The Beatles: 10 Incredible Rarities You Can Listen To Right Now
2. Goodbye
The Beatles’ Apple Records label never really fulfilled its potential. As four full time rock stars, making band records and working on various solo projects, it’s unsurprising the band ultimately had little time to devote to second jobs as A&R guys.
Still, the label had some early successes, not least with Paul protégé and Welsh folk singer Mary Hopkin. McCartney produced her debut single Those Were The Days and wrote Goodbye to be the follow up.
Hopkin’s version of the track was a hit but was kept off the number one spot by The Beatles’ own Get Back. Somehow this feels emblematic of the problems other artists would face, signed to a label run by the world’s biggest band.
Paul’s demo has a sweetly lilting vocal and gentle guitar part that wouldn’t sound out of place on The White Album. That double record featured acoustic Macca tracks like Blackbird, Mother Nature’s Son and I Will. Goodbye sounds cut from the same cloth. You can hear it on Abbey Road 50th Anniversary Edition (Super Deluxe).