Paul McCartney and Jane Asher attend the première of The Family Way

Paul McCartney and Jane Asher attended the première of the film The Family Way at London’s Warner Cinema.

The cinema was located at 1 Cranbourn Street in central London. The film’s soundtrack had been written by McCartney and scored by George Martin.

If you are blessed with the ability to write music, you can turn your hand to various forms. I’ve always admired people for whom it’s a craft – the great songwriting partners of the past, such as Rodgers and Hammerstein, or Cole Porter. I’ve admired the fact that they can write a musical and they can do a film score.

So film scores were an interesting diversion for me, and with George Martin being able to write and orchestrate – and being pretty good at it – I got an offer through the Boulting Brothers for him and me to do some film music for The Family Way.

I had a look at the film and though it was great. I still do. It’s very powerful and emotional – soppy, but good for its time. I wanted brass-band music; because with The Beatles we got into a lot of different kinds of music, but maybe brass band was a little too Northern and ‘Hovis’. I still loved it. My dad had played trumpet and his dad had been in a brass band, so I had those leanings. For the film I got something together that was sort of ‘brassy bandy’, to echo the Northernness of the story, and I had a great time.

We got an Ivor Novello Award for the score – for the best film song that year, a piece called ‘Love In The Open Air’, which Johnny Mercer was nearly going to put lyrics to, but I didn’t know who he was. Later I realised, ‘Oh, that Johnny Mercer! You mean the greatest lyricist on the planet!’ I should have done that. Never mind – it fell through – but it was good fun doing the music.

The soundtrack album was issued on 6 January 1967, and was reissued in 2011.