The three Hello Goodbye videos
On the 10th of November 1967, The Beatles filmed three promotional films for Hello Goodbye at the Saville Theatre in London. Directed by Paul, film no. 1 saw the Beatles dressed up in their Sgt Pepper uniforms, and Ringo’s drum kit was rather small. For film no. 2 they wore their everyday clothes, and film no 3 was put together of outtakes from the first two, with the Beatles hamming it up for the camera. Here’s a snippet of film no. 3, courtesy of the Beatles’ own YouTube channel:
The full length video of this is very rare, but we found a copy over at Dailymotion – in a not so good quality. The other two are more common, thanks to having been aired more frequently on TV. Number 1 was shown on Norwegian TV once in the eighties.
But we had a hard time finding the number 1 video on the internet, in fact we came up empty handed. It looks like most uploaders go for the Anthology edit, which is actually a fourth version – but more on that later.
Video no. 2 was distributed to TV stations when the Red and Blue albums were released on CD for the first time, in 1993. Unfortunately, Apple messed with the films, adding a blue border around the videos from the blue album and a red border for songs from the red album. Another version was borderless, but featured a rather big Apple logo on the screen.
Like we mentioned earlier, Apple also made a fourth version in the nineties, which was shown on the Anthology TV series. This was merely video no. 1 until the coda, then it switched to footage from video no. 3. In number 1, the coda just had those dancing girls, dancing until the song ends. For some reason, the Anthology edit also rendered the opening footage of the film in black and white, but not so in the version below.
If the rumoured “1”- themed Beatles music video compilation gets a release this autumn, it’ll be interesting to find out which of the videos they will include. A completist would want them all, at least the first three.
A 'borderless' version of the second promo was broadcast on MTV Europe in 1993:
In those days (when MTV played music!) the station did this thing called "3 From 1": which was three clips from the same artist… The 3 From 1 (2 versions) included "Help!(Bench/Umbrella version)" Ticket To Ride (Intertel)" "I Feel Fine (Gym version) and "Hello Goodbye (version 2")and two others. All these videos did have a big Apple in the corner of the screen though…
There is one thing I wanted to ask you, Roger: All the Beatles albums were remastered and reissued in 2012. But there was (and still is) no 'Red' and 'Blue' albums on remastered vinyl (I think both are out of print right now). Is there any news of a possible Red and Blue vinyl release? Thanks…
I remember those well, Martin – my first viewings of some of the promos in fact. MTV had a Beatles weekend, or day, or some such.
The promos did the rounds on UK TV too, I remember even children's TV's Blue Peter showed bits of the Intertel clips, and ITV's The Chart Show showed Hello Goodbye in one of its variants and claimed it as a UK premiere, which may have been true (banned from UK transmission in the 60s under music union rules, as we all know).
Taped a lot of this coverage – big apples intact, though the Hello Goodbye had the blue border IIRC, and I remember that the Something promo was in a much better state on MTV than it later appeared on Anthology.
BTW, the Anthology Hello Goodbye fades from B&W as it followed the (shockingly poor-quality) B&W kinescope clip of Ed Sullivan's lead-in announcement.
I agree about "Something", RW. It did look better on MTV… The thing with Beatles films is that Apple don't always have the best version in their vaults…
I remember as a 13 year old, watching BBC's epic Video Jukebox (hosted by John Peel in 1986). That's the first time I saw those Beatles promos (and the 'Hello Goodbye' one (Pepper uniforms version). That night the BBC showed full B/W versions of Penny Lane, Strawberry Fields Forever and Hello… But the Penny Lane film was much sharper and clearer than the colour clip used for the Anthology (which looks blurry).
And while the Hey Jude /Frost footage for Anthology isn't too bad, a better version was found in the late 90s and was used to promote the "1" compilation.
Sorry, I meant BW (not RW!)…
Martin: No news of a remastered red and blue on vinyl, I'm afraid. I guess with all the stuff they're releasing nowadays that one passed them by. And the proposed "Love" vinyl reissue also didn't happen. I'm just hoping that the 1-themed video collection will materialise.
Thanks for the info, Roger. I hope the "1" DVD comes out too.
I still find is astonishing that there is no definitive DVD "Best Of" for either The Beatles or The Stones (The Brian Jones/60s era) out there…
Led Zeppelin have far less footage than both the above bands. But they arguably have put out the definitve music DVD package for a group of that standing. I only hope The Beatles do the same…
Roger, Here Is The Promo 1:
beatlesarchive.net/hello-goodbye-promo-video-1.html