“Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye” is a 1969 song written and recorded by Paul Leka, Gary DeCarlo and Dale Frashuer. They wrote a blues shuffle version of the song in the early 1960s when they were members of a dop-wop group from Bridgeport, Connecticut, originally called the Glenwoods, then the Citations, and finally, the Chateaus, of which Leka was the piano player. In 1969, DeCarlo (using the professional name Garrett Scott) recorded four songs at Mercury Records in New York with Leka as producer. The singles impressed the company’s executives, who wanted to issue all of them as singles. In need of a B-side, Leka and DeCarlo resurrected an old song from their days as the Glenwoods, “Kiss Him Goodbye”, with their old band mate, Frashuer.
With DeCarlo as lead vocalist, they recorded the song in one session. Instead of using a full band, Leka played keyboards and had engineer Warren Dewey splice together a drum track from one of DeCarlo’s four singles and a conga drum solo by Ange DiGeronimo recorded in Leka’s Bridgeport, Connecticut, studio for an entirely different session. “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye” reached number one in the United States for two weeks. It was Billboard‘s final multi-week number 1 hit of the 1960s and also peaked at number twenty on the soul chart.By the beginning of the 21st century, sales of “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye” had exceeded 6.5 million records, attaining multi-platinum record status.
Jeronimo, a German hard rock band of the early 1970s from Frankfurt am Main. The band was founded by Rainer Marz (guitar, vocal), Gunnar Schäfer (bass, vocal) and Ringo Funk (drums, vocal) in 1969 and in ’69/’70 they had their first two hits “Heya” and “Na Na Hey Hey”. With these two chart breakers, they climbed to the number 1 position in almost all European countries. In October of 1973, The Dave Clark Five released the song as a single, credited to Dave Clark & Friends. It did not chart in the US, but was a minor success in Germany and New Zealand.
In February 1983, UK Bananarama released the song as a single from their album Deep Sea Skiving. This version became a top ten hit in the United Kingdom (number 5), but only a minor hit in the US (Billboard number 101) later that year. This was the fifth single released from their first album in 1983. It peaked at number five in the UK singles chart, and number 38 in Australia on the Kent Music Report chart. The music video directed by Keith McMillan features the band playing in a school playground and then being made to move by a group of men. They then decide to join a boxing club so the video features them singing the song whilst boxing. By the end of the video they return to the playground wearing leathers and this time make the group of men move away. They then ride off into the night on motorbikes.
n 1987, Canadian quartet the Nylons released an a cappella version of this song as a single under the shortened title “Kiss Him Goodbye”. It became their biggest hit on the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at number twelve that summer, and reaching number 15 in Canada.
