"A playwright and singer who performed with his wife as "Gene & Francesca", Gene Raskin had originally given "Those Were the Days" to the Limeliters, an American trio who popularised it during the folk boom of the early Sixties along with another of his compositions, "That's Just the Way it Goes". Paul McCartney heard Gene & Francesca play "Those Were the Days" in a London club and recalled the song when picking material for his protegee Mary Hopkin, who had triumphed on ITV's Opportunity Knocks show." (source: Pierre Perroni, The Independent)

Original Russian title: DOROGOI DLINNOYU (Boris Fomin/Konstantin Podnevsky).