Tune In

by Mark Lewisohn

  That she is the best of the five.

  Each one of them slept, not one of them wept

  At the struggle of her mate to survive.

  7/6/55. J. W. Lennon

  This sincere poem—lucid, forthright and notably mature for a 14-year-old—gave comfort to Mimi and she kept it always. It also has one other revealing dimension, because the third line—“If they should survive, to one hundred and five”—is adapted from Frank Sinatra’s “Young at Heart,” a 1954 American and British hit. In places, the cadence of John’s piece just about fits the meter of Sinatra’s recording too. This poem for Mimi is the first example of John Lennon expressing his feelings through popular song.26

  It isn’t known if he attended the funeral and burial, at St. Peter’s church. He never said he did (but no interviewer asked him). Mimi fell ill soon afterward, suffering from stress. Yet as much as John gave comfort with his poem, the school report he brought home from Quarry Bank a month later caused her great anxiety. What had happened to the Dovedale Road highflier bright enough to be gliding through grammar school and beyond, to university and into a profession? His class positions were terrible: even in Art, where he was usually first, he was now fifteenth. He’d given up. Headmaster E. R. Taylor summarized it as “A shocking report on work & conduct & attitude to school. He cannot escape relegation this year.” The boy who’d been in IIB and IIIB would next be in IVC … and again Pete Shotton went down with him. John’s last report had been signed by George; this time the document received his widow’s signature, and her raw feelings are shown in an extra comment scrawled at the bottom of the sheet: “6 of the best needed”—six lashes of the headmaster’s cane, please. She wrote it to frighten John, she said later, but conceded that he never let the school see it anyway. Shortly afterward, Mimi went into the hospital for five weeks, suffering from shock, worry and ulcers, while John went to Edinburgh and Durness for what turned out to be his last-but-one Scottish summer holiday.

  Paul McCartney became a teenager on June 18, 1955, lost his puppy fat and went straight into the raging-hormone stage. One day he had to face the consequence of his mother finding “a dirty drawing” in his shirt pocket. It was a typically creative piece of work, a scrap of paper that had a clothed woman on the front but which, when unfolded, showed her gradually disrobing until naked. Mary was shocked and offended by such imagery, so palpably upset that when she confronted Paul he named and blamed another boy in his class. A fretful domestic impasse resulted. Paul says, “It went three days, and my father was called in on the case. He grilled me, I still denied it and in the end he broke me down, and I admitted it and cried.”27

  Several girls Paul’s age lived in Ardwick Road and he gained a new nickname—“the boy Casanova of Speke.” A fledgling boyfriend-girlfriend situation developed with Sheila Prytherch, from number 8. “Paul McCartney was my first kiss,” she says, “and we held hands. It was innocent and lovely—he was the first boy who made me feel like that.”28 Paul would recall taking Sheila to the pictures one afternoon and announcing to her, “I can sing better than Frank Sinatra!” Such was his self-belief, he felt he could. Paul’s cousin Ian played trumpet in a local amateur jazz group, and during a family visit to his house in Huyton, Paul picked up the instrument for the first time; with only a little advice from Jim—“purse the lips, son, purse the lips”—he managed to blow a few notes. Impressive.

  Paul’s birthday was coming up, so Jim took the opportunity to present him with a trumpet, bought secondhand at the oldest music store in Liverpool, Rushworth & Dreaper.29 Paul set about mastering the instrument his way, untutored. Trumpet records were plum in vogue at this time: the number 1 tune in Britain and America in the week of his 13th birthday was “Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White,” so the instrument was at the pinnacle of its popularity. Paul felt he could crack it: “Of course, I immediately fancied myself as Louis Armstrong, but I only got as far as learning ‘When the Saints Go Marching In’ before I got fed up with it. It used to hurt my lip and I didn’t fancy the thought of walking around like a beat-up boxer.”30

  Into the last months of 1955 (and maybe as far as the spring of 1956) the sounds of Paul McCartney’s trumpet playing spilled out into Ardwick Road like an avant-garde music-track to the street games of other children. He mastered the C scale and learned one or two other tunes beyond “The Saints.” Ultimately, however, as the craze for trumpet records began to fade, as more exciting musical sounds reached Britain from America, and as Paul’s lips suffered from the constant pursing, his attachment to the instrument ebbed away.

  Eight months younger than Paul, George Harrison was still a boy, prepubescent. He and Arthur Kelly went everywhere together, and in July 1955 George saw his first Formula One Grand Prix, held at the new road-racing circuit added to the Grand National racecourse at Aintree. Engines were George’s sole sporting interest: as well as motor-racing, he also followed the bikes, sending away for photographs and autographs of the stars. At an Aintree practice day in September 1955 he clambered aboard one of the bikes for an evocative photograph, grinning away under his crash helmet.31

  This interest ran through the Harrison family: brothers Harry and Peter were also keen followers, and dad Harry had just bought his first car, which—as motor-fan George would always specifically recall—was a 1933 Austin 10 Saloon with running boards, wire wheels and a luggage rack on the back. Virtually no family, friends or neighbors had a car, so they seemed like royalty. In July 1955, Harry and Louise took Peter and George on their first motoring holiday, a marathon trip down to South Devon. Their destination was the coastal town of Exmouth and what would become a camping and trailer park called Sandy Bay but was at this time just a field with a outhouse. Here we see the British on holiday in the 1950s: spirit stoves, straw mattresses and rain. Soon after arriving, the Harrisons met another family, the Brewers, starting a friendship that would last the rest of their lives. Their daughter Jenny was the same age as George and they became good pals and pen-friends.

  I found Harry reticent and quiet; Lou was loud, vivacious, not shy at all—there wouldn’t be silence in the room when she was there—and George was bubbly like his mum. They all bounced off each other and would do anything for anyone, and they all had a wonderful sense of humor, George especially. I threw a strop one day and threatened to walk to Budleigh Salterton. I stayed away a bit but all I really did was go to the loo and kill some time before coming back. After that, whenever George went to the loo he’d say, “I’m just off to Budleigh Salterton …”32

  Richy Starkey got out of the hospital toward the end of 1955, under instructions to take life easy for a while. Before then, as a respite treat for his fifteenth birthday, Harry took him (and Elsie) on his annual trip home to Romford, staying with his parents in the house where he was born forty-two years earlier. It was Richy’s first time in the south of England and his first glimpse of the capital—they went to see the annual Searchlight Tattoo at White City Stadium, where he enjoyed the swing of the American band just as John Lennon had done in Edinburgh, and they went on a grand day out “to see the sights.” A photo shows Richy patting a regimental horse. Somewhat dwarfed by the animal, he is a small lad, smart in a jacket but with his shirt and tie slightly askew, his hair brushed clear of the forehead into an impressive little quiff.33

  Being 15, he was now beyond the minimum school-leaving age and this time there was no question of going back to find himself even further behind his classmates—because they’d all left too. He returned only to pick up the sign-off document qualifying him to collect his unemployment benefit—“the dole.” Initially, the school secretary couldn’t find any record of his attendance, but then she did and Dingle Vale provided him with a typed reference: “Richard Starkey is honest, cheerful and willing, and quite capable of making a satisfactory employee.”34

  Where he might use such a lustrous testimonial was unclear. Elsie knew he lacked the basic education to work in an office, and also, for at least a while longer, the
strength to do anything manual. On top of his dole money, Richy earned a few bob singing in a church choir, and marking up papers in a newsagency on High Park Street: he wasn’t strong enough to be involved in their delivery, and the future held nothing whatever in store for him.

  With a broad taste in popular music, Richy spent these self-earned shillings on a secondhand wind-up gramophone from a junk shop—and a few discs to go with it, some old and a few new. He bought the music-hall comedy record “The Laughing Policeman,” by Charles Penrose; “Love Is a Many Splendored Thing,” by the Four Aces; Eddie Calvert’s 1954 trumpet hit “Oh, Mein Papa”; and “Mama,” by David Whitfield. Besotted with drums, Richy strung wire across the top of a biscuit tin and thwacked it with firewood, then he got his first proper instrument: a single massive one-sided bass drum, fifty inches in diameter, bought from a secondhand shop in Smithdown Road for thirty bob (£1 10s). With this, he said, he “used to drive ’em all mad … bashin’ it to the BBC.”35 At family parties Richy wouldn’t only sing “Nobody’s Child,” he’d bring out the big drum and pummel it with wood while everyone was doing their turn. “Ah, it’s the kid,” people would say, sympathetically, “let him have a go.” He could hardly be seen behind it, but the noise! After a few minutes of tuneless thumping they’d all be shouting at him, “Sling yer ’ook!”

  Richy didn’t buy “Rock Around the Clock,” which—on November 25, 1955, soon after the X-certificate Blackboard Jungle opened in London—became the first rock and roll number 1 in Britain. But he did love it, as did Paul McCartney. All his life, Paul had heard people say that certain things “give you a tingle up your spine”; he first felt it when he heard Haley’s record—a magical, emotional, unforgettable moment. On a visit to Blomfield Road, John Lennon found Julia dancing around the kitchen to it—not Haley’s version, which he liked, but a Mills Brothers–like cover by the Deep River Boys which he didn’t. George Harrison eagerly saved his pocket money to buy it, and someone in the family went to the shop for him; he was crushed when they returned saying, “They sold out of Bill Haley so I got you this one instead,” presenting him with the Deep River Boys. George would call “Rock Around the Clock” “the first record I didn’t get.”36

  An equally important figure for George at this time was Slim Whitman, the yodeling country and western singer from Florida who’d had two British hits in 1955, “Indian Love Call” and “Rose Marie.” Louise liked them so much she bought them, which meant George had unlimited exposure to the records, both of which had appealing steel guitar parts. George had been listening to guitar music since hearing his dad’s Jimmie Rodgers records as a very young child, but he hadn’t seen a guitar until catching sight of Whitman … and he knew instantly he had to have one.b

  Around this time, toward the end of 1955, George contracted nephritis (inflammation of the kidneys) and spent six weeks in the hospital, obliged to force down an almost inedible spinach diet. One of his visitors reported grapevine news that an ex–Dovedale Road schoolmate, Raymond Hughes, had an acoustic guitar for sale. It was £3 10s—a lot of money, well beyond George’s pocket, but he mentioned it to Mum and, ever a great encourager of her children, Louise found the cash. When George got out of the hospital, he wasted no time in rushing around to Raymond’s house, just off Penny Lane, emerging a short time later with his first guitar.

  A snapshot: George in the front room of a Speke council house, a boy in his carpet slippers, fingers picking out notes at the eighth fret, one leg straight and the other crooked as he rises on his toes.37

  He didn’t play this guitar for long. Though costing £3 10s, it was really a cheap old thing, made in the Netherlands by a company called Egmond, and it had a bolt in the back of the neck. George kept wondering what would happen if he unscrewed it, so he did, and found out: the neck came off, and then he couldn’t get it back on. Out of frustration and embarrassment at having broken something that had cost Louise all that money, he shoved the two pieces in a cupboard and closed the door, his guitar sentenced to a stretch of solitary.

  This country music influence already affecting George and Richy was also significant for John Lennon. He was going to a friend’s house and playing his Hank Williams records. This boy also had a guitar but neither of them could play it, so John would just hold the instrument while he sang, performing “Honky Tonk Blues” into the fireplace.38

  It was probably Pat Boone’s safe white cover version of “Ain’t That a Shame” (the one played on the radio rather than the original recording by Fats Domino) that John Lennon’s mother Julia heard and liked, and which she taught him to play on banjo—the same instrument on which she was taught by her father. John had been a harmonica player for years and this interest in stringed instruments was new, kindled in those guitar-holding sessions miming to Hank Williams. He would later call “Ain’t That a Shame” “the first song I was able to accompany myself on, taught me by my mother. I learnt it on banjo.”39 The words “accompany myself” relate an equally vital dimension to Julia’s teaching: without the harmonica, John was free to sing along with the chords his fingers were forming. And he could really sing; his was a voice that came naturally and honestly. His hands-on musical education also had balance. Julia showed him how to play at least four sweet songs from her youth: “Don’t Blame Me” (1933), “Little White Lies” (1930), “Ramona” and “Girl of My Dreams” (both 1927). All would remain lifelong favorites.

  Julia was very much the girl of John’s dreams. She was still the kicker of convention and bucker of trends she’d been all her life, and at 41 was simply an older version of himself, like him in drag: irreverent, iconoclastic, uninhibited, witty, with a huge personality and a wicked sense of fun. She stuck two fingers up to society and postponed housework duties whenever something daft could be done instead. A reliable witness to what he saw, Pete Shotton’s first impression of Julia was of “a slim, attractive woman dancing through the doorway with a pair of old woolen knickers wrapped around her head”; instead of shaking his hand, she stroked his hips and giggled girlishly. Pete was the first of many pals to come away thinking John’s mum was just bloody great. This mother and son shared the same sense of the ridiculous: though Julia still shunned the glasses she needed for her acute nearsightedness, she sometimes put on empty frames; Pete once watched her talking to a neighbor and casually rubbing her eye through the lens-less center. As it was with John so it was with Julia: the joke mattered, but even better was watching people react.40

  “The part Julia played in John’s life was more that of an indulgent young aunt than a responsible parent,” Pete comments. In a strange but logical role-reversal, John was giving Aunt Mimi the full adolescent spite typically meted out to a parent, while finding respite two miles away with Mum. Mimi probably always sensed that when John formed a real relationship with Julia it could undo her enduringly strenuous efforts to keep him on the straight and narrow. Though his Quarry Bank education was in free fall, she still clung to the hope—sharp and intelligent boy that he was—that he would somehow “rally in the end” and quite literally make the grade. He would if she had anything to do with it. But here he was, on the brink of his critical year at grammar school—the year of his GCE O-Level exams—being encouraged to play truant by his mother. Any day that John, alone or with Pete, turned up on Julia’s doorstep, she was always delighted to indulge him, remarking, “It’s lovely to see you. Don’t worry about school, don’t worry about a thing!” At a time when other parents were making heavy pronouncements about “the future,” urging sons to steel themselves for the challenges ahead, John’s mother was preaching the polar opposite, and it was music to his ears.

  For close to ten years, Mimi had maintained a line with John, tough, rock-solid, firm. They’d put each other to every test and survived, infuriated but intact. The pubescent John, however, encouraged to skip school by his mother, caused Mimi real grief. Their rows blazed, and with each one he spent less time at Mendips and more at Blomfield Road. A few hours became overnight
, then weekends, then a week or more. John was now an adjunct of the Dykins family, and as no one—not their mother, father, John or any of their many relations—told Julia and Jacqui, eight and six, he was not their full brother, they thought he was.

  Pete Shotton would also write that John’s relationship with Julia was “a source of unending confusion, much as he tried to give the impression of taking it all in his stride.” There were moments of emotional turmoil for a strongly sexual 15-year-old boy in the company of a woman who had a history of liberality uncommon in her time, a woman aware of her effect on men, a woman he knew to be his mother but didn’t always act like it. As he’d recall in a personal audio diary:

  I was just remembering the time when I had my hand on my mother’s tit. It’s when I was about 14. Took a day off school. I was always doing that, and hanging out in her house. And we were lying on the bed and I was thinking, “I wonder if I should do anything else?” And it was a strange moment, ’cause I actually had the hots for some rather lower-class female who lived on the opposite side of the road. But I always think I should have done it, presuming she would have allowed it.c

  John’s time with Julia was also complicated by the presence of “Twitchy.” His relationship with Bobby Dykins was not all bad but neither was it particularly rosy. Pete Shotton isn’t the only person to recall him as an alcoholic, and Dykins worked in a job that provided access to the means. Latterly, he’d become a waiter at one of Liverpool’s foremost restaurants, the New Bear’s Paw. Again the job entailed late shifts; he drove an Armstrong Siddeley car, returning home to south Liverpool at speed along deserted streets in the early hours. Pete says Dykins wasn’t best pleased at having John around the house … which may or may not be tied to the problem of accommodating a teenager prone to entering rooms at inappropriate moments.