Paul McCartney is becoming the "pal" of this year's landmark cultural milestones. On March 31, he was seen performing at Apple Park to mark the 50th anniversary of the tech giant, and now, on May 21, he helped Stephen Colbert sign off from his late-night talk show with a Beatles classic: Hello, Goodbye. On background vocals was Colbert himself.
The choice of song is interesting. Hello, Goodbye was written at a time when the Beatles had lost their managing and guiding star, Brian Epstein, to an accidental overdose. "There was suddenly a lot of uncertainty in our lives," McCartney had said years earlier.
Suddenly, the group was managing themselves. "We discovered this the hard way when making the Magical Mystery Tour film, where this song appears, and having to deal with logistics that before had just magically taken care of themselves."
The song is a good example of the relationship shared by John Lennon and McCartney. They had great respect for each other and, in a way, completed each other's sentences. "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," McCartney said earlier.
Ed Sullivan Theatre in Manhattan, where Colbert's Late Show is recorded, also has a special place in Beatles history. On February 9, 1964, the Fab Four made their legendary American debut on The Ed Sullivan Show. More than 73 million people tuned in to see John, Paul, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr for the first time. Beatlemania gripped the world. The four of them kicked off the show with three songs: All My Loving, Till There Was You, and She Loves You. The camera loved Paul whilst John got his own microphone. At that point, Ed Sullivan was the king of American TV.
McCartney helping Colbert say goodbye is a poignant ending. The Beatle was not alone in doing music duties. Elvis Costello and Colbert's former bandleader Jon Batiste, along with current bandleader Louis Cato, were present during the final night hosting The Late Show at the Ed Sullivan Theatre.
The first song to be broadcast was Costello's Jump Up (Honky Tonk demo), featuring Costello, Batiste, Cato, and Colbert on stools. Then came McCartney.
It marked the end of Colbert's almost 11-year run behind The Late Show's desk after taking over from David Letterman in September 2015. The Late Show was cancelled in July last year after CBS and its parent company Paramount settled a $16 million lawsuit with US President Donald Trump. CBS said it was "purely a financial decision"; however, many believe that Paramount axed the show to look favourable to Trump, of whom Colbert has been critical.