Tune In
Page 18
The calypso craze, corporate America’s first attempt to fob off rock and roll, was a miserable failure … though with a bright smile, great rhythm and happy tunes. Kids just didn’t want it. The entertainment business couldn’t grasp that rock was the purest movement of them all because it had grown organically out of rhythm and blues, and that, at its best, it was natural and thrilling. It couldn’t be deposed by artifice.
The Quarry Men were now picking up the occasional booking, appearing again at the Cavern, at a sixth-formers’ dance in Quarry Bank, and at St. Peter’s church youth club in Woolton, where some of them (John included) were still members.‡ They and the Eddie Clayton Skiffle Group appeared together on several occasions, enough for John to notice and admire Clayton’s guitar playing even if he paid no special attention to their stand-up drummer. Promoters and dance-hall managers had clued in to the fact that holding skiffle competitions or auditions ensured they’d be inundated with kids eager to perform for nothing. At best, the promoter’s only expense was £10 or a trophy to be handed out at the end of the evening; most of the time they needed to do nothing at all except keep peace on the dance floor. Asked to name the favorite moment of his time in the Quarry Men, Eric Griffiths replied, “The best gig we did was at the Locarno Ballroom, a competition. We played well but the audience wanted skiffle and we got booed off because we were playing Elvis Presley.”19 John Lennon was getting up people’s noses again. The date was probably April 18, 1957; though no records exist to show who won the contest, it may well be that Richy Starkey and his mates walked away with the prize. The Eddie Clayton Skiffle Group won several such competitions and Roy Trafford remembers one victory coming at the Locarno.
The evening of Friday, March 8—the day after the Reveille ad for the Gallotone guitar was published—John had a second experience that shaped his behavior for many years to come. Quarry Bank’s annual Speech Day had just taken place, as usual, at the Philharmonic Hall—all that boring singing and new headmaster Mr. Pobjoy reminding them of the grammar school’s very highest ideals. John and his gang couldn’t wait to get out and sink a few bevvies in the pubs around Hope Street. As they walked along the roads, full of the ale, John was struck by how many deformed people there were—“three-foot-high men selling newspapers,” as he later put it. They’d always been there: Britain seemed full of paraplegics, dwarves and “cripples” in those days, the casualties of two world wars and victims of poor sanitation, insufficient medical knowledge and inadequate diet and care. He hadn’t really noticed them before, but now, as he waited for and caught the bus back to Woolton, they seemed to be everywhere. “It got funnier and funnier and we couldn’t stop laughing,” he’d remember.20
So began John’s strange and prolonged obsession with deformities, one that dovetailed with his need to rattle on about anything that marked anyone out as different—blacks, Jews, queers and more—and wrap them up inside his humor. At any time now, John would contort his face into that of a “crip” or “spaz,” the commonly used words of the period (for “cripple” and “spastic”), voiced without thought of offense by adults as well as children. He’d thrust his tongue inside his bottom lip, make “spaz” noises and limp along the street—and the stage—hunching his back and dragging a leg like Quasimodo or those war casualties. He did it when he was feeling embarrassed or self-conscious, he did it when he ridiculed something, he did it when he thought someone was behaving like a prick, he did it off and on all the time at any moment—and, being John Lennon, he was cocky with it, always pushing to see how much he could get away with. Often, when he noticed someone disabled, he’d make a loud comment like “Some people’ll do anything to get out of the army”—rich stuff from a youth still scheming a disappearing act the moment his call-up papers hit the Mendips mat. Intolerable today, it was simply unremarkable in the 1950s for black people to be called “wogs” or “coons,” Jews “Yids,” homosexuals “queers” and “poofs,” and Down’s syndrome sufferers “mongols” or “mongies,” and for such language to appear in print and in comedians’ jokes. It wasn’t nice but it was said and done all the same, and while John’s “cripping” made some people nervous or uncomfortable (he naturally felt this was their problem, not his) it often made others laugh and join in with him.
In later times, some assumed John’s antics to be a parody of Gene Vincent, one of his outright musical heroes, the untamed Virginia wildcat who dragged his shattered left leg behind him as he limped around the stage. Not so, but Vincent was first seen in Liverpool at precisely this time, in March 1957, when The Girl Can’t Help It opened at the Scala Cinema on Lime Street. Previous rock and roll films were rightly recognized as trashy, but this movie earned a place at a higher table. The Girl Can’t Help It was the first quality Hollywood film about rock, the first comedy, the first in color, the first with proper production values and a storyline divorced from juvenile delinquency. Here, in particularly vivid De Luxe Color, was Little Richard performing three songs—like “an animated golliwog,” noted the NME21—and Gene Vincent singing “Be-Bop-A-Lula.” And what did he look like, this young god who gave John Lennon the shivers and made the first record bought by Paul McCartney? He was scruffy, dirty, ugly, scary and utterly wonderful. The Blue Caps, his backing group, all wore blue caps (known in Liverpool as “twat ’ats” or “cunt caps”) which seemed to have been lowered onto their heads by crane. The movie didn’t mention delinquents but these guys sure looked the part.
Also featured were Fats Domino, the Treniers, the Platters and Eddie Cochran, a newcomer fictionally introduced as “one of America’s top rock and rollers.” He soon was. Cochran was 19, only just older than the boys and girls who instantly idolized him, and he looked vaguely weird in too much makeup and eye shadow; but his movements were good, his shoulders bouncing rhythmically, and he was playing a song called “Twenty Flight Rock” on his … Good God, what is that gorgeous big guitar? It was a Gretsch 6120 electric plugged into an amplifier—want!—and here too, instantly, was another great rock record to add to the pile.
Paul McCartney loved the whole film, start to finish, and not only for the music. He’d describe the way actor Tom Ewell ordered the standard screen into wide-screen at the beginning as “the most fantastic trick ever, and of course added to that was Jayne Mansfield and her cantilevered cleavage—what more do young teenagers want?”22 For kids hungry to know just how records were made, the film’s recording studio scene made a deep impression. Everything was done live—orchestra, singers, backing singers and conductor waving his baton—and at the end the important man in the control box announced, “I can assure you of another gold record!” So that’s how they did it. This studio even had an automated vending machine dispensing apples. British eyes watched green with envy. The incredible luxuries they had in America!
It’s impossible to overestimate the impact made by The Girl Can’t Help It on Liverpool teenagers. Rock Around the Clock and Don’t Knock the Rock played there just one week but The Girl Can’t Help It ran and ran. It finally came off after seven weeks—forty-nine days and 195 performances. The Scala only seated 620—it was an old fleapit, opened in 1916—but by the time the projectionist packed the film away and sent it off to the suburbs to be watched by more, tens of thousands had seen it, and many of these were now joyously drunk on Little Richard, Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochran. Bang in the middle of the period supposedly dominated by skiffle, The Girl Can’t Help It was seminal to everything that followed.
Paul wasted no time after seeing The Girl Can’t Help It: he headed straight to Curry’s and ordered Eddie Cochran’s “Twenty Flight Rock,” having to wait because it wasn’t out yet. John Lennon was contributing to a boom in record sales by buying Elvis’s “Blue Moon” and “Mystery Train,” and other discs known to the enthusiasts included “Come Go with Me” by the Dell-Vikings—which only gained public exposure through Decca’s purchased airtime on Radio Luxembourg23—and, at last, a second British single by Carl Perkins, “Matchbox” c/w “Y
our True Love.” Having already been bowled over by “Blue Suede Shoes” and “Honey Don’t,” George Harrison was a definite fan of Perkins’ seemingly effortless rockabilly guitar playing, just as he also loved Scotty Moore’s work on the early Elvis records. Though George was interested in catching every guitar player around, craning for any glimpse of any instrument, that Sun style was his favorite and the one he spent most time studiously trying to copy.
Still only 14, George saw several live shows at this time: Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers at the Empire, Freddie Bell and the Bell Boys at the Empire, and the Vipers Skiffle Group at Grafton Ballroom (though how he gained entry to licensed premises at 14 he never let on). He was also awed by Big Bill Broonzy, the great American blues guitarist he caught when Jack Good booked him for Six-Five Special. Guitars were the only thing that mattered to George now, figuring in his mind pretty much the entire time. Still too young for girls, it was his sole obsession, while his only interest at Liverpool Institute was in seeing just how outrageous he could dress before being rapped over the knuckles. Arthur Kelly remembers George being stopped in the corridor by (John Lennon’s uncle’s brother) “Cissy” Smith for wearing suede slip-on shoes. “He shouted, ‘Harrison! They’re not school shoes.’ George later said to me, ‘What the fuck are school shoes?’ ”
Rock and roll was encroaching hard on Paul McCartney’s mind too at a time when Jim Mac wanted him to focus on his looming first GCE O-Level exams. Jim was always amazed how his son could do school homework and watch television at the same time; while he repeatedly told Paul his work would suffer, Paul kept assuring him it wouldn’t, and generally his marks backed him up. Also, Jim noted, “afterward he usually knew more about the [TV] program than I did. He seemed to have the sort of mind that could easily grasp things that used to take a lot of concentration from other boys.”24 This period was the height of Paul’s friendship with Ian James; as spring headed into summer, he spent many post-school afternoons at Ian’s house in the Dingle, 43 Elswick Street. “My grandmother was always on at me,” says Ian. “I should have been studying for my exams, and all Paul and I were interested in was playing records. We played them so often I’m surprised some of them didn’t wear out.”
Keeping tabs on all the new releases was an important after-school activity. The city center had quite a few shops: Cranes, Curry’s, Beaver Radio, the Top Hat, James Smith, Hessy’s, Rushworth’s, the record counters in Lewis’s and Blackler’s department stores and one or two other smaller places, and they shuttled between them as if on patrol. Ian remembers, “We knew all the girls behind the counters. We’d ask ‘Is there anything new in?’ and they’d play it for us in one of the booths; we’d either buy it or write down the words. Around this time I first heard the phrase ‘rhythm and blues,’ and when I asked the girl in the shop about it she said it was ‘some new kind of music from America.’ When I asked if she had any she put on a single by Chuck Berry …”25
Mostly, the pair played music together. If they were at Paul’s house, Ian had the guitar while Paul played piano, both singing. Ian vividly remembers Jim Mac being on the phone in the back room, trying through the din to place horse-racing bets with his turf accountant: “He’d often charge through to us and shout, ‘Can you keep that bloody noise down!’ ” They played more often at Elswick Street.26 Both boys now had Eddie Cochran’s “Twenty Flight Rock” and wanted to learn it note-perfect. Ian’s Rex acoustic deputized for Eddie’s divine Gretsch 6120 and through repetition they learned all the flicks and tricks, and its intricate words about a man so tired after climbing twenty flights to see his girlfriend that when he gets there he’s too tired to rock.
It was shaping up to be one of those rare good summers in Britain, hot from the end of May. Given study periods to revise for their O-Levels, Paul and Ian would buy a bag of chips from Vaughan’s, on Falkner Street, and sunbathe on the tombstones in St. James’ Cemetery. And after school they’d carry the guitar into the tiny brick backyard at Elswick Street, by the privy, playing and basking in the sunshine: the sounds of Memphis, New Orleans and Los Angeles—mingled and mangled through a Liverpool filter—floating up and over Herculaneum Dock. Memorable times. There’s no photo of Paul here, but he took a good one of Ian—his shirt off, his hair tousled into a quiff, cradling the precious guitar as they ran one more time through the songs of their heroes.27
Scenes like this were being played out all over the city. Six miles deeper into the south of Liverpool, on the Speke estate, a different backyard photo shows George Harrison and Arthur Kelly playing their guitars, George squinting through the sunlight to check his fingers are on C.
It was around this time that George got a booking for his group, to play at the British Legion social club in Speke. Quite how he managed it isn’t clear, but his mother Louise would recall him coming home to break the good news. “I told him he must be daft: he hadn’t even got a group. He said don’t worry, he’d get one … [On the night] they all left the house one by one, ducking down behind the hedge. George didn’t want the nosy neighbors to know what they were doing.”28
George’s group was a quartet: himself, his brother Pete and Arthur Kelly on guitars, and an older Speke boy called Alan Williams on tea-chest bass; there was no drummer. A James Dean fan, Arthur came up with their name, the Rebels, after Rebel Without a Cause. They made only this one unadvertised appearance, the date of which can’t be pinpointed. However, since Arthur recalls their repertoire being “Pick a Bale of Cotton,” “Cumberland Gap,” “Hey Liley, Liley Lo” and a couple of other early skiffle songs (“but we didn’t do ‘Freight Train’ because it required quite a bit of finesse”), the performance can be placed squarely in the second quarter of 1957. The booking was probably designed as a free audition, but they ended up with ten bob each for their labors.
George was never able to recall much of this event when asked about it in later years, but Arthur remembers it well:
We painted the tea-chest black and then painted the word rebels in red, with a couple of musical symbols. George and I took turns to do the vocals.
We thought we were the support act, but when we got there we found we were the only act. The club was very quiet that night—there weren’t more than half a dozen people in there—but we were just delighted to have a stage to stand on and microphones to sing into. Who had microphones? We only had six or seven numbers, so when somebody said “Do more” we did them all again, and made them longer by repeating verses. When we finally came off, the bass player’s fingers were bleeding profusely from all the plucking.29
There are fascinating photographs from this period. A picture of the Eddie Clayton Skiffle Group was taken on May 23, 1957, when they played for local promoter Charlie McBain (“Charlie Mac”) at Wilson Hall, Garston. It’s the earliest known photo of any Liverpool group playing any venue—truly the start of something.30 Clayton is the main guitarist but Roy Trafford is center-stage, singing; Richy is standing at the back, gazing forward, hitting his single snare with sticks or brushes. Though closing in on his 17th birthday, he’s a young 16, small and skinny; while his illnesses are behind him, they’ve left their mark. Except for Eddie, who wears an open-neck shirt, the four other lads are wearing darkish shirts and black bootlace ties, group uniform being important.
On the same day, John Lennon lined up with the boys and masters of Quarry Bank for what would be his last school picture. He began at Quarry Bank a boy, he was to leave in July a young man, three months shy of 17, looking very much like the John Lennon people would come to know over the next few years, with strong features, a bony nose and a hard direct stare (though without glasses, he probably couldn’t even see the photographer). Pete Shotton is by his right shoulder, as he’d been since the start. Two months more and they’d be gone from this place …
Either side of Easter had come the news for which so many boys were praying. The Liverpool Echo on April 4 was surely grabbed eagerly by lads all over Merseyside, much as other evening newspapers were bein
g seized all around the country, for nestling within a five-year outline of government defense policy was an announcement that National Service, the dreaded call-up, would end in 1960. From this day, George Harrison knew he was spared the duty he was meaning to dodge, and Paul McCartney was almost certainly in the clear. He became definitively so on May 27—the same day as John Lennon, Richy Starkey and others their age heard that boys born in 1940 would also be spared. They’d all escaped the call-up ordeal by the skin of their teeth. As John would recall: “I remember the news coming through that it was ‘all those born before 1940,’ and I was thanking God for that. I’d always had this plan about [escaping to] Southern Ireland. I had no intention of going and fighting—I couldn’t kill somebody, I couldn’t charge at them.”31
Theirs became the first generation in Britain since pre-1939 not to be forced into army duty, and the first and only teenagers to have their own rebellious music—rock and roll. They had disillusionment to vanquish, money to squander, dreams to follow, and the drawing-board was blank. As Paul McCartney says, “The turning point was the ending of National Service. It meant we were the first generation for so many years that didn’t have that ‘we’ll-make-a-man-of-you’ threat hanging over [us]. We weren’t going to be threaded through the system like so many before us—we were like errant schoolkids off the leash.”32