Celebrating the Memory of John Lennon, the Day He Met Paul McCartney and the Birth of The Beatles

The Quarry Men

Though, again, no one could have imagined the extent of that success on that July day in 1957. As noted by Baird, virtually every teenage boy had a group, John’s being The  Quarry Men, the lineup of which included Pete Shotton, Eric Griffiths, Rod Davis and Len Garry.  A devoted rock and roll fan, John was driven by his passion and fantasies — shared by innumerable others — of being the next Elvis.

The fateful day that would, at the very least, put destiny into play, was a celebration of Liverpool’s being signed to the Magna Carta by King John in 1215 (“We like our history here, don’t we?” laughs Baird). Taking place at St. Peter’s Church in Woolton, Liverpool, the annual fete was an opportunity for John and the band to offer a public performance.

The Road to Destiny

“We saw John play in the kitchen and practice in the bathroom and on [Aunt] Mimi’s porch,” Baird explains. “On that day, John and the Quarrymen were playing on the back of a lorre [truck]. My sister Jackie and I were running alongside the lorre, trying to make John laugh, because he could hardly stand up. Then, in the end, he sat down on the back of the lorre to keep better balance, because they were singing all the way up to the church field. Now Paul hadn’t appeared at that point when they were playing, and those are the pictures you’ve seen of John in the check shirt. Later, Paul was brought up and introduced.”

Recalling That Day

Author Philip Norman in the pages of Shout! The Beatles In their Generation describes the setting as such: “The Quarry Men’s big numbers that afternoon were ‘Cumberland Gap,’ ‘Railroad Bill’ and ‘Maggie May,’ a Liverpool waterfront song in which the references to a famous tart and her beat along Lime Street were, fortunately, incomprehensible to the ladies of the Church Committee. The whole performance was watched keenly by Paul McCartney, standing with [mutual John and Paul friend] Ivan Vaughan next to the little outdoor stage. Paul noticed the tinny banjo chords which the leading Quarry Man played, and how, while singing, he stared about him, as if sizing up or challenging the rest of the world.

Impressive Musical Prowess

“While the police dogs were performing obedience trials, Ivan Vaughan took Paul across the road to the church hall, where the Quarry Men had made a small encampment of chairs and their coats,” he adds. “They were due to perform again, at a dance that evening, in alternation with the George Edwards Band. Introductions were made, Pete Shotton remembers, a little stiffly. ‘”This is John.” “Hi.” “This is Paul.” “Oh. Hi.” Paul seemed quite cocky, sure of himself, but he and John didn’t seem to have much to say.’ The ice positively splintered when Paul revealed a brilliant accomplishment. ‘He actually knew how to tune a guitar,’ Pete Shotton says. ‘Neither John nor Eric Griffiths had learned how to do that yet. Whenever their guitars went out of tune, they’d been taking them around and asking a fellow in King’s Drive to do it.’ It impressed John further that Paul knew the lyrics of rock and roll songs all the way through. He himself could never remember words, which was partly why he preferred to make up his own. Paul was even prepared, in his neat hand, to write out all the verses of ‘Twenty Flight Rock,’ which Eddie Cochran had sung in the film The Girl Can’t Help It. Then, with equal obligingness, he wrote out the words of Gene Vincent’s ‘Be-Bop-A-Lulu.'”

Paul’s View of Things

For his part, Paul reflected in the pages of The Beatles Anthology, “One day I went with this friend of mine. His name was Ivan Vaughan. And I went up to Woolton, in Liverpool, and there was a village fete going on, and John and his friends were playing the thing. My friend Ivan knew John, who was a neighbor of his. And we met there and John was onstage singing ‘Come little darlin’, come and go with me…’ But he never knew the words because he didn’t know the record, so he made up his own words, like, ‘Down, down, down, down to the penitentiary.’ I remember I was impressed. I thought, ‘Wow, he’s good. That’s a good band there.’ So backstage, back at the church hall later, I was singing a couple of songs I’d known. I liked their band, and then one of their friends, who was in the band, a guy named Pete Shotton who was a friend of John’s, saw me cycling up in Woolton one day and said, ‘Hey, they said they’d quite like to have you in the band, if you’d like to join.’ I said, ‘Oh, yeah, it’d be great.'”

And John’s

Added John, “I had a group, I was the singer and the leader. I met Paul and I made a decision whether to — and he made a decision, too — have him in the group; was it better to have a guy who was better than the people I had in, obviously, or not? To make the group stronger or to let me be stronger? That decision was to let Paul in and make the group stronger.” Obviously there were still several steps before the formation of The Beatles, but as John would point out, “George would join later, but everything started moving forward with Paul and I.”

The John/Paul Connection

Julia Baird points out that Paul had an “enormous” influence on John, which was evident from the first day the duo met. “John was impressed with his looks, and probably slightly envious, as well as his ability to play the guitar and the fact that he knew a lot — note, not all — of the words to ‘Long Tall Sally,’ which sealed his fortune. Obviously the songwriting came slightly later. I called them the Dream Team, because John was the wordsmith and Paul is the melodist; he has beautiful melodies. You put them both together and you’ve got almost perfection — as has been proven.”

Their Outlook on Life

Biographer Julius Fast adds, “The two boys hit it off very quickly. There was something both of them had that just locked together. Perhaps it was a crazy kind of attitude towards life, a contemptuous mockery that later became the trademark of the four Beatles, or perhaps it was just a teenage friendship that stuck. Whatever it was, Paul eventually was invited to join The Quarry Men. As far as John was concerned, Paul was not only a good guitarist — as good as John himself — but he also resembled their mutual idol, Elvis.”

Road to The Beatles

Notes Tony Bramwell, “There’s this whole legend about how great The Quarry Men were, but they barely played any gigs in their life. As soon as Paul joined, most of the others left because they wanted to play skiffle jazz and didn’t want to play rock and roll. Then George Harrison joined and completely demolished the idea of The Quarry Men as a folk skiffle band.”

Reflects Baird, “We were watching what happened, but without really knowing what was going on. It was all a gradually evolving process. It’s a bit like the auntie that comes every six months and says, ‘Oh my God, he’s grown.’ You don’t see it day to day but it’s happening nonetheless.”

Remembering John Lennon, October 9, 1940 to December 8, 1980.