counting the 'why-why-why... do you say goodbye' part) requires a third verse, and winds up being more structurally repetitive than we're used to for a McCartney a-side.

The chorus contains the interesting music, both in terms of melody and chord progression, but for me, this isn't enough to counter the d'j' vu of the verse-chorus-verse-chorus pattern. To be fair, the coda is nearly perfect.

'I Am the Walrus'

With 'Ticket to Ride,' 'Come Together,' and possibly one or two others, 'I Am the Walrus' is one of the very best songs John Lennon ever wrote. While the lyrics to his more straightforward songs - - 'In My Life,' for example, or '(Just Like) Starting Over' or 'Imagine' - - are as good as the average for a pop or rock song, I've always preferred the disjointed impressionism of 'Tomorrow Never Knows,' 'Come Together,' and 'I Am the Walrus.'

Lennon is foremost a great rock-and-roller, and often a good poet. I have no idea, no clue what 'I Am the Walrus' is about, or whether it was ever about anything. But if we assume that it has no meaning beyond an LSD-trip-fractured take on a passage of a poem from Through the Looking Glass, then it's about as deep as 'She Loves You' Or 'I Want to Hold Your Hand.' But even then it provides so many potential tangents - - 'Semolina pilchard,' anyone, 'climbing up the Eiffel Tower?' Or 'yellow matter custard,' perhaps? If it's all crazy, all drug induced, what more fitting chorus than the refrain of 'I am the Walrus?'

In the hands of another band, the words and music of 'I Am the Walrus' would've made for an amusing single for one of the new psychedelic-rock groups popping up in the late 1960s. Maybe it would've been memorable; maybe not. But in the event, Lennon and producer George Martin ensured the song's enduring renown with an arrangement as surreal as the composition itself. The icing, so to speak, was Martin's use of the Mike Sammes Singers.

Summary

In the US, this single was rendered inessential a week after its release, when both sides became available on the Magical Mystery Tour album. In the UK, 'Hello Goodbye' was a non-album single. Nonetheless, given the high quality of both sides, this is a three- star single.