Tune In

by Mark Lewisohn

  Paul began his new life and new daily journey on September 9—he was heading into town. The Latin motto at Liverpool Institute High School for Boys was Non Nobis Solum Sed Toti Mundo Nati—translated as “Not for ourselves but for the whole world were we born.” Clearly, this was a school that took itself a mite seriously. Mary had high hopes Paul would become a doctor, Jim thought he’d become a scientist, but first Paul had to find his way around what Liverpool and Merseyside Illustrated called “an overcrowded and ancient building.”54 The school opened in the year of Queen Victoria’s accession, 1837, and it was a confusion of dark dank passageways and staircases. Charles Dickens addressed a gathering here in 1844. Next door was Liverpool College of Art; it had been the same school until 1890, when doors were sealed up and they were separated. The headmaster was quite literally a Victorian: John “Jack” Edwards, known to boys as The Baz, a feared individual, strict and humorless in his determination that every Institute scholar go on to Oxford or Cambridge. A number did, but those who didn’t could be scorned as a waste of everyone’s time.55

  Pupils were in the “Lower School” for the first three years—and began in what was confusingly called “the third year.” Paul started in form 3C, an arbitrary decision, after which the forms were streamed according to ability. In his first year he was middling, ranked around twelfth—an impressive achievement considering his classmates were among the city’s brightest boys and he was always one of the youngest in his year. He was popular too. Naturally funny, he showed a good talent for vocal mimicry by impersonating the masters, and drew witty cartoons that were passed around the class for laughs. Some pals called him Macca—the nickname stuck on many a Liverpool child whose surname starts with Mc or Mac. One boy he made friends with was John Lennon’s close pal Ivan Vaughan, sometimes nicknamed Ive or Ivy. He was at the Institute solely because of John: his mother decided he couldn’t go to Quarry Bank as “that Lennon” was bound to derail his studies. Another boy starting at the Institute in September 1953 was Neil Aspinall, nicknamed Nell, from West Derby, north Liverpool. He too was in 3C, but on only nodding acquaintance with Paul at this time.

  Paul’s overall impression of the Institute was succinct and truthful: “I didn’t like it very much, but I didn’t dislike it; and I quite enjoyed bits of it. What I didn’t like was being told what to do.”56 One particularly appealing aspect was its location. Until this time, Paul’s life had played out in the suburbs; now he’d landed at the heart of the action. The school was in one of the best parts of Liverpool, just off Hope Street, a handsome thoroughfare with the Anglican Cathedral at one end, the Philharmonic Hall concert venue halfway along, and an art-house cinema, Hope Hall, at the far end. Very close by was Canning Street, the “artistic quarter,” peopled by the bohemians who studied or taught at the art school or did nothing very much at all except drink in the local pubs. Strides down the steep hill took Paul to the city’s main streets: it was a thrill for him to spend solo time here, enjoying the spiel of the St. John’s Market traders, watching the escapologist wriggle his way out of chains on a “bommy” opposite the Adelphi Hotel, and catching Codman’s Punch and Judy show, a constant fixture by Lime Street station for decades.

  George Harrison first went to the Liverpool Institute in February 1954, to take his Eleven-Plus. Though he’d done well at Dovedale Road, no one was sure he’d make grammar-school grade. His sister Louise had, his brothers Harry and Peter hadn’t. The next day, when his Dovedale teacher asked who in the class felt they’d passed, George didn’t put up his hand. But he had, and he’d be Institute-bound from September for at least five years, perhaps seven or eight.

  The blond hair George had had since birth was now turning brown, and there was a major battle every time Harry tried to trim it: George always put up a fuss when forced into a haircut. He was growing into a self-sufficient and opinionated lad. Children were often being told to “respect your elders and betters” but George didn’t always feel they’d earned it. He was a born skeptic with a reasoned disregard for some of his schoolteachers, and was experiencing a rapid loss of faith in the Catholic Church owing to the way it was trying to control him. Louise had been sending George to mass on and off all his life at Our Lady of Good Help, in Wavertree, where he’d also been going into the confessional box from an early age, coming clean to the priest about his latest “sins.” At 11, he’d taken part in the Communion ceremony; but by this age, as he’d explain, he already “felt that there was some hypocrisy going on.”57

  George observed the way supposedly God-fearing people carried on—how, for instance, the men forced to go to church would far rather have been away drinking somewhere: “When I was about 11 I was sitting in this church with all these people who could well have been in the Red Lion.” He’d overhear grown-ups commenting on alleged infidelities: “I always remember [adults] saying, ‘You’ll never believe that Mrs. Jones—she’s running around with Mr. Badger. She’s a dark horse!’ ” And he also saw how, when priests came to Upton Green, knocking on doors to collect money for the building of a new church, many (and sometimes the Harrisons) would pretend they were out, lying low, turning off the lights and maintaining radio silence until God’s messenger had gone.

  George was becoming dismissive of organized religion as he knew it, but he kept the door ajar for God. “The only thing that came across to me in the church was these oil paintings of Christ struggling up the hill with the cross on his back. I thought, ‘There’s something going on there.’ But as to the rest of the building and the priest and the people, I just thought it was stupid. [I thought] ‘I can’t get anything out of this!’ ” Though he was meant to be confirmed after his Communion, George dropped out. “From then on,” he’d say, “I avoided the church.”58

  * * *

  * The Polyfotos are on display at 251 Menlove Avenue, the house authentically re-created by the National Trust and open to the public.

  † Pronounced “Speak.”

  ‡ After he’d spent several months in the hospital, the school may have believed he wasn’t coming back: the St. Silas admission register records “21.11.47” as the date he left through “Sickness.”

  § A. J. Smith, although respected, was the kind of teacher kids liked to mimic: he spoke with pronounced sibilance and was somewhat effeminate; his “Inny” nickname was Cissy.

  THREE

  1954–5

  “WHO YOU LOOKIN’ AT?”

  As simplistic as it is to consider that fashion for young people didn’t exist before the 1950s—that children reached 18 and then dressed like their parents—this was the essential truth of it. The suit-and-tie look was maintained daily in almost all walks of life by almost all men of all ages. Jim McCartney, George Smith, Harry Harrison and Harry Graves sat in a shirt and tie, or something similarly smart, at home in the evenings and at weekends, and certainly when going out, and almost every man had very short hair that was brushed or combed neatly into a parting and greased.

  In London around 1948 there was a trend among upper-class Guards officers to wear handmade frock-coats with velvet collars and double-breasted waistcoats, echoing the style of royalty, politicians and businessmen in Edwardian (and previous) times. In the early 1950s, this style was taken up by gangs of working-class London youths, except they didn’t ape the trend, they subverted it, extending the “drape” jacket to the fingertips and knees in the manner of the American “zoot suit.”* In May 1952, an advert ran in the Daily Mirror for “crepe soled shoes, in 18 different styles,” with a drawing of a young couple jiving to a jazz band and a blurb that exclaimed “Not for him are the fashions of Grandfather’s day.” These shoes, also known as “brothel creepers,” went brilliantly with the Edwardian jackets, and the outfit was completed with tight-legged “drainpipe” trousers (to be known in Liverpool as “drainies”); “Slim Jim” bootlace ties; tight waistcoats; luminescent socks; and, ever the crowning glory, a mop of hair swept back off the forehead into a piled quiff held in place with as much gunk
as necessary. The hair at the back was separated and greased into two lanes, a style that took its name from what it looked like—in Britain a “duck’s arse,” in America a “duck’s ass” or “ducktail,” the “DA” for short. (The American film actor Tony Curtis, very popular among British kids, was the chief influence: people called it “the Tony Curtis style.”) Finally, the 1950s Edwardian always carried a comb to keep his hair in order, and so much the better if it was steel and could double as a weapon.

  Young Edwardians started to roam the streets in gangs rigorously demarcated into tight little districts or areas, and there were running battles with anyone who stepped in from outside. Juvenile delinquency was constantly in the news after the war but Edwardian activity was fairly low-key until January 1953, when an illiterate 19-year-old Londoner called Derek Bentley was found guilty of murdering an unarmed policeman, and was hanged for his crime. The subject was hot for a long time, and the popular press, noticing Bentley’s appearance, began calling Edwardians “Teddy Boys.” From now on, juvenile delinquents were Teddy Boys, and Teddy Boys were juvenile delinquents: the two were bootlace-tight.1

  This sartorially savvy street-army instantly became the scapegoat for society’s ills, a sickness of the age, the cause of all the problems. It was an unfair and illogical argument, but defending the line too strongly would obscure the fact that many a Ted enjoyed trouble, and plenty carried flick-knives, knuckle-dusters, studded belts or bicycle chains. Few were angels, no matter how much they loved their mum; if you saw even one Ted coming toward you on the street, it was always a good idea to run.

  Inevitably, the more the Teddy Boy became public enemy number one, the more many found it attractive. Adopting the fashion of the reviled was a critical adolescent statement. Teddy Boys suddenly rose up all over Britain, especially in places of social deprivation—of which there were many. In Liverpool, gangs of Teds roamed more or less every little district, so just when Speke couldn’t get much worse, Teds ensured it did.

  GEORGE: I was puny [but] I was a good runner—I’d just see a bunch of them coming and I’d avoid all that sort of scene. There was only once or twice I almost got done in.

  PAUL: [It was] “Who you lookin’ at?” And if you answered wrong, either way, smack.2

  Another major issue of the day was the creeping Americanization of British society. Adults were scathing about it, but kids lapped it up. “We were like the Fifty-Ninth State in Britain,” John Lennon would say. “We had all the Doris Day movies, and Heinz beans. (We all thought they were English.) I was brought up on Americana.”3 Everyone was, especially when it came to films and music.

  • • •

  The early days of summer 1954 found John, Pete, Nige and Ivan in their latest favorite spot: a tree-shaded grassy knoll in Calderstones Park which they called The Bank. They sat around here and did what boys do: played games, talked crap, smoked “Woodies” (“John was always saying ‘Give us a ciggie,’ ” recalls Nigel Walley) and teased and punched one another, always keeping a watchful eye out for the spoilsport park-keeper (“parkie”). Girls weren’t invited, but, says Pete Shotton, “There’d be a steady stream of them all wanting to flirt with John.”4 As crude and cutting as he was, John was a magnet for the “birds.”

  But The Bank was lads-only territory. John had the “gob iron” and led them through rousing sing-alongs of recent American-made British hits such as “Cool Water” by Frankie Laine and at least three of Johnnie Ray’s: “Walkin’ My Baby Back Home,” “The Little White Cloud That Cried,” and “Somebody Stole My Gal.” John Lennon and pop music are linked here, decisively, for the first time.5 He liked Laine and Ray, he also liked “Sh-Boom” by the Crew-Cuts, and when Tennessee Ernie Ford had a British number 1 with “Give Me Your Word,” he liked him too; he also enjoyed “Caribbean” by Mitchell Torok, a US country number 1 in 1953 that came to his attention by means unknown.

  Around this time, John started seeing his mother again. It will never be known for certain how much contact they’d had in the preceding years—not none, but not a lot either.6 It was John’s cousin Stanley, down from Edinburgh, who took events into his own hands and let John accompany him on a visit to Julia at Blomfield Road. It was an encounter they kept secret from Mimi.

  No doubt it was wonderful for John finally to be resuming a real relationship with Mummy after all these years, but it was probably also a time of great confusion. He once remarked how she was more like “a young aunt or big sister” to him, as if the roles of Mimi and Julia were reversed in his mind.7 He certainly made clear his feelings about Julia’s de facto husband: he didn’t much like him, just as he hadn’t liked Taffy Williams. John called him Bobby to his face, but behind his back and to others he called him “Twitchy,” picking on Dykins’ nervous tic and throat-clearances.

  John’s schooling was now falling apart. His July 1954 report placed him thirtieth out of thirty-four in his class, and he only just escaped being demoted, staying in the B stream for the third year. In Mimi’s eyes he became “bone-idle,” but in certain respects he was more than active. John had started to draw captioned cartoons on scraps of paper, to be sneaked around the classroom during lessons, much as Paul was doing at the Institute. Many of these were inspired: a typical example featured a woman with a pram and ten tiny children, her husband burbling, “But I do love you, dear.” The artistic influence was US cartoonist James Thurber, the ideas were sprung from Milligan and also “Professor” Stanley Unwin, the humorist who spoke in a mangled English known to aficionados (and John was one) as “gobbledegook.” It wasn’t long before these scraps of paper had evolved into John’s own newspaper, Daily Howl, a school exercise book with an illustrated front cover and page after page of one-line gags, eccentric wordplay, spoof ads, cartoons and the first evidence of a lasting obsession with blacks, Jews and human grotesques. John would write it at Mendips in the evenings and take the book into school next morning, to be read aloud and passed around—and then, after being confiscated by the teachers, enjoyed by the Quarry Bank staff before John got them back at the end of term.

  Out of school, when he wasn’t scrapping, John’s main aim was to have a laugh and a shout. Michael Hill remembers how John would stand at the bus stop with a wellington boot on one foot and a football boot on the other, or he’d stick his leg out of the bus window. Nigel Walley says, “He’d go upstairs on a bus and shout ‘All change!’ and people would start scrambling downstairs, or ‘All tickets please!’ and everyone would start fumbling for their tickets. Then he’d just sit down while someone mumbled, ‘Bloody teenagers.’ ”

  This word was a new American invention, arrived at after less likely attempts such as “teenster” and “teener.” Richy Starkey became one in July 1953 and had a new ambition: to become a tramp. If he couldn’t ride the Prairie’s wide-open spaces with his compadres, he’d wander the byways of Britain like Dick Whittington. Or, another plan: run away to sea. He’d heard that you could get out of National Service by serving eight uninterrupted years in the merchant navy—it was one of the few exemptions. Richy began his preparation by joining Dingle Sea Scouts, but was soon scuppered. “I was thrown out because I ran away with a rifle. I never saw a boat. I was never in anything too long; I always did something that annoyed people.”8

  He avoided school as much as possible. The only documented report from his years at Dingle Vale, Christmas 1952, shows that in the three months from September he was absent thirty-four times, which means he was away as much as he was there.9 His form teacher wrote: “A quiet, thoughtful type, although working rather slowly. Academic work will no doubt improve in time as he is trying to do his best. Helpful & willing.” He was twenty-third out of thirty-nine in his class. But he did achieve an A in Drama (“Takes a real interest and has done very well”) because he loved playing roles—a trait he’d picked up from years of going to the Saturday-morning pictures.

  Richy had a long walk when he went to school, from the northeast tip of the Dingle to its southwest cor
ner. His usual route took him down Park Road, where there were shops, and one day—around early 1954—he stopped outside a music store and stood staring at a drum in the window. “They had guitars and banjos and mandolins, accordions and things like that, but this one drum, just a tom-tom, used to freak me out. I loved it and used to go and look at this tom-tom every day, walking to school and walking back.”10 The drum was expensive, beyond his means, but the idea of owning it, of beating a sound on it, was unshakable from his mind. “I couldn’t get over that price. But I couldn’t get over the idea of a drum either. I don’t know why.” Richy had been gifted a range of musical instruments in his childhood, none of which he’d asked for or bothered to do anything with; the drum was the first one he wanted. As he’d later put it, “There was never any other instrument … I wanted to be a drummer.”11

  At this time, ten years after separating, Elsie and Richard Starkey were divorced; both were remarried before the year was out. On April 17, Elsie tied the knot with Harry Graves in a ceremony at the new register office on Mount Pleasant, a short walk up the hill from the city center. The Graves family came up from London and there was a rare old party that night, cockneys in the Dingle, the ale flowing, the old songs sung, perhaps a fist or two thrown in boozed-up joy. Richy was a big part of the day. Elsie had asked his permission for all this, saying she wouldn’t marry if he said no. It was a hefty weight for slight shoulders—he’d be having to share her, and maybe soon be competing with a new brother or sister. Elsie was only 39. On the other hand, Richy had loved Harry from the start, warming to his softly spoken and generous nature. So he said yes, and now Harry really was his stepfather. He didn’t call him Dad, just Harry, and he took to calling his mum Elsie. They were his parents by deed if no longer by name. Harry moved into 10 Admiral Grove, so now there were three in the tiny house.