Paul McCartney on Recording Mary Hopkin and "Those Were the Days"

"I phoned Mary Hopkin and she came down and I listened to her sing in the recording studio. She was sensational, so I decided to record her. I had heard 'Those Were the Days' about two years earlier when I was out at a nightclub feasting on steak and lettuce. These two people came on and they sang this song. I think I was there about two nights that weekend. I heard the song twice, and it was one of those things I couldn't get out of my head. So I started playing it on my guitar. I always thought, you know, that it would be a hit song. But no one ever did it. I tried to get the Moody Blues to do it. They nearly did it, but it never worked out for them. It's better that they didn't actually because Graham Edge was saying to me the other day that if they had done it, they wouldn't have been into this thing they're into now. They would have had a mammoth hit and been pop stars all over again. So I recorded Mary Hopkin and she had the hit with it."