John’s school report at Christmas 1955 was an improvement over the previous one—but only, he said later, because he more conscientiously cheated in exams and bullied other boys into letting him copy their work. Many elements of his life at this time show a duality: on the one hand he’d started drinking as well as smoking, swearing, stealing and being a sex-obsessed loudmouth; on the other he was a member of St. Peter’s church youth club, indulging in honest-to-goodness clean teenage fun.41 Then there was the John Lennon who voluntarily put himself through Confirmation. Though later he said he did it “for very materialistic reasons” (financial gifts from relatives), and rarely set foot in a church again, he also remarked, “I’ve always suspected there was a God even when I thought I was an atheist.”42
All the while, National Service—the call-up—cast an ever longer shadow. These teenage boys knew their moment must come, but there was now a glimmer of hope. On John’s 15th birthday, October 9, 1955, newspapers reported a speech by Prime Minister Anthony Eden announcing a gradual raising of the call-up age, which meant their turn wouldn’t now come before they were 19. Richy Starkey and John Lennon would serve from 1959 to 1961, Paul McCartney 1961–3, and George Harrison 1962–4. People were also saying the intake might be relaxed further, or even that National Service might eventually be scrapped altogether; there were political and economic pressures for it. For these and other boys, it was time to pray: “If the call-up is going to be scrapped, please, please could it happen before my turn?”
More was invested in this prayer than a simple wish to avoid army life. Those born during or soon after the war were having to contend with endless verbal and screen replays of the action. The conflict was too recent for any other topic to have taken over conversation, and in the teeth of everyday evidence shouting otherwise, the British were clinging to victory over the “Krauts” as proof that they could overcome all adversity, and that the Empire was still mighty. It was inevitable, but mind-numbingly tedious for the first generation that followed. As John Lennon said, “Our parents never stopped talking about the war. Yes it was very important, but not to us. We were alive because of what our parents did, but that was irrelevant to us, we were just alive. All the times they said ‘because of the war we didn’t have matches, we didn’t have milk,’ OK, too bad, but I got it! That’s all we ever heard as kids in England—how lucky we were because of the fucking war.”43
* * *
* Worn by some black, Hispanic and Italian-American male youths in the late 1930s and ’40s, the “zoot suit” included high-waisted, wide-legged pegged trousers, and a long coat with wide lapels and wide padded shoulders.
† There were two standard record business terms to denote the A- and B-sides of a single: c/w (short for “coupled with”) and b/w (“backed with”). This book will use c/w.
‡ It didn’t matter if you wrote it as rock and roll or rock ’n’ roll, just so long as you got the beat. Freed himself (mostly) wrote it as rock and roll.
§ A childhood operation had left Haley blind in his left eye, which then took on a different appearance; the kiss curl was to distract people from noticing it.
‖ AFN—American Forces Network—served the needs of the United States’ substantial body of European-based servicemen. Broadcast from a castle outside Frankfurt, the reception wasn’t brilliant in Britain, but listeners were rewarded with a terrific quantity and variety of sounds. More popular and influential still, Radio Luxembourg beamed nighttime programs to Britain from the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, its signal ebbing and flowing at 208 meters on the medium wave (AM). Unimpeded by any of the restrictions imposed on the BBC, Luxembourg was freer in tone and content, and strove for an American approach, commercials and all.
a Why there was never enough pop music on the BBC—aka “Needletime in a nutshell.”
In order to control broadcasting rights, in 1934 British record companies formed themselves into a central body called Phonographic Performance Ltd. (PPL). The BBC couldn’t play records without buying a PPL license—an annual six-figure cost by the 1950s. The license restricted the amount of time records could be played, and the influencing factor in negotiations was the Musicians’ Union. Though not party to the agreements, the MU pulled PPL’s strings, threatening industrial action against record companies if it granted the BBC too much “Needletime,” arguing that this could put musicians out of work. In 1952 it was set at twenty-two hours a week across all domestic BBC radio networks (twenty-eight hours from 1959), with BBC-tv allowed three hours; the BBC had to bolster its musical content with live and prerecorded sessions. There were other restrictions too—e.g., in the 1950s, the BBC was only permitted to play a new record once a day in the first week of its release, to prevent overexposure. Not without feeling was a BBC internal report about “Needletime” titled Radio’s Bridle. However, seen strictly in the light of this history, in the years 1962–5 it had some highly beneficial consequences.
b In later years, George couldn’t recall if he saw Whitman on television or whether it was a photo in a magazine. The Harrison family rented their first TV in this period.
c John Lennon said this on September 5, 1979, in the context of focusing on early memories, and because he only rarely filtered his thoughts before voicing them, and because this was a personal/private tape. Since it became public (c.1990) some writers have chosen to make more of the content than they can be certain was intended, one concluding that it reveals an incestuous relationship. This tape is the sole evidence, so such a conclusion is imaginary as well as unprovable.
FOUR
1956
SCUFFLERS TO SKIFFLERS
Nineteen hundred and fifty-six began with Bill Haley at number 1 with “Rock Around the Clock”—which was also the title of rock’s first real film. It was one that set the standard for most of those that followed—a swift cash-in before the bubble burst. For the moviegoing public, its only redeeming feature was the chance to see performers in action, miming to their latest record; the American showbiz term for the genre was “jukebox musical.”
Haley didn’t know that rock’s regal robe, cloaked on him unbidden, was shortly to be yanked away by the hottest of hot young pretenders. Elvis Presley cut his first sides for RCA Victor in Nashville on January 10, including “I Got a Woman” and “Heartbreak Hotel.” He’d just turned 21, and his arrival in the eyes and ears of mainstream America came eighteen nights later when he made his national TV debut on Stage Show. In a dark tweed jacket, black shirt and white tie, and sporting Marlon Brando–like looks, moody eyes and quivering lips, this strangely named young white man from Memphis put on a stunning spectacle of sexual power—whip-strumming an acoustic guitar with his right hand, jerking his legs, wheeling his hips, and bowing his torso dynamically and deeply after each of two songs. Parents and other adults recoiled, repulsed, but hundreds of thousands—or millions—of young Americans were floored. The battle lines were drawn.
These events were not yet known across the Atlantic. But breaking into that same first NME chart of 1956 was “Rock Island Line,” the eighteen-month-old recording credited to the Lonnie Donegan Skiffle Group, finally issued as a single by Decca when the Chris Barber LP on which it appeared had been excavated of other possibilities. The track had what seemed like a new sound—rudimentary, homemade rhythmic guitar music—but actually it was at least thirty years old, sourced in the “rent parties” of poverty-stricken 1920s black America. First speaking it and then singing, Donegan delivered “Rock Island Line” as a rollicking yarn (“Now this here’s the story …”), relating the rolling tale of a train driver who fools a tollgate-keeper on the railroad running down into New Orleans. One hearing was enough to engross British teenagers—boys especially—and sales began to pick up speed the same way Donegan’s voice gradually accelerated through the two-and-a-half-minute recording.
“Rock Island Line” was never a huge hit—it spent five weeks in the top ten and peaked at 9—but it hung around the chart for six months, during which
time John Lennon, who never had much money, managed to buy or steal it. George Harrison also bought it—the first record he did get. Converts, instantly. His best friend Arthur Kelly remembers George in the Institute playground one morning raving, “I’ve got this record you really must hear. It’s called ‘Rock Island Line,’ by Lonnie Donegan.” One listen for Arthur and, boom, fellow convert. His parents got him his first guitar soon afterward, a Hoyer archtop acoustic that George always wanted to play.
The timely coincidence that the word “rock” was in its title was enough to open certain ears, but it was the acoustic guitar sound on “Rock Island Line” that had the greatest impact. The instrument’s appeal had kicked off with the Bill Haley records but Lonnie Donegan single-handedly propelled the guitar high into the consciousness of young British males. For many, getting a guitar—and singing with it—would become a fixation, albeit, for most boys, one frustrated by lack of funds and the paucity of guitars in the shops. Lots of boys made them, a nation of young can-dos getting down to work with wood, glue and strings. “Rock Island Line” made a particular splash in Liverpool, where it spent two weeks in the “Top 3.”1 “Rock Island Line” ’s impact was that of a slow-ticking cultural time bomb, the name Lonnie Donegan bandied about British school playgrounds as frequently as Bill Haley’s.
Richy Starkey was beyond school, but had still to get a proper job. It was close on two years since he’d begun his second long stretch in the hospital and several months since he’d come out. His health was not yet robust. It was all well and good having a piece of paper indicating his capability of “making a satisfactory employee,” but who would have him? He was relying on state support, and it wasn’t only the future that promised no prospect. Because the Labor Exchange couldn’t find anything for the lad, Harry Graves was putting the word around the pubs and clubs, telling people he was sure his stepson would do whatever he was offered. Eventually, someone said he knew of a job on the railways, as messenger boy. The starting pay was only £2 10s a week but Richy was considerably attracted to the uniform. New clothes weren’t easily afforded at 10 Admiral Grove, much like heating: as he would say, “Our house was very cold and damp. Everyone would huddle around the coal fire. When I started work you would jump out of bed, run down and put your feet in the oven to keep warm.”2
He was disappointed from the first day: expecting the full British Railways messenger boy’s uniform, he was given only the cap. He grumped about it, but it made no difference—the rest of the outfit would follow, he was told. Only it didn’t, because after he’d been in the job five weeks he had a medical exam and that was the end of that. Richy was sacked before the end of his probationary period, perhaps considered too much of a risk, a likely burden on the public payroll. He went back on the dole … and had no choice but to be in “the gang.”
Teddy Boys had risen unchecked in 1955 and 1956 and were now everywhere. Seldom a place for the fainthearted, Merseyside had become a series of battlegrounds. Despite an established inter-city rivalry, it wasn’t Teds from Liverpool fighting Teds from Manchester, it was Teds being territorial to the tiniest degree—Liverpudlians from one side of a main road fighting those from the other. The sworn enemies of Teds from the Dingle were the Teds from Garston, and they continually engaged in acts of warfare from minor skirmishes to pitched street-battles, fifty lads at a time all bundling in, with weapons. Richy Starkey was one of them. “It was deadly serious—that’s what life was about. In our area you had to be in one. If you weren’t, you weren’t protected and you’d be beaten up by everybody.”3
The word was “walk.” You’d walk with a gang, a mass of youths strutting up and down High Park Street and Park Road and standing around on street corners, hungry for trouble. They’d beat people up and get beaten themselves, and go to the Gaumont or Beresford cinemas and create aggravation. Teds always fought with style, in their long colorful drape jackets, drainpipe trousers, crepe-sole shoes, and a belt studded with metal washers to double as a weapon. Some had the buckle ground down to form a sharp point, others carried bicycle chains; a few attached razor blades behind their coat lapels so, when grabbed, their assailants’ fingers would be sliced. No one had a gun, but Richy witnessed lads being beaten with hammers and stabbed; on one occasion he saw someone’s eye knifed out.
Every gang had a leader and Richy Starkey was never it—he was “hospital boy,” tagging along on the end, smaller, leaner, weaker than the strapping toughs he did his best to buddy up with. Their uniforms were clad around muscles; his gear came from a cousin several sizes bigger and he had to hitch up his drainies with a belt already heavy with washers. In such a rabid atmosphere, gangs could turn on themselves. As he’d remember, “I didn’t knife anyone or kill anybody but I got beaten up a few times—mainly by the people [I was] with, because it’s that terrible craziness, that gang situation, where, if you’re not fighting an outsider, you get crazy and start fighting amongst yourselves, like mad dogs.” Sometimes, even if you could sprint very fast—and Richy prided himself on his speed—there was no way of avoiding bother. When a Ted called out “Oi, you lookin’ at me?” you’d had it either way. Saying yes meant a certain beating; saying no got a “Why not?” followed by a certain beating.
There were far fewer such dangers in Woolton, but no area was trouble-free. As John Lennon would say, “It was a big part of one’s life to look tough. I spent the whole of my childhood with shoulders up around the top of me head and me glasses off because glasses were sissy, and walking in complete fear, but with the toughest-looking little face you’ve ever seen. I’d get into trouble just because of the way I looked; I wanted to be this tough James Dean all the time.”4
The link between juvenile delinquency and rock music was now ingrained in America, and Britain’s perception ran close behind. By the time “Heartbreak Hotel” had given Elvis his first US number 1, the record was issued across the Atlantic, by EMI on March 30, 1956, under a half-century-old cross-licensing arrangement between His Master’s Voice and RCA Victor. Elvis was a taste too foreign for most adult diets, including those who chose the content of the BBC Light Programme, but he was broadcast on Radio Luxembourg. Teenagers up and down the country eagerly tuned in to its British evening service, trying to ride the signal that came and went over the medium wave, peaking and crashing across the European night skies. Listening to “Luxy” was never less than an ordeal—ear pressed to the speaker, finger constantly micro-manipulating the tuning dial—but these broadcasts, and those on the American Forces Network (better at night but seldom a good signal either), contained treasure for anyone who loved rock and roll.
At some point in (probably) early April 1956, “Heartbreak Hotel” dropped into John Lennon’s universe like an atom bomb with no four-minute warning.
When I first heard “Heartbreak Hotel” I could hardly make out what was being said. We’d never heard American voices singing like that—they’d always sung like Sinatra or enunciated very well, and suddenly there was this hillbilly, hiccuping on tape echo, and the bluesy background going on, and we didn’t know what the hell Presley was singing about. To us it just sounded like a noise that was great … It just broke me up. I mean, that was the end. Me whole life changed from then on, I was just completely shaken by it … I remember rushing home with the record and saying, “He sounds like Frankie Laine and Johnnie Ray and Tennessee Ernie Ford!” … I thought “This is it!” and started trying to grow sideboards and all that gear.5
The Elvis Presley of 1956 would attract many fans around the world and John Lennon was ever among them. Richy Starkey was another: “I couldn’t believe it when Elvis came out. Just this lad with sideboards and shaking his pelvis and being absolutely naughty. Before Elvis we’d always had to listen to men, as opposed to guys who were just a bit older or around our own age … Bill Haley was like my dad. When he came out, I was 14 or 15 and he was probably about 28.”6
Paul McCartney first read the name and saw the photo (for weeks there was just one wild phot
o of Elvis available in Britain) during a free period at Liverpool Institute. A friend had the NME and there was an advert for “Heartbreak Hotel.” “I thought ‘He’s so good-looking,’ ” Paul says, “he just looked perfect.”7 There was a buzz about him: boys seemed to know that Elvis was it, the Messiah, and it was confirmed for Paul when he first heard “Heartbreak Hotel”—he too became, in that instant, a lifelong and vocal Elvis fan.
The first time George Harrison heard Elvis would also remain etched in his memory. “I was riding along on my bicycle and heard ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ coming out of somebody’s house. It was one of them things I’ll never forget: what a sound, what a record! It changed the course of my life.”8
In the space of perhaps three weeks, John Lennon then experienced a second epiphany. The date was on or soon after April 17, and Quarry Bank friend Michael Hill had just returned from an Easter school exchange visit to the Netherlands, during which he’d gone into an Amsterdam record store and bought a Belgian 78 by Little Richard, “Long Tall Sally” c/w “Slippin’ and Slidin’.” Little Richard wasn’t known in Britain, so when Hill said to his mate “I’ve got a record by a singer who’s better than Elvis,” John—who’d clearly fallen head-over-heels for Presley—insisted (probably in two short words) that this simply wasn’t possible. Hill lived on Dovedale Road and his mum worked in the daytime, which meant his house was available. One lunchtime, he, John, Pete Shotton and another friend, Don Beattie, raced there by bike and went into what Hill remembers as something of a routine: “They’d cycle off to the fish and chip shop on Rose Lane to buy chips, and I’d go home to warm up the plates and prepare bread and butter, and I had a tin of cocoa hidden in my bedroom. We’d be at my house about forty-five minutes, eating chips, listening to records and sharing a Woodbine.”9
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