11 Ibid. Richy remembers the drum on sale at £26.
12 This is a story that’s been told many times; the colors assigned to the instruments understandably vary with retelling.
13 Davies, p40.
14 Rockline, US radio phone-in, February 10, 1988.
15 From 1970s interview transcript of unknown origin.
16 Author interview, June 21, 2007.
17 Author interview, December 14, 2004.
18 Questionnaires completed by hand in early summer 1963, sold at auction by Christie’s, London, May 5, 2004. Paul quote from The Beatles Anthology, p21.
19 Thank U Very Much, p37.
20 Pwllheli is pronounced as “Pull-helly,” but such was the Englishman’s inability to grapple with Welsh words it was often jokingly referred to as “Peely-weely.” Mike’s photo is best seen in his book Mike Mac’s Whites and Blacks Plus One Colour (Aurum Press, London, 1986), p9.
21 The Beatles Anthology, p18.
22 Ibid., p35.
23 Interview by Horst Königstein, Hamburg, September 29, 1976, for Ringo und die Stadt am Ende des Regenbogen (Ringo and the City at the End of the Rainbow), West German NDR-TV, June 9 and 16, 1977—Ringo’s best TV interview by far. Jigsaw aired on alternate Saturdays from January 1955. George Fierstone (1916–84), who performed with his Quintet in these TV programs, was a bespectacled drummer, active since childhood in dance and swing bands; he played for seven postwar years in the Skyrockets, house-band at the London Palladium.
24 Author interview, April 27, 2007.
25 John and Mimi from Davies, p15; Liela from John Lennon, My Brother, p23; Paul from interview by Sir David Frost, Channel 5, December 28, 1997.
26 John’s manuscript illustrated an article about Mimi in Fabulous, November 27, 1965. He slightly anglicized Carolyn Leigh’s original lyric “And if you should survive, to a hundred and five.”
27 Interview by Diane Sawyer, Good Morning America, ABC-TV, April 30 to May 3, 2001.
28 Author interview, March 12, 2007; “… the boy Casanova of Speke” from “Portrait of Paul,” by Mike McCartney, Woman magazine, August 21, 1965.
29 It isn’t definitively established on which birthday Paul received the trumpet. He usually says it was his 14th, but other events and situations make it more likely to have been his 13th, in June 1955. “I can sing better than Frank Sinatra!” from interview by Alan Freeman, Rock Around the World, US syndicated radio show, April 11, 1976. Paul’s cousin Ian was Henry Ian Harris (b.1938), eldest child of Paul’s auntie Gin and uncle Harry. Huyton should be pronounced as “Heighten.”
30 Interview by Tony Webster, Beat Instrumental, September 1964.
31 Illustrated in The Beatles Anthology, p27, and elsewhere.
32 Author interview, March 22, 2007.
33 Illustrated in The Beatles Anthology, p39. The Romford address was 86 George Street.
34 Liverpool Echo, November 3, 1994.
35 Interview by Brian Matthew, Pop Profile, BBC Transcription Service, May 2, 1966.
36 The Beatles Anthology, p28.
37 Illustrated in Harrison, by the editors of Rolling Stone (Simon & Schuster, New York, 2002), p19, and in numerous other books. In June 2009, in Observer Music Monthly, the photo was dated for the first time: April 19, 1956. No explanation was given for the sudden discovery of this detail.
38 Interview by Charlie Gillett and Johnny Beerling, November 14, 1973, for BBC Radio 1. The identity of John’s friend isn’t known.
39 Song-by-song notes typed by John Lennon for his LP Rock ’n’ Roll, spring 1975.
40 Pete Shotton quotes and background information in these paragraphs from In My Life, p37 and beyond. The book is recommended for those seeking depth on John Lennon’s youth.
41 Interview by David Sheff, September 12, 1980, for Playboy. “I’ve been drinking since I was fifteen.”
42 Interview by Peter Lewis, for Release, BBC2, June 6, 1968.
43 Interview by David Sheff, September 15, 1980, for Playboy.
FOUR: Scufflers to Skifflers (1956)
1 Based on local wholesale and retail sales (the Nems store in Walton was among the places canvassed), “Liverpool’s Own Top 3” chart appeared in the Echo every Saturday, compiled by “Disker” along with his weekly record review column. Disker was Anthony F. J. “Tony” Barrow (b.1936), an enterprising young man from Crosby (just north of Liverpool) who will play an important part in this history. He began his weekly Echo column in 1954, when 17 and still at school; in 1956–7 he promoted several disc and live music dances (skiffle, jazz, etc.) in the north end.
2 Interview on The Weekender, BBC Radio 2, January 18, 2008.
3 Interview by Elliot Mintz, April 18, 1976. This is one of Ringo’s best ever interviews, and is the primary source of the knowledge around this quote.
4 Interview by Jonathan Cott for Rolling Stone, December 5, 1980.
5 Main part of quote from interview by Howard Smith, WPLJ-FM, New York, September 10, 1971; second part from radio program Pop Goes the Bulldog, December 1969; third part from an interview for Record Mirror (by Mike Hennessey), October 2, 1971; fourth from interview for the NME (by Alan Smith), August 30, 1963. Before all this, John already knew the name Elvis Presley. A Quarry Bank boy, Don Beattie, had pointed it out in the NME, showing how “Heartbreak Hotel” was climbing the US chart. John had only just learned of the existence of charts, was yet unfamiliar with music papers and didn’t care at all for the name Elvis, which put him in mind of Perry Como and Frank Sinatra. He also thought “Heartbreak Hotel” a corny title. But when he heard it …
6 First part from interview by Andrew Tyler, Disc, December 16, 1972; second from interview by Brant Mewborn, Rolling Stone, April 30, 1981.
7 The Beatles Anthology TV series. Such ads ran in the NME on March 30 and May 4, 1956, the first on an inside page, the second occupying the front page.
8 Interview by Joe Brown, Let It Rock, BBC Radio 2, July 5, 1999.
9 Author interview, May 26, 2005. Hill lived at 69 Dovedale Road.
10 From John Lennon to Maureen Cleave, quoted in John Lennon 1940–1980, by Ray Connolly (Fontana, London, 1981), p32. The Little Richard 78 was Ronnex 1142, with a bright yellow label; Elvis Presley’s “Heartbreak Hotel” was HMV POP 182, blue label.
11 Interview by Elly de Waard, Vrij Nederland, March 28, 1969.
12 First and third quotes from interview by Jann S. Wenner, December 8, 1970, for Rolling Stone; second quote from interview by Jean-François Vallée for French TV, April 4, 1975. The best-available publication of the Rolling Stone interview is in Lennon Remembers, by Jann S. Wenner (Verso, London, 2000).
13 Interview by Alan Smith, NME, August 30, 1963.
14 Interview by Bob Rogers, Dunedin, June 26, 1964.
15 Interview by Jerry G. Bishop, August 13–24, 1965.
16 Determining the correct chronology of Paul McCartney’s earliest songwriting endeavors is tricky. Many Years From Now (pp182–3) confirms that “Suicide” (so called) was written at 20 Forthlin Road, and Paul has stated that this and what became “When I’m Sixty-Four” were written on the piano and predate the rock and roll explosion: “Rock and roll was about to happen that year, it was about to break, [so] I was still a little bit cabaret minded.” (Interview by Mike Read, October 12, 1987.) “Rock and roll hadn’t happened yet.” (Author interview, June 6, 1990.) “I wrote a lot of stuff thinking I was going to end up in the cabaret, not realizing that rock and roll was particularly going to happen. When I was fourteen there wasn’t that much of a clue that it was going to happen.” (From Paul’s narration for an unreleased film, One Hand Clapping, August 1974.) Paul never mentioned that he wrote any songs while living in Speke, and—as “Heartbreak Hotel” entered his world no later than May 1956—they were probably written shortly after the April 30, 1956, move to Allerton.
The title has been variously given as “Suicide,” “Call It Suicide” and “I Call It Suicide”: when copyright was first registered, in 197
0, it was as “Suicide”; when reregistered in 1977 it was as “Call It Suicide” with the alternative title “I Call It Suicide” (and Paul has sometimes referred to it in conversation as “I Call It Suicide”). Four different 1970s recordings of the song are in unofficial circulation, and about eight seconds of another, predating these, was included on the album McCartney in 1970.
17 The Beatles Anthology, p18.
18 “Turban” remembered by Paul McCartney in the 2011 film George Harrison: Living in the Material World. The school photo also shows Ivan Vaughan, Neil Aspinall, Mike McCartney and other names soon to enter this history (Len Garry, John Duff Lowe and more). George adapted it for an album sleeve (Dark Horse, 1974) but doctored the image in several ways. Repositioned directly beneath him is the hated “Baz”—Liverpool Institute headmaster J. R. Edwards—the Capitol Records logo imposed on his jacket indicating just how George felt about his US record label at this time. George’s favorite teacher, art master Stan Reed, was given the good “OM” sign.
19 Going Home, Disney Channel, April 18, 1993 (mostly filmed in Liverpool in 1992). There’s a scene in the 1973 film That’ll Be the Day where Richy enacts his time as a bar waiter. Imagine it on a boat and the picture is about right.
20 Interview by Tom Snyder, Good Morning America, ABC-TV, November 25, 1981.
21 Interview by Barry Miles, September 23–4, 1969, partly published in Fusion and Oz.
22 Interview by Jean-François Vallée for French TV, April 4, 1975.
23 Quotes from interviews with the author, May 2, 1991, and Alan Rowett and Geoff Barker for Paul McCartney’s Routes of Rock, BBC World Service, Oct–Nov 1999.
24 Author interview, March 22, 2007.
25 Davies, pp45–6.
26 Author interview, May 28, 2004.
27 The Beatles Anthology, p36.
28 Love Me Do! The Beatles’ Progress, by Michael Braun (Penguin, London, 1964), p35.
29 Reference to a 1936 song by Stuff Smith, “If You’re a Viper”: “I dreamed about a reefer five feet long …” The 2i’s group deliberately chose the name Vipers for this reason, though they themselves smoked nothing stronger than Virginia tobacco.
30 Interview by the Rev. Wayne Clarke, BBC Radio Merseyside, September 28, 2009.
31 Yesterday & Today, by Ray Coleman (Boxtree, London, 1995), p28.
32 Mary McCartney’s mass was at the Church of St. Bernadette, Mather Avenue, near the family home on Forthlin Road. The committal was at Yew Tree, the RC cemetery in Knotty Ash, between West Derby and Huyton. She went into eternity in the same plot as her mother (died 1919), baby sister Agnes (1918), and father’s second wife Rose (1948), the stepmother she’d left home to escape.
33 “Portrait of Paul,” by Mike McCartney, Woman magazine, August 21, 1965.
34 The Beatles Anthology, p19.
35 First part of quote (“We’d never heard anybody sing …”) from unknown source, quoted in The Beatles Anthology, p11; second part (“The most exciting thing …”) from interview by Barry Miles, September 23–4, 1969, partly published in Fusion and Oz.
36 Interview by Johnnie Walker, BBC Radio 2, May 11, 2001.
37 As told by Maureen Cleave, Daily Telegraph, December 14, 2009.
38 Interview by Jerry G. Bishop, August 13–24, 1965.
39 Interview by Timothy White, Billboard, December 5, 1992. Liverpool directories of the period list the names of off-licensees, beer retailers and wine and spirits merchants but there’s no entry for anyone named Houghton or Horton or any similar-sounding spellings. Seemingly unrelated to this, George’s friend Arthur Kelly remembers going with George to learn guitar from a man at a pub in Edge Hill that they called “The Cat”—actually the Botanic Hotel on Wavertree Road (junction with Byford Street): “There was a local guy—mixed race, half-black—who used to give lessons. He had a big mother of a guitar, probably a Gibson, with a pickup and an amplifier. He taught us a few Hank Williams country songs like ‘Your Cheatin’ Heart.’ ”
40 Author interview, October 27, 2009.
41 Author interview, February 5, 2008.
42 Interview by Spencer Leigh.
43 Varying a little in retelling by others, this comes from James Graves himself, quoted in the Evening Standard (London), February 25, 1964. Graves was described as “a retired packer and one-time Romford United footballer.” An article in the Romford Recorder (February 21, 1964) said Graves spoke “without a trace of any kind of accent”—that is, he didn’t speak like a typical East End Londoner.
44 Interview by Elliot Mintz, April 18, 1976.
FIVE: Guaranteed Not to Split (January–June 1957)
1 Interview by David Sheff, September 24, 1980, for Playboy.
2 Ibid. A transcribing error for the book of this interview turned “Artsy-fartsy people were despised” into “Artsy-fartsy people were spies,” which seemed logical enough. It also appears this way in The Beatles Anthology, p9.
3 Interview by Spencer Leigh.
4 Interview by B. P. Fallon for RTE2 (Ireland), circa October 20, 1987.
5 Vic Lewis will re-enter this history in subsequent volumes as a businessman. His orchestra’s drummer for the Haley tour, Andy White, also reappears.
6 Author interview, May 2, 1991.
7 Interview by Spencer Leigh.
8 Unpublished quote from September 1971 interview by Mike Hennessey for Record Mirror. Nothing is known of this guitar teacher—neither John nor Eric was ever able to recall the man’s name or address.
9 Interview by Brian Matthew, Pop Profile, BBC Transcription Service, May 2, 1966. Nothing is known of this drum teacher.
10 Interview by John Wilson, Front Row, BBC Radio 4, January 18, 2008.
11 Author interview, May 28, 2004.
12 The Beatles Anthology, p102. Sunday Night at the London Palladium was on the ITV network, launched late 1955 as an alternative to the ad-free BBC.
13 This and the subsequent quote from an interview by Robert W. Morgan, US radio, March 20–21, 1982.
14 George describes his homemade guitar in some detail in The Beatles Anthology, p28. It isn’t known which guitar manual George and Paul were reading. Paul later said (and George vaguely implied) it was Bert Weedon’s Play In a Day, a manual so well known to British musicians it’s cited even by those who didn’t use it. This may be the case here: it was first published in September 1957, surely after George and Paul’s experience.
15 Author interview, July 18, 2006.
16 Interview by Ray Coleman, Melody Maker, October 24, 1964. The guitar ad said: “Full size popular plectrum style, handsome shaded mahogany finished, highly polished. Super treble and full bass, warm responses. Suitable for solo or with band, please play it, don’t let us try to describe a gem.”
17 Interview by Howard Smith, WPLJ-FM, New York, January 23, 1972.
18 Calypso Rock mentioned in interview by Mike Hennessey (Record Mirror, October 2, 1971). In the full transcript, John said “Calypso/Rock, Rock/Calypso, I couldn’t tell which”—which is open to interpretation. Five months earlier, he’d told Raoul Pantin (Trinidad Express, May 4, 1971), “The first song I ever attempted was called Calypso Rock, because the big question at the time was whether calypso would take over from rock ’n’ roll.” (The quote “What I had to learn to do …” is from the published Hennessey interview.)
19 Interview by Spencer Leigh.
20 Davies, p54.
21 NME, January 18, 1957.
22 Interview by Alan Rowett and Geoff Barker for Paul McCartney’s Routes of Rock, BBC World Service, Oct–Nov 1999.
23 Luxembourg was now embracing a kind of permissible payola system where (as well as carrying regular shows and commercials) its schedule included “sponsored programs,” record companies buying exclusive airtime as shop windows for product, hiring DJs to spin all their latest discs and encourage people to buy them. Though the signal still washed in and out like the waves on a beach, the station at 208 meters remained the only place for British teenag
ers to hear the kind of music the BBC had scant space for and sometimes little inclination to play; also, crucially, while the BBC was hidebound by rigorous “Needletime” restrictions (see footnote, p75), Luxembourg operated free of any such outside control. EMI and Decca sponsored numerous programs, and because Decca had Elvis, and its London label picked up the choice American masters, theirs were the essential shows, the best one being presented by Tony Hall; the programs were short, sometimes just thirty minutes, and DJs faded records early to discourage home-taping. Historically, Radio Luxembourg was always more popular in the north of England than the south, and listeners in Liverpool still included Richy Starkey, John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison.
24 Young Paul, Beatles Book magazine, issue 27 (October 1965).
25 Two Berry singles were issued in Britain simultaneously at the end of May 1957: “School Day” and “Roll Over Beethoven.” Columbia’s display ad for the former announced “He sings it! He plays it! He wrote it!” This didn’t prevent a competing cover version by the British singer-trombonist Don Lang, a Six-Five Special regular. Berry got to 24 on the NME chart, Lang 26. “Roll Over Beethoven” didn’t chart.
26 Steeply sloping Elswick Street overlooks the Herculaneum Dock, River Mersey and, on a clear day, the distant Welsh hills. The BBC television sitcom Bread was filmed here between 1986 and 1991, at a house just across from where Ian James lived with his grandparents. When Paul McCartney made a cameo appearance on the show in 1988 he knocked on the door and told the occupants he’d learned to play guitar in their house.
27 Seventeen years on, in summer 1974, Paul McCartney was working with a cameraman and director at Abbey Road Studios when he suggested they film him on a little patch of wasteland behind the Number 2 studio echo chamber. The result was a nine-minute short he called The Backyard but which might as well have been Elswick Street, Paul sitting on a chair in the sunshine, playing an upside-down acoustic guitar and singing some 1950s rock and roll numbers—including “Twenty Flight Rock.” It remains unreleased.
28 Davies, p46. In 1957, Speke British Legion was using a temporary construction, demolished in 1962 when permanent premises were erected on the same site. The busloads of tourists brought most days to this unlovely spot are always shown the wrong building. Oddly, the club chairman at the time the Rebels played there was G. Harrison.
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