Songfacts®:

• "Hi Ho Silver Lining" was Jeff Beck's first single. A quasi-novelty song, it's not at all indicative of his work, although the guitar riff does demonstrate his talents on the instrument.
  
  The song is about a girl who's a bit of a pollyanna, always seeing the bright side even when she's under cloud cover. It was a hit in Beck's native UK, going to #14 and becoming a popular party song.
• The song had some hit-making machinery behind it. It was written by two American songwriters: Scott English and Larry Weiss, who also wrote "Bend Me, Shape Me" by The American Breed. It was produced by Mickie Most, who also worked with Hot Chocolate, Lulu, and Suzi Quatro.
• Jeff Beck was at a crossroads when he recorded this song. He had left The Yardbirds and was in the process of forming his own band, the Jeff Beck Group. According to the song's producer, Mickie Most, Beck had visions of becoming a pop star and needed a pop song to do it. Most had been pitched "Hi Ho Silver Lining" and decided it was a good song to gallop Beck to pop stardom. Most also had him sing the lead vocal, something he hadn't done in the past.
  
  The song did indeed set Beck on the pop star path, but it was clearly not his destiny, especially since he was a top-shelf guitarist but a speed rack singer. His next single, "Tallyman," he also sang, and that was a hit as well, going to #30 in the UK. But when he released Truth, his first Jeff Beck Group album, in 1968, neither song was on the setlist and he ceded the lead vocals to a more competent singer and dynamic frontman: Rod Stewart.
• The phrase "Hi ho Silver" was coined by the Lone Ranger, Silver being the name of his horse. Americans, like the writers of this song, were quite familiar with it, but most British listeners didn't get the reference.
• The Jeff Beck Group was still forming, so it's not clear who played on this track. Clem Cattini is credited as the drummer, and Mickie Most said that John Paul Jones, later of Led Zeppelin fame, did the string arrangement. Most sang on the chorus, and according to Rod Stewart's autobiography, he did too - it sure sounds like he's in the mix.
• The song's co-writer Scott English said he tried to tank this song because he hated it. Speaking with Paul Leslie, he said that his co-writer Larry Weiss started writing the song, and it was really stupid. Weiss played an early version to Mickie Most, who came to their offices in New York to get the demo, which they hadn't finished. Most urged English to finish the song, so he did, writing a lyric so absurd he was sure Most would reject it: "flies are in your pea soup baby and they’re waving at me..."
  
  But most loved it and brought the song back to England.
• The opening of the song, which sounds a bit like feedback, is a piano chord that was recorded and played backwards by flipping the tape over.
• "Hi Ho Silver Lining" was re-released in the UK in 1972, this time charting at #17.
• At times with the words adapted, "Hi Ho Silver Lining" is the official anthem of Wolverhampton Wanderers Football Club and the unofficial anthem of the City of Wolverhampton. The most famous band to emanate from that unprepossessing Black Country town is Slade, but even Wolverhampton deserves a better theme song than "Merry Xmas Everybody."
  
  "Hi Ho Silver Lining" is also used by Aston Villa and Sheffield Wednesday Football Clubs, and doubtless others. >>

  Suggestion credit:
  Alexander Baron - London, England
• The B-side of the single is "Beck's Bolero," an instrumental recorded with a different set of musicians, including Keith Moon and Jimmy Page, who wrote the song. That one made the Truth album and aged more gracefully than "Hi Ho Silver Lining."
• Jeff Beck lamented how "Hi Ho Silver Lining" was so catchy, calling it a "pink toilet seat around my neck."