During term time, Paul and John met daily in town, which was easy now with John studying next door at the art college. Here, Lennon fell in with a group of art students who styled themselves self-consciously the Dissenters, meeting over pints of beer in the pub round the corner, Ye Cracke. Like students the world over, the Dissenters talked earnestly of life, sex and art. Beatnik culture loomed large, the novels of Jack Kerouac and the poetry of Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti being very fashionable. The work of these American writers was of great interest to the Dissenters up to the point, significantly, where they decided they didn’t have to be in thrall to American culture. ‘We sat there in the Cracke and thought Liverpool is an exciting place,’ remembers Bill Harry, a founder member of this student group. ‘We can create things and write music about Liverpool, just as the Americans [do about their cities].’ Although the Quarry Men, and later the Beatles, would play rock ’n’ roll in emulation of their American heroes, importantly John and Paul would create authentic English pop songs, with lyrics that referred to English life, sung in unaffected English accents. The same is also true of George Harrison.
When Paul slipped next door to the art college to have lunch with John, his friend Georgie would often tag along. John treated Paul more or less as his equal, despite the age difference, but George Harrison was a further year back, and he seemed very young: a skinny, goofy little kid with a narrow face, snaggly teeth and eyebrows that almost met in the middle. Lennon regarded this boy with condescension. Paul did, too, but he was shrewd enough to see that George was becoming a good guitar player, telling George to show John how well he could play the riff from the song ‘Raunchy’. John was sufficiently impressed to invite Harrison to join the band. George’s relationship with Paul and John was thus established. Ever afterwards the two senior band members would regard George as merely their guitarist. ‘The thing about George is that nobody respected him for the great [talent] he was,’ says Tony Bramwell, a Liverpool friend who went on to work for the Beatles (John Lennon called Bramwell ‘Measles’ because he was everywhere they went). ‘That’s how John and Paul treated George and Ringo: George is [just] the lead guitarist, and Ringo’s [only] the drummer.’
Ringo is not yet in the group. But three of the fab four are together in John’s schoolboy band, Paul and George having squeezed out most of John’s original sidemen. When the resolutely unmusical Pete Shotton announced his decision to quit the group, John made sure of it by breaking Pete’s washboard over his head, though they stayed friends and, like Measles Bramwell, Shotton would work for the boys when they made it. Eric Griffiths was displaced by the arrival of George, while Len Garry dropped out through ill-health. Only the drummer, Colin Hanton, remained, with Paul’s school friend, John Duff Lowe, sitting in as occasional pianist. Of a Sunday, the boys would sometimes rehearse at 20 Forthlin Road while Jim McCartney sat reading his paper. ‘The piano was against the wall, and his father used to sit at the end of the piano facing out into the room, and if he thought we were getting too loud he’d sort of wave his hand. Because he was concerned the neighbours were gonna complain,’ says Duff Lowe, noting how patient and kindly Paul’s dad was. ‘At four o’clock we’d break and he’d go and make [us] a cup of tea.’
Despite Paul’s drive to make the Quarry Men as professional as possible, they were still rank amateurs. So much so that Duff Lowe got up from the piano and left halfway through one show in order to catch his bus home. It is also a wonder that their early experiences of the entertainment industry didn’t put them all off trying to make a living as musicians. On one unforgettable occasion, auditioning for a spot at a working men’s club in Anfield, the Quarry Men watched as the lad before them demonstrated an act that was nothing less than eating glass. The boy cut himself so badly in the process he had to stuff newspaper into his mouth to staunch the blood. Paul’s show business dreams were not quelled. Indeed, he seemed ever more ambitious. At another audition at the Locarno Ballroom, seeing a poster appealing for vocalists, Paul told John, ‘We could do that.’
‘No, we’re a band,’ replied John severely. It was clear to Colin Hanton that Paul would do anything to get ahead in what he had seemingly decided would be his career; or at least as much of a career as music had been for Dad before he settled down and married Mum. It is important to remember that in going into local show business in this way Paul was following in the footsteps of his father, Jim, who had entertained the people of Merseyside between the wars with his Masked Melody Makers. The fact Dad had been down this road already also accounts for Paul’s extra professionalism.
The next step was to make a record. In the spring of 1958, John, Paul, George, John Duff Lowe and Colin Hanton chipped in to record two songs with a local man named Percy Phillips, who had a recording studio in his Liverpool home. For seventeen shillings and sixpence (approximately £13 in today’s money, or $19 US) they could cut a 78 rpm shellac disc with a song on each side. The chosen songs were Buddy Holly’s ‘That’ll Be the Day’ and ‘In Spite of All the Danger’, credited to McCartney and Harrison, but essentially Paul’s song. ‘It was John’s band, but Paul was [already] playing a more controlling part in it,’ observes Duff Lowe. ‘It’s not a John Lennon record [sic] that we are gonna play, it’s a Paul McCartney record.’ This original song is a lugubrious country-style ballad, strongly reminiscent of ‘Trying to Get to You,’ from Elvis’s first LP, which was like the Bible to the boys. John and Paul sang the lyric, George took the guitar solo, the band striking the final chord as Mr Phillips waved his hands frantically to indicate they were almost out of time. ‘When we got the record, the agreement was that we would have it for a week each,’ Paul said. ‘John had it a week and passed it to me. I had it a week and passed it on to George, who had it a week. Then Colin had it a week and passed it to Duff Lowe – who kept it for twenty-three years.’ We shall return to this story later.
A COMMON GRIEF
Despite living with the redoubtable Aunt Mimi, John kept in close touch with his mother, who was more like a big sister to him than a mum. Julia Lennon attended Quarry Men shows, with the band sometimes rehearsing at her house in Blomfield Road, where the boys found her to be a good sport. Paul was fond of Julia, as he was of most motherly women, feeling the want of a mother himself. John also slept the night occasionally at Julia’s. He was at Mum’s on 15 July 1958, while Julia paid a visit to sister Mimi. As Julia left Mendips that summer evening, and crossed busy Menlove Avenue to the bus stop, she was knocked down and killed by a car. The effect on John was devastating. In later years he would remark that he felt like he lost his mother twice: when Julia gave him up when he was 5; and again when he was 17 and she was killed.
In the wake of this calamity, John, always something of a handful, became wilder and more obstreperous, while his friendship with Paul strengthened. The fact that Paul had lost his mother, too, meant both boys had something profound in common, a deep if largely unspoken mutual sadness. It was at this time that they began to write together more seriously, creating significant early songs such as ‘Love Me Do’. Paul would often ‘sag’ off school now to write with John at Forthlin Road when Dad was at work. But Paul was not dependent on John to make music. He wrote alone as well, composing the tune of ‘When I’m Sixty-Four’ on the family piano around this time, ‘thinking it could come in handy in a musical comedy or something’. Unlike John, whose musical horizon didn’t go beyond rock ’n’ roll, Paul had wider tastes and ambitions.
The Quarry Men played hardly any gigs during the remaining months of 1958, and performed only sporadically in the first half of the next year, including an audition for a bingo evening. The boys were to play two sets with a view to securing a regular engagement. The first set went well enough, even though the MC got the curtain stuck, and the management rewarded the lads with free beer. They were all soon drunk, with the result that the second set suffered. ‘It was just a disaster,’ laments Colin Hanton. John started taking the piss out of the audience, as he had a tendency to do, and the Quarry Men weren’t asked back. John was often sarcastic and downright rude to people, picking on their weaknesses. He had a particularly nasty habit of mocking and mimicking the disabled. On the bus home that night, this same