from wikipedia:"Romany is an album by The Hollies, the first not to feature distinctive, tenor-range lead
singer Allan Clarke, who had left to try a solo career and was replaced by a Swedish singer
with lower vocal register, Mikael Rickfors---prompting a somewhat radical reshaping
of their trademark vocal harmony style. It was also the first Hollies album to feature only one
song written or co-written by lead guitarist Tony Hicks, a member of the band's two
in-house songwriting teams, Clarke-Hicks-Nash and Clarke-Hicks-Sylvester. Hicks was the only
member of those teams to contribute a song to the album; Rickfors was the only other band
member to contribute an original composition to it.
The U.S. Epic version which reached #84 on the U.S album charts, omits the track "Lizzy and the Rainman,
and has a slightly altered side one track order."
------------------------
The song 'Romany' on that album includes these lyrics:
Take me home
Sailing on with Romany
To and fro on a icy morning
Feeling calm to have an old friend 'round
Feeling warm to see the wind blow down
Take me home
where saints and children laughing
Tell the Dutchman ships are passing
Feeling safe to reach the harbor sound
Feeling warm to see the wind blow down
Take me home
Leave the galley sailors talking
Leave the bridge and captain's walking
Feeling naked on the covered ground
Feeling warm to see the wind blow down
The wind blowed
down in the moonless light
the sea was dark
the breeze was light
Everyone's thoughts were their own
Caught by the ocean thief
The bow hit on a coral reef
Romany sank like a stone --------------------------
There was a British radio broadcaster known as "Romany".
The album cover suggests to me it hearkens to this individual.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Bramwell_Evens"George Bramwell Evens
The Rev. George Bramwell Evens (1884- November 20, 1943) was, under the pseudonym
Romany (and sometimes The Tramp), a British radio broadcaster and writer on countryside and
natural history matters - quite possibly the first to broadcast on such issues.
He was also a Minister of the Methodist Church.
Biography
His mother was a true Romani, born in a caravan (or 'vardo' in Romani).
He is most famous for his
Out With Romany programmes on the BBC's Children's Hour,
describing travels in his own vardo, with Comma the horse, his spaniel Raq and his young friends
Muriel and
Doris. Although the programmes were all pre-scripted and performed
entirely in the studio, the impression given was of Romany and his friends going for a walk in the
countryside and spontaneously discussing the plants and animals they came across."
--------------------------------
I think John Lennon may have been alluding to this show when he said something about
"Doris gets her oats" on the 'Let It Be' album. But again, that may suggest that the 'friend of Romany'
in the song met his death in a boating accident. And was Paul. Or something.
Certainly since Romany was into nature, then his children radio audience could have been
considered 'Mother Nature's sons and daughters'. Is it possible that Paul became a child-like
"mother nature's son" who would have listened to the show, after becoming child-like after suffering
a lightning strike to the head? I am still troubled by the shattered child's face in the mountain montage
on the alternate White Album cover:
Dear Prudence, won't you come out and play ... like a little child.
Or perhaps as the Pink Floyd words in "Signs of Life" suggested, the person became like a child
after his plane crashed....
Not a pleasant thought. Maybe what Stevie Nicks was talking about here:
And if I was a child, and the child was enough,
Enough for me to love, enough to love.
She is dancing away from me now.
She was just a wish....