Excerpted from As Time Goes By by Derek Taylor, to read full click Rolling Stone.com It happened like this.
In April 1968, Neil Aspinall and John Lennon and Paul McCartney and I were sitting in Nat Weiss's apartment in New York talking about nothing at all. On Nat's record player Paul played a brass band-style version of "Thingumybob," a tune he had written for a television series of the same name which was one of the magnificent line-up programmes with which the new London Weekend Television company was planning to open its first season and justify its manifesto of great promise.
Now in those days there was never a long wait between the musical will and the recorded deed and by phone the best band in the land was swiftly found, hired and asked to report to the Victoria Hall, Saltaire, Bradford, a fine Northern location for a brass band, at ten o'clock on Sunday morning, a fine Northern time of day for a brass band. We flew back to England.
It was now eleven o'clock and we were still in the house and the inn was closed but a winged messenger came to say that as this was the night of nights, never to return, the inn was to be re-opened. "In your honour, Paul."
It was 11 p.m. Paul had The Look on his face, the "do we don't we?"
I nodded: tonight we should. The pub was absolutely full. The whole village was here. Paul played the piano until at three o'clock a woman stood and sang "The Fool on the Hill" and he left the piano to dance with her and kiss her on the cheek and then I went and sat in the little garden and cried for joy that we had come to Harrold. It was a most beautiful garden, with hundreds of old-fashioned flowers, lupins, foxgloves – that sort of thing, and Alan Smith came out, pissed as a newt and said, "Why so sad, old friend, why so sad on such a night?" "Not sad," I said, "not sad, old pal, just happy to be alive."
