One Night At Cavendish, Paul And I Sat And Drank Scotch And Coke For So Long That The First Light Of

One night at Cavendish, Paul and I sat and drank scotch and Coke for so long that the first light of dawn started to appear as we were still putting the world to rights. ‘Come on, Al,’ said Paul. ‘I need some fresh air. Let’s take Martha for a walk.’ We were pretty relaxed but we weren’t drunk. Martha leapt up from the rug by the fire and Paul and I piled into the DB6 and he drove us the half mile or so to the foot of Primrose Hill. We left the car outside London Zoo and went through the fence up the hill. It was very muddy at the bottom and Paul looked at my footwear and laughed, ‘So much for the man with the shiny shoes.’ We enjoyed the spectacular view in the first light of dawn. There was a real freshness in the air as Martha hurtled off in all directions in search of sheep or, better still, bones, and Paul and I enjoyed a few stolen moments of the day before the rest of London woke up. At 5.00am there was so little traffic noise that we could hear some early morning noises from the occupants of the zoo. It was chilly in the breeze that rustled the kites stuck up in the trees. Paul and I kept strolling around enjoying the experience and keeping warm. ‘Look at that dawn,’ said Paul in a whisper. ‘How anybody can say that there is no such thing as God, or some power bigger than us. If you stand and look at that sky, you know there must be more to life than we can comprehend …’ We were totally absorbed in the sights and sounds of the universe in front of us, as if we were the only men in an abandoned city. Then, suddenly behind us, a stranger appeared. He was a middle-aged man, very respectably dressed in a belted raincoat and he appeared to have come out of nowhere. One second Paul and I were alone, straining to see which direction Martha would come bounding back from, and the next, this man was there. He said, ‘Good morning,’ politely. ‘My name is John.’ Paul said, ‘Good morning. Mine’s Paul. This is Alistair and that’s Martha the dog,’ as our four-legged friend returned swiftly. John said, ‘It’s lovely to meet you. Isn’t this wonderful?’ and he walked away. Paul and I looked at each other and I said, ‘God, that was peculiar.’ I looked round and there was no sign of the man. The stranger had completely disappeared from the top of the hill as if he had just vanished into thin air. There was nowhere for him to go, yet he had just evaporated. Paul and I both felt pretty spooked by this experience. We both thought something special had happened. We sat down rather shakily on the seat and Paul said, ‘What the hell do you make of that? That’s weird. He was here, wasn’t he? We did speak to him?’ ‘Sure. He was here only seconds ago,’ I said. ‘Let’s go home,’ muttered Paul. Back at Cavendish, we spent the rest of the morning talking about what we had seen and heard and felt. It sounds just like any acid tripper’s fantasy to say they had a religious experience on Primrose Hill just before the morning rush hour, but neither of us had taken anything like that. Scotch and Coke was the only thing we had touched all night. We both felt afterwards that we had been through some sort of mystical experience, yet we didn’t care to name, even to each other, what or who we had seen on that hilltop for those few brief seconds.

(Alistair Taylor, With the Beatles, 2003)

John: Who’s the fool on the hill, Paul? Paul: John.

(Get Back sessions, January 14th, 1969, Twickenham Film Studios)