Paul and George had a quota of anecdotes from these early days of a strengthening friendship, like the time they heard how someone had a copy of the Coasters’ “Searchin’ ” and made a long bus journey to Bootle or Kirkby or Knotty Ash (it varies in the telling but apparently it involved two changes) simply to ask this person if he’d play it to them. Why they didn’t just buy it is never explained. However, as Paul once confessed, having accepted the generosity of this stranger, who let them sit in the living room and listen to his record, they relieved him of its ownership, doing a runner with the precious disc stuffed under a jacket.23 Another of Paul’s warm anecdotes is the one where he and George heard about somebody in a distant Liverpool suburb who knew the chord B7; again, they got out the bus map, planned a route, knocked on the unknown door and asked the man to show them.
How much any of this would have happened had Paul not been kept back in the Removes can only ever be speculation, but the consequence of another fact coinciding in September 1957 is resoundingly clear: it was John Lennon’s enrollment at Liverpool College of Art that would bind the three close together. John had invited Paul to join his group and Paul was now close friends with George, and five days a week all three rode the bus from their respective suburbs into Hope Street to spend their days in adjoining buildings.
John Lennon’s O-Level results were worse than even he expected. Here he was, going to art school, and he hadn’t even passed in Art, in which he had such a gift. Pobjoy, Quarry Bank’s headmaster, says he failed them narrowly, and John remarked ten years later that he managed to keep the results from Mimi: she believed he’d passed at least one and he let her think it.24 But none of this mattered: he was accepted into Liverpool College of Art and on September 16, 1957, stood on the threshold of a whole new adventure.
The first challenge was what to wear. Apart from the optional art school scarf (blue, yellow and black), there was no uniform—students could dress how they liked. John wanted to wear jeans on the first day, and to avoid a scream-up with Mimi had them under another pair of trousers which he slipped off at the bus stop opposite Mendips. For a jacket, he wore his Quarry Bank blazer with the badge ripped off and the collar turned up.25 From day two he kept people guessing: he was a Teddy Boy one day and a typical collegian the next, or just plain scruffy in his greasy hair and Uncle George’s old tweed overcoat. Fellow student Bill Harry spotted John straightaway and was impressed by his individuality. “Everyone was dressed the same: navy blue, fawn or black duffel-coats, green polo-neck sweaters, and there was John Lennon striding around with a DA haircut, brothel-creepers, drape jacket. It was as if a Teddy Boy had walked in off the street into this strange place where everyone else was dressed the same.”26
Beyond its walls, out there in the public mind, art school students were young layabouts or just plain rebellious, but these were really quite polite radicals; they came generally from grammar schools and a variety of backgrounds across the social spectrum, some working-class, others middle-class from upmarket homes. There were boys who planned to become art teachers or were just putting off work for a few years; there were girls talented enough for a career in art or design, or who were merely filling in time between school and the duties of a housewife and mother, sent to college by parents who didn’t want them working in shops before they married. Several had been students at the Junior College of Art across the street, on Gambier Terrace, and were less inclined to challenge the thinking. For John there was abundant scope and temptation to shock here, and it wouldn’t take him long to kick off. Says another contemporary, Ann Mason, “Art college was the perfect breeding ground for someone like John, a burster of bubbles. It was the only place that was both liberal and creative.”
Excepting the fact that membership of Sulca (Students’ Union Liverpool College of Art) was compulsory, art school offered freedoms unknown to any maverick schoolboy. Students not only dressed how they pleased, they could also smoke in class, come and go from the premises, and drink in the pub at lunchtimes, often with the tutors. There was an expectation that the work must meet a certain standard, but the skilled skiver (and we know his name) could usually find a way out. The first year was a probationary period, not overly taxing: students were expected to learn perspective, an introduction to architecture, simple lettering, elements of design, modeling and craft … and Life Drawing, which entailed lengthy study of the female nude—a great thrill, until it wore off.
John was one of only two boys from Quarry Bank’s class of ’57 to progress to art school, so during his years here he formed an entirely new social circle—not all coming right at the start, some developing slowly over time. John would befriend Bill Harry, and Bill would introduce him to his friend Stuart Sutcliffe, whose best friend was Rod Murray. As well as his former Quarry Bank alumnus Geoff Cain, one of John’s earliest and most important friendships at art school was with Tony Carricker, whose passion for American music, especially rock and roll and rhythm and blues, had led to an outstanding record collection; and it was through Tony that John became close with a fascinating and complex individual named Jeff Mahomed. Then there was Derek Hodkin and Jon Hague, and for the first time since puberty John was in school with girls, among them Ann Mason, Mona Harris, Pat Jourdan, June Harry, Helen Anderson and Cynthia Powell. They would all be spending their final teenage years together in the college’s large, light, airy rooms, sharing a wealth of experiences, seeing one another at their best and their worst—and all of them would have ample cause to remember John Lennon.
The ranks of Liverpool’s college-going students were also swollen at this same time by Richy Starkey. Strange but true. From the second year of his five-year apprenticeship at H. Hunt & Son he was expected to attend a part-time course in engineering, studying toward a National Certificate. Though he’d hated school, Richy was happy to go because it was day-release—one day a week away from the factory, a day out, almost a day off. Instead of heading as usual to Windsor Street he took the bus down to Aigburth, to the area where he hoped to live one day, just beyond Liverpool Cricket Club, and joined the students heading into Riversdale Technical College. The college liked to encourage day-release students to take on evening study too, but Richy wasn’t going to do that. He’d show them his face in work hours but he wasn’t going to give up leisure time: he wanted to be out and about, drumming with Eddie, drinking and jiving with Roy.
Paul McCartney first played on stage with John Lennon and the Quarry Men the night of Friday, October 18, 1957, in New Clubmoor Hall, situated in a little alley called Back Broadway, near Norris Green in the north end of Liverpool.27 Also known as Maxwell Fyfe Hall (after the Conservative MP for Liverpool West Derby, Sir Maxwell Fyfe), it was the social venue of the Clubmoor Conservative Men’s Club and a long way from home for the five of them, Paul being only 15 and all. Nigel Walley fixed the booking with Charlie McBain, the promoter who gave the Quarry Men more engagements than any other, though his opinion of their merit was definitively mixed: on the back of one of the group’s business cards given to him by Walley he penciled “Good & Bad.”
Probably both aspects were reflected in this performance at New Clubmoor Hall, about which little is remembered save for one anecdote. During rehearsals, John and Paul decided one of their numbers should be “Guitar Boogie” by Arthur Smith and his Cracker-Jacks, and that Paul would handle the solo.§ He was clearly the best guitarist in the group, better than John or Eric, and what did the best guitarist do if not play the solo in the middle of the song? Not for the first time in his life, however, the boy who routinely transmitted cheery confidence was suddenly beset by grand-scale nerves.
My very first Quarry Men gig, at the Conservative Club in Broadway, was a disaster because I got sticky fingers and blew the solo in “Guitar Boogie,” which is one of the easiest things in the world to play … I was just too frightened; it was too big a moment with everyone looking at the guitar player … It’s a twelve-bar and I just couldn’t do it. The fingers stuck to the fretboard an
d wouldn’t lift off, and I sweated and blushed. After that I said “Forget me on lead” and I never played lead again on stage. It wiped me out as a lead guitar player, that night.28
There’s no photograph to show what the Quarry Men looked like at this time, but one was taken when they came back to the hall five weeks later, on November 23.29 In images of the Quarry Men before Paul joined they’re all wearing different clothes. In the first photo of the group with Paul they have a uniform look, and a sharp one at that: white shirts with black bootlace ties and black trousers, and John and Paul (only) are also wearing jackets on top, white or cream—it’s Paul’s “white sports coat” and something similar John has managed to acquire. This was undoubtedly Paul’s doing, reaching back to his experience at Butlin’s in 1954 when he saw how a singing group in matching gear claimed everyone’s attention. He’d brought the thinking early to John, and John had bought it. And something else is compelling about this Quarry Men photo: although it’s John’s group, new boy Paul is not at the back with Colin or Len, or to the side like Eric, he’s up front with John. Lennon and McCartney are clearly the front line of the Quarry Men, strumming crummy Gallotone and upside-down Zenith, and they’re the only ones with vocal microphones. The group is the two of them and three others. When one sings lead the other provides harmony; often they sing the lead in unison—and their voices go together.
One can only surmise what they sang into those microphones. Nigel Walley remembers plenty of rock in the repertoire in this period and not so much skiffle, including several Elvis numbers—“All Shook Up,” “Blue Moon of Kentucky,” “Heartbreak Hotel,” “Hound Dog,” “Lawdy Miss Clawdy,” “That’s All Right Mama” and “Trying to Get to You”—as well as “Be-Bop-A-Lula,” “Blue Suede Shoes” (Carl or Elvis), “Come Go with Me” and “Twenty Flight Rock.” All American songs, of course. Paul did some Little Richard—“Long Tall Sally,” “Tutti Frutti” and probably “Lucille”—and John, who wanted to do Little Richard but couldn’t sing high enough, found it easier to sing Larry Williams instead, taking on “Short Fat Fannie.” Not all of these were played this evening, although as the main act in Charlie Mac’s Liverpool Echo advert they may have performed for an hour.
The hairiest part of the evening, as it would always be, was getting there and getting home again. Colin remembers John and Paul carrying their guitars without cases or bags, just the guitars, playing and singing upstairs on the bus as it wended its way to the city’s northern suburbs. Colin put his drums in a large brown suitcase which he shoved under the stairs before going up for a ciggie with John, Paul, Len and Eric. Norris Green was a rough area: Teddy Boys and other hard-knocks claimed the streets. On August 16 Richy Starkey was here with the Clayton group, and they were set upon by a gang of fifteen thugs; in the melee, apart from all the bones that crunched, Eddie’s handsome guitar was nabbed. In keeping with his prowess as one of the best players around, he’d just had it fitted with a pickup, going electric, so it was a devastating loss. Roy Trafford’s sister wrote a letter to George Harrison, the Evening Express columnist, and he publicly appealed for the thug to surrender it. Six days later Harrison was able to publish good news: he was now in possession of the guitar, returned by the boy’s mum, a divorced mother of six who didn’t want her lad getting mixed up in any trouble.30
Another song highly likely to have been in the Quarry Men program that first night was the Crickets’ “That’ll Be the Day.” Number 1 in America when issued in Britain, it came with built-in excitement. On the day that’ll be, September 20, 1957, The World’s Fair printed a unique notice, boxed and emboldened to attract the attention of the entire jukebox business: “This will be really big in boxes for months to come. Be among the first to order. It will be a sellout.”31 It was no empty rhetoric: “That’ll Be the Day” was as much a sensation among British boys as anything by Elvis Presley or Little Richard. If one can nail down a specific moment that the whole pop group business—the whole rock band industry—kicked off in Britain, it was when the needle dropped into the first groove of “That’ll Be the Day” and boys were grabbed by its distinctive ringing guitar intro. The record came at the perfect time. Just when skiffle was fading, limited by sameness of repertoire and sound, all these grassroots musicians—all these thousands of singers, guitarists and drummers around the country—suddenly discovered a whole wonderful new field to play in.
Big in America, the Crickets were so much bigger in Britain. Rock and roll was full of solo singers with backing musicians—Elvis, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Gene Vincent, Chuck Berry, Eddie Cochran and the rest. The only group of note was the Coasters, and not many knew them yet; besides which, they were just vocalists with session musicians. The Crickets were another kind of group: vocals, electric guitar, bass, drums. When thousands of skifflers heard “That’ll Be the Day,” those eternally uplifting two minutes, they were converted. It was like a well-drilled, willing and equipped army being given a new battle plan.
The Crickets certainly arrived at the right time for the Quarry Men. Without Rod Davis and Pete Shotton, they’d lost their banjo and washboard and were almost a skiffle group no longer, just three guitars, bass (tea-chest) and drums. Here was the big transition. In a letter of unqualified praise that John Lennon once typed about Buddy Holly, he went into capital letters to emphasize the point: “EVERY GROUP TRIED TO BE THE CRICKETS.”32
Six weeks after release, “That’ll Be the Day” was the bestselling record in Britain, and in Liverpool it got there in half that time, holding down the top spot in Nems’ published chart well into November. It sold purely on sound: no one knew who the Crickets were, which area of America they came from or what they looked like. This knowledge only came when the record was already a hit, when the NME ran a feature article. So … there were four of them, they came from Texas, and the lead singer was an odd-looking bod in glasses (wire at this point, but by early 1958 black hornrimmed) with the equally strange but desirously American name of Buddy Holly. His group’s name was great too, admired in Britain for a punning dimension unrealized back home: it wasn’t just the insect, it was also the sport; how very clever. It led to every kind of painfully contrived headline, like when the NME announced that Lew & Leslie Grade had signed them to a British tour in early 1958: CRICKETS TO BAT IN BRITAIN.33
Until now, John Lennon and Paul McCartney had soaked up rock and roll’s small canon independently. “That’ll Be the Day” was the first song they absorbed and learned together—the right song with the right sound arriving at exactly the right time. They loved the performance, the electric guitar, the harmonies, the lead singer’s distinctive vocal style (with a kind of hiccup on certain phrases), and they were impressed with the name “Crickets.” Paul says that when he first heard “That’ll Be the Day” he didn’t know if the singer was black or white and it didn’t matter, he was simply electrified by its sound. This more than any other was the song that turned Paul on to the combination of guitar and vocal harmony.34 John and Paul already knew their voices blended in an exciting way, and with “That’ll Be the Day” they learned how to take parts. Paul’s voice was naturally higher than John’s, and his ear for melody and harmony, acquired through all those years of listening to Jim Mac’s piano songs, meant he generally found the right notes without any difficulty.
Since getting his guitar, John had been only vamping, using the wrong chords; “That’ll Be the Day” was the first pop/rock song he learned to play on his Gallotone, shown to him by Paul—and also, according to one (possibly suspect) quote, his mother. Apparently, Julia went through the song with him, demonstrating the tune on banjo while he tried to copy it on guitar. “She made me go through it over and over again until I had it right. I remember her slowing down the record so that I could scribble out the words.”35
Through the last weeks of 1957, John and Paul began to see each other more frequently, socially and always with their guitars. They’d formed a strong connection; while they would see the o
ther Quarry Men when they had bookings, or were rehearsing, they got together more often as a twosome, each finding out who the other was. It didn’t take long for Paul to point out that the chords John was playing weren’t proper guitar chords. Paul’s dad then told John they weren’t even proper banjo chords, though John felt sure they were—a conversation that was probably fairly abrupt and which got John and Jim’s relationship off to a bad start, Paul’s dad unwittingly maligning the banjo knowledge of John’s mum. Paul showed John the guitar chords he knew, including that magical B7 recently learned (with his little friend George) from a distant stranger. He encouraged John to study his fingers, to jettison the banjo notes and learn the proper positions on the fretboard. It was a complicated and slow business, John copying Paul’s fingers and then reversing them for the right-hander.36
The first time John turned up at 20 Forthlin Road, his new friend’s younger brother happened to be gazing out of the window. “By a million to one chance I’m in the front parlor and I just looked up and saw this Teddy Boy,” Mike McCartney would recall. “ ‘Wow, he looks good!’ He had sidies and drainies, and ‘Hold on … he’s coming down our path’—past me dad’s lavender bush. ‘He looks good!’ ”37
Jim McCartney was nowhere near so enamored. John wasn’t your typical polite and respectful visitor, he was who he was, edgy and sarcastic. He knew manners but didn’t necessarily use them, any more than he automatically showed respect to his elders. (He may also have let Jim see his “crip” antics once or twice, because he was as liable to burst into them as Paul was to suddenly break into his screaming Little Richard voice.) Since primary-school days, parents had warned their children to “keep away from that John Lennon,” and Jim saw that here was a character. He knew his sort—Liverpool was full of them, and Jim was a man of the world—but this lad breezing into his house was a Teddy Boy, and everyone knew Teddy Boys were delinquents. Associating with John could well turn Paul into one, and this was all happening at a bad time, when Paul had just suffered that setback at school.
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