Goodbye

AUTHORSHIP McCartney (1.00)
Naturally Mary Hopkin needed a follow-up to "Those Were The Days". Over in Cavendish Avenue Paul quickly wrote one called "Goodbye".
McCARTNEY: "I didn't have in mind any more Russian folk songs so I just wrote one for her. I thought it fit the bill. It wasn't as successful as the first one but it did all right. My main memory of it is from years later, going on a boat trip from the north of Scotland to the Orkney Islands. The skipper of the boat was called George, and he told me it was his favourite song. And if you think of it from a sailor's point of view, it's very much a leaving-the-port song. He had the strangest Scottish accent, almost sort of Norwegian, as the Orkneyans do. He was quite proud of the fact that that was his favourite song." Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now

"Goodbye" entered the British charts at number five, but didn't make it to the top. Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now

McCARTNEY: "After 'Goodbye', Mary and I didn't work together again. She wanted to do a more folky album, and I felt that if she wanted to do that I wasn't really interested in producing it. I don't think it was a very good idea in the end."
The album, Earth Song/Ocean Song, was produced by Tony Visconti, whom she married in 1971. After that, she more or less left the business to have children, though she made appearances on records as diverse as David Bowie's Low in 1977 and an entire album sung in Welsh, The Welsh World of Mary Hopkin, in 1979. Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now