Tune In

by Mark Lewisohn

  Hill lifted the wooden lid of his mother’s Rushworth & Dreaper radiogram, in went the record, down went the needle, and Little Richard—the irrepressibly wild Richard Penniman from Macon, Georgia—burst screaming and yowling into suburban Liverpool.

  Gonna tell Aunt Mary, ’bout Uncle John! He claim he has the misery but he’s havin’ a lot of fun!

  “This record stopped John in his tracks,” Hill recalls. “His reaction that day was something that stuck in everybody’s memory, because he really was struck dumb by this record. He didn’t know what to say, which for John was most unusual because he was always so quick with an answer, with a bit of repartee. So the record was played again, and again, and again. It made a huge impact on him. I felt good because John was so hard to impress.”

  John spoke several times of the occasion, of how the record presented first a challenge and then a wedge that opened his mind to unconsidered possibilities.

  When I heard it [“Long Tall Sally”], it was so great I couldn’t speak. You know how you’re torn? I didn’t want to leave Elvis. Elvis was bigger than religion in my life. We all looked at each other, but I didn’t want to say anything against Elvis, not even in my mind. How could they be happening in my life, both of them? And then someone said, “It’s a nigger singing.” I didn’t know Negroes sang [rock and roll]. So Elvis was white and Little Richard was black? “Thank you, God,” I said. I thought about it for days at school, of the labels on the records. One [Richard] was yellow and one [Presley] was blue, and I thought of the yellow against the blue.10

  So rock and roll wasn’t only sung by whites … John’s education was on a steep curve: “The first thing I learned about Negroes was that they were swinging like mad and that they had a great beat. Only later did I start meeting some of them. I didn’t know a single black person in England, and I worshipped black people in America.”11

  Those two recordings by Elvis Presley and Little Richard, totaling a little over four minutes, altered the course of John Lennon’s life as sure as they did Richy Starkey’s, Paul McCartney’s, George Harrison’s and a good many other young lads who happened to be the right age at this rightest of right times, 1956. Lennon later reflected:

  Somebody said that the blacks gave the middle-class whites back their bodies. It’s something like that. It was the only thing to get through to me out of all the things that were happening when I was 15. Rock and roll was real. Everything else was unreal.

  Once I heard the music and got into it, that was life. Rock and roll was it—I thought of nothing else, night and day, apart from sex, food and money.

  I had no idea about doing music as a way of life until rock and roll hit me. That’s the music that inspired me to play music.12

  The influences began to flow thick and fast now. Beyond Elvis, and beyond Little Richard, there was also the sound of a young white singer-songwriter-guitarist from Tennessee who played country music with an uptempo or rock rhythm, called rockabilly—the word was coined in 1956 by Cash Box reviewer Ira Howard, combining “rock” and “hillbilly.” “I suppose I started to get off-beat, musically, when I found I liked the Carl Perkins version of ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ better than Presley’s,” John said in 1963.13 The two were in the charts simultaneously by the end of May 1956, and—Elvis disciple though Lennon was—Perkins’ original was well worth the excitement. John got both versions (on 78) and was delighted to find another inspirational original number on Perkins’ B-side, “Honey Don’t.” This was rhythmic country and western—or, as John called it, “crumbly and western.”14 He loved it, and, with the intuitive thinking of a music aficionado, knew it was smarter to prefer Perkins’ ”Blue Suede Shoes”—more “hip,” to use the bebop jargon also flowing across the Atlantic—because it was the less commercial of the two.

  The music that had first inspired Paul McCartney to play was fading fast. The year had produced one more trumpet hit, Billy May’s theme from Otto Preminger’s controversial film The Man with the Golden Arm, in which Frank Sinatra played a jazz drummer with a heroin addiction, but the trumpet had tarnished in Paul’s hands. When he wanted to play, he usually went to the piano.

  At the end of April 1956, to Mary’s great relief, the McCartneys moved out of Speke. Though Paul and Mike were sorry to be leaving friends behind, Paul would recall, “It was getting a bit rough. I was wondering what was gonna happen—in a few more years would I have a gun?”15 Mary always wanted better for them, and this time (it was at least the eighth home for Paul) “better” meant another terraced council house in south Liverpool. It was at 20 Forthlin Road in the district of Allerton—a straight run south from the Penny Lane bus hub and not far from Woolton. It wasn’t an estate and the area was much more agreeable: Forthlin Road was a short side street off Mather Avenue, a busy tree-lined dual-carriageway into town. The McCartneys weren’t its first residents but the house was only about four years old and similar in some respects to their place in Speke with its three small upstairs bedrooms, and an indoor toilet in addition to the backgarden privy. All this for £1 19s 10d a week.

  The big hit record in Britain at this time was “I’ll Be Home” by Pat Boone, which spent five weeks at number 1; perhaps because of its appropriate title—and that it was a sweet tune—it became the song of the McCartneys’ first summer at Forthlin Road, heard and enjoyed many a Sunday lunchtime on Two-Way Family Favourites while Mary was cooking the roast. Sometimes the BBC would play her favorite tune, the evocative light classical theme from the film The Glass Mountain. When the wireless was off, Mary would whistle around the house … and this wasn’t the only music being created here.

  Paul knew songwriting could be done. His father still played “Eloise” on the piano, the tune he’d composed in his teenage years, and now—as if a switch was flicked—Paul began to write music too.

  It came naturally. He just sat at the piano and when his fingers found some interesting chords he started to explore around them, working in the key of C. His thinking was to write a tune for cabaret, nightclub music, a song for Frank Sinatra to sing in a lounge, picked out by a spotlight through a smoky blue haze. Paul wrote two tunes in this vein: “I Call It Suicide” and a probably untitled piece that would become known some years later as “When I’m Sixty-Four.”16 “Suicide” was perhaps the first, although it extended to only a first verse and chorus. Some of the words came while Paul was lying in bed; like all would-be writers, he kept a pencil and paper at hand and fancied his ability to write coherently in the dark.

  Paul had about forty seconds of music, and it didn’t get any further. He realized the key word “suicide” presented a rhyming dilemma—the best he had was “ruin, I.” But though the words wanted work (and didn’t get it), it was a charming little tune, a dance-band piece with a dash of modernity, light, engaging and original … quite exceptional for a first attempt by a boy on the cusp of 14.

  Paul thought about offering “I Call It Suicide” to Sinatra but didn’t bother to write the letter (not at this time anyway). The Voice remained in the dark about it, as he did about Paul’s second piano tune, the prototype “When I’m Sixty-Four,” which had no words yet. Jim Mac’s “Eloise” never had any words, and there was a running joke in the McCartney family: could anyone think of any that fit? No one did. Like “I Call It Suicide,” this second piece by his son possibly didn’t extend any further than verse and chorus, but its tune was another quality dance-band piece, much like Jim Mac’s would have played. Again, this was an exceptional achievement for a young teenager, a beginner. He felt so too. Mindful that no one else in his orbit was writing songs, Paul keenly played them to people, requesting their opinion. Yet, as much as he enjoyed their compliments and admiration, any perceived criticism stuck in his craw. “ ‘It sounds a bit like a hymn’ was one of the damning things people said about some of my early numbers,” he’d remember.17

  Life was lived easier in Allerton. Paul and Mike (who also now went to Liverpool Institute) had a shorter school journey; their route
was the 86, which meant Paul no longer rode the bus used by George Harrison, not unless George made the effort of changing buses in Garston, which sometimes he did and other times he didn’t. Liverpool Institute periodically arranged for all staff and pupils to be photographed—extended panoramic shots taken in the playground—and a Lower School photo from April 1956 shows Paul and George at age 13 (far apart because they’re with their respective year groups). Paul’s hair is short and side-parted, George wears the lopsided smile inherited from his dad, and long hair piled into a quiff. So impressive was this, and so daring was it for the “Inny,” Paul would always recall Arthur Kelly’s awed exclamation, “It’s like a fuckin’ turban!”18

  Soon after the move, though, Mary McCartney started to suffer breast pains. She didn’t tell Paul or Mike but she did tell Jim, saying she thought it was the menopause—she was 46. A doctor told her not to worry unduly, so Mary self-medicated BiSoDol, an antacid tablet taken for indigestion, and carried on as normal.

  • • •

  Richy Starkey landed his second job at this time, on the tramp steamer St. Tudno. His new employer was the Liverpool & North Wales Steamship Company, which—oddly, considering he was 15—hired Richy as a bar waiter. The TS St. Tudno was the largest and swiftest of a fleet of three pleasure cruisers: it sailed daily from Liverpool to North Wales in the summer season, carrying up to 2,500 day-trippers at a time, leaving Liverpool mid-morning, sailing to Llandudno, then on again through the Menai Straits to Menai Bridge, and returning to Liverpool before eight in the evening. The crew stayed on board one night a week.

  Richy took the job because he still harbored hopes of joining the merchant navy, mindful that it remained one of the few legal methods of avoiding National Service. The way he understood it, you stood a better chance of being accepted in the merch if you had a few months’ sea experience, even on a pleasure steamer. But the job also had another attraction: booze. Richy was now a confirmed drinker. Regular exposure to alcohol in and around the home was an influence, and it was what many boys did anyway, swear and smoke and drink at the first opportunity. Just as the appeal for St. Tudno passengers (particularly the men) was its ever-open lounge bar, enabling them to drink when the pubs in Liverpool were closed, so Richy too enjoyed the same privilege, swigging bottles of ale in free moments, trying not to spill it down his waiter’s tunic and tie. He and his workmates also headed to the pub after docking back in Liverpool in the evening, sinking as many beers as the coins in their pockets would buy. Being a sailor was something to boast about when chatting up “judies,” but, as Richy would recall, the gloating could be short-lived: “[I’d] say, ‘I’m in the navy. I just got back.’ And [she’d] say, ‘When did you leave?’ and I’d say, ‘Ten o’clock this morning.’ ”19

  He lasted on the St. Tudno no more than five weeks. One morning Richy arrived in a surly mood, hungover from an all-night party. When his boss asked him to do something, he responded with insolence and was sacked on the spot. Any lingering desire to spend a life on the ocean waves was dashed. Richy had now had two jobs and been fired from both.

  Harry Graves put the word around yet again—boy available, job wanted—and the call was answered immediately: there was a position at H. Hunt & Son, a long-established factory on Windsor Street that manufactured, supplied and fitted children’s recreational equipment, everything from swings and slides for playgrounds to gymnasium gear for schools, even Olympic-quality diving boards.* The firm had contracts from local councils all over the country. Richy started work there five days shy of his 16th birthday and was set for a five-year woodworking apprenticeship, as a joiner. In 1961, if he played his cards right, he’d have the status that represented the pinnacle of aspiration for blue-collar workers: a trade for life. People were always saying to him, “Get a trade, son, and you’ll be OK,” so Richy was shooting for it—mindful too that being in an apprenticeship would qualify him for deferment of National Service.

  Like all new boys, Richy started as the gofer, filling glue pots, getting sent out to buy chips, making tea, sweeping up and running errands with a handcart or the delivery bike; he earned the same £2 10s a week he’d been getting as a messenger boy on the railways. His 16th birthday came along on July 7, 1956, an age his loved ones had frequently believed he would never reach. But he had, and didn’t everyone know it: as he’d remember, “When I was 16 or 17 I thought that everyone at 60 should be shot, to make more space on the planet.”20 This let off Elsie, who was only 41; spared the bullet, she gave Richy a birthday present he would cherish: a signet ring, his first piece of jewelry, something to show off to his latest group of workmates and the other Dingle Teds.

  “Liverpool’s Own Top 3” chart in the Echo on Richy Starkey’s birthday showed “Heartbreak Hotel” at number 1. The record had been out more than three months and was now finally holding what many knew to be its rightful place. Two weeks earlier, the chart of Liverpool shop Nems, printed in The Record Mirror, had Carl Perkins’ ”Blue Suede Shoes” in second spot when it was 12 in the NME. A pattern was emerging where certain rock and skiffle records registered higher in Liverpool than nationally; and into this frame hobbled crippled Gene Vincent with “Be-Bop-A-Lula,” a record that proved the theory: the discs really despised by adults were the ones most loved by teenagers.

  To adults, “Be-Bop-A-Lula” was appalling; to kids, it was a sensation—a rocking, shuffling, echoing track with attitude, screams, two fabulous electric guitar solos and a girl who wears red blue jeans and has flying feet. Who knew what it meant? Being puzzled became part of the appeal. What would these incredible Americans come up with next? Just the first bar of “Be-Bop-A-Lula” was enough to send John Lennon into rapture. “That beginning—‘we-e-e-e-e-l-l-l-l-l!’—always made my hair stand on end.”21 In this instant, John loved Gene Vincent like he loved Elvis, Carl and Little Richard. Three months earlier he’d existed without them, now he was really living, and these sounds were shaping his very future. As he would say of this period: “When I was 15 I was thinking, ‘If only I can get out of Liverpool and be famous and be rich, wouldn’t it be great?’ I was always thinking I was going to be a famous artist. And possibly I’d have to marry a very rich old lady, or man, to look after me while I did my art; but then rock and roll came along and I thought, ‘Ah, this is the one.’ So I didn’t have to marry anybody or live with them.”22

  “Be-Bop-A-Lula” was the first record bought by Paul McCartney.

  A friend at the Liverpool Institute said, “There’s this great record by Gene Vincent, called ‘Be-Bop-A-Lula.’ ” (If I’d have spent as much time on studies as talking about these rock and roll acts I think I’d be a nuclear physicist by now.) So I wrote it down and went to Curry’s record shop in the city center after school, went into the listening booth, and the echo and the whole atmosphere of it was so fantastic that I had to have it there and then. I got my hard-earned cash out, slipped it over the counter and I was a proud owner of “Be-Bop-A-Lula.” The whole song is purple in my mind because of the purple Capitol label. I loved the Capitol logo.23

  John Lennon’s report at the end of his fourth year at Quarry Bank shows where he was academically at the age of 15: twentieth out of twenty-four in the lowest of the grammar school’s three streams, almost the bottom of the bottom. He contrived to be absent for all the exams, and it isn’t difficult to imagine where he spent those days. Julia had come up with a new term of affection for her son, Stinker (it wasn’t in his nature to fart discreetly), and she was still showing him how to play banjo. John was also thrilled that his mother was an Elvis fan. Not as much as he was, of course—few people were that besotted—but she did like Elvis and was happy to hear his name mentioned any number of times, unlike Mimi, who remarked, “Elvis Presley’s all very well, John, but I don’t want him for breakfast, dinner and tea.”

  John and his gang still went every year to the garden fete at Strawberry Fields, and Nigel Walley has a cherished memory of laugh-a-minute Lennon somehow gaining possessi
on of a monk’s habit and spending the afternoon inclining a hooded head and dispensing twisted words of wisdom and phoney prophecies in a low murmur while people bowed to him. As it happens, though, John’s own future direction—and the lives of untold numbers of others—was being determined this very same afternoon, Saturday, July 14, at another fete two hundred miles south.

  The second annual Soho Fair was a week-long carnival organized to illustrate that there was another side to this London enclave than the goings-on depicted in the press and films. If you believed what you read and saw, Soho was Britain’s postwar underworld, its rat-run streets a cloister of sweatshops, workshops and lurid bookshops, of pimps and prostitutes, drug-addled jazz musicians, small-time crooks and queer-smelling foreigners, of filmmakers, writers, agents, publishers, actors, deadbeat poets and no-good anarchists, all idling and conspiring in its seedy coffee bars and darkly exotic restaurants. In truth, as well as being more than this, Soho was all of this. And because it was all of this, it was also the most diverse, cosmopolitan and cutting-edge “village” in Britain.

  On the Saturday of the 1956 Soho Fair, three bright chaps in their twenties, keen amateur guitarists devoted to the American folk- and workers’-song movement, acolytes of Pete Seeger, found themselves on the platform of a flatback lorry, singing and playing as it trundled around Soho Square, Wardour Street and Carnaby Street. The vehicle finally halted outside a small coffee bar on Old Compton Street, where they went in, bought coffees, sang and strummed as they sipped, and passed the hat around. When they rose to leave, the proprietor asked if they would come back and play there again, perhaps for an evening: the place had a cellar and he could put up a little stage. And so it was that these three young men, who called themselves the Vipers, became the first attraction at the 2i’s Coffee Bar. This chance encounter would light the fuse under the sound popularized all year by Lonnie Donegan, eventually transforming his skiffle hits into a fully fledged skiffle boom. While Donegan would always be its revered figurehead, the number of participants would soon be counted in tens of thousands. Why, if they’d made a film of it, it would have seemed trite.