Tune In

by Mark Lewisohn

  Jim was trying so hard to prevent Paul from becoming a Ted, even by (he thought) controlling the trousers he wore, and now Paul had gone and become friendly with one. Jim strongly disapproved of the way John dressed: his DA, his sideburns, his drape jacket, his drainies, his shoes. The boy was clearly going to be a bad influence. Mary probably wouldn’t have had him in the house. Jim, determined to stand by his axiom of “toleration and moderation,” stopped short of banning him, but he made it plain to Paul that John wasn’t welcome and urged him not to get involved, cautioning, “He’ll get you into trouble, son.”38

  Right from the start, being John Lennon’s friend presented challenges to Paul. But while he didn’t court disapproval, he wasn’t going to jettison a vital new friendship just because his dad didn’t like him. The Latin exam failure had confirmed to Jim that his eldest son always rebelled when told what to do or think—“It annoyed me when even my dad told me what to do,” Paul has said—and the outcome was invariably the same: he’d dig in his heels and do whatever he was being advised against, even to his own detriment. Nevertheless, maintaining the peace at home and a friendship with John would require diplomacy and skillful timing on Paul’s part; it would mean keeping John out of Jim’s way and evading John’s repeated urgings: “Face up to your dad! Tell him to fuck off!”39

  Lennon and McCartney could not have come together at a more fertile time. Each enjoyed the other’s great passion for Elvis. Loving You, his first starring movie, played at the Gaumont in Liverpool at the end of October. Unlike The Girl Can’t Help It, it ran only a week, but it was compulsory viewing for every Presley fan. For the first time, British audiences could watch him sing, gyrate and sneer—all in glorious Vista-Vision Technicolor. Boys studied all his moves and aped his every mannerism, especially those slackly curled lips; aspiring guitarists watched the fingers; girls panted or just screamed.

  On the downside, Little Richard carried through a threat to renounce the devil’s music and stride into the Church; he tossed four diamond rings (valued at US$8,000) into Hunter River, Sydney, during a tour of Australia, saying, “If you want to live for the Lord you can’t rock ’n’ roll too. God doesn’t like it.” On the upside, Chuck Berry disagreed—he said it’d got to be “Rock and Roll Music” in a single issued in Britain on October 25, which was followed a week later by the Everly Brothers’ “Wake Up Little Susie,” their second consecutive million-seller in America. November also brought the mellifluously soulful “You Send Me” by Sam Cooke, and a single by Buddy Holly intriguingly titled “Peggy Sue.”40 John and Paul agreed it was fantastic, the perfect successor to “That’ll Be the Day”: dynamic, inventive, with the same group-sound qualities … and yet different. They were inspired by the ease with which Buddy sang and played guitar at the same time—really played guitar, not just strumming like Elvis—and they wondered how the fast drumming was done. John bought or nicked the record (“Everyday” was on the B-side—almost as wonderful) and he and Paul listened to it again and again, trying to figure it out. There was just so much to learn, and it was such great fun doing it.

  Buddy Holly wasn’t pure rock and roll, nor was he rhythm and blues, he was country and western with a beat. Holly, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis and sometimes Elvis were all showing that rock could be country too, or gospel, or some interesting American popular song of the pre-Haley era, that it wasn’t merely the one-dimensional “jungle beat” so derided by critics. This message was received loud and clear—especially in Liverpool, historically a musical melting-pot anyway—and it directly informed the taste and direction of not only John Lennon and Paul McCartney but also George Harrison, Richy Starkey and the thousands of other teenage boys hooked on all these great American sounds. Good music was good music no matter what, and to them it was all rock: origin, skin color, rhythm and tempo were irrelevant. They were just as likely to appreciate Elvis’s “Hound Dog” as Carl Perkins’ rockabilly “Glad All Over,” one of the singles released in December from a new jukebox musical movie called Jamboree, extracts from which were shown on Six-Five Special. And here, seen in Britain for the first time, was the wildman Jerry Lee Lewis—from Ferriday, Louisiana, somewhere near Saturn—following “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On” with the stupendously potent “Great Balls of Fire.” It would shoot to number 1 and awe budding musicians, as would its B-side, “Mean Woman Blues.” And then, in the run-up to Christmas, Decca’s Coral label put out another fabulous single by the Crickets, “Oh Boy!” c/w “Not Fade Away.”

  Buddy Holly was a huge influence on George Harrison too. “One of the greatest people for me was Buddy Holly, because first of all he sang, wrote his own tunes and was a guitar player, and he was very good. Buddy Holly was the first time I heard A to F sharp minor. Fantastic—he was opening up new worlds there. And then A to F. A, D, E, F and F sharp minor. He was sensational. I no longer had the fear of changing from A to F.”41

  As well as Buddy, other guitarists figured high in George’s mind. The Sun sound of Scotty Moore and Carl Perkins remained his favorite, and from the same Sam Phillips studio in Memphis at the end of 1957 came a twangy guitar instrumental, Raunchy, that would change George’s life (the artist name on the record label was Bill Justis, who played sax; the guitarist was Sid Manker, the tune’s cowriter). It was issued in Britain in mid-December and George was quickly tuned in. His method was to play a section of a record over and over, lifting and lowering the stylus repeatedly and trying it on his guitar until he’d found the notes and learned them, then moving on to the next, and the next, until eventually he had the whole piece. It was slow and methodical but George always had great single-mindedness and patience. Paul was very impressed he’d mastered such a tricky piece and would boast “I’ve got a mate who can play Raunchy.” He told John about it.

  George also had a deep interest in the Nashville guitarist Chet Atkins, whose LPs he got as a regular supply (by 1963, he had eleven in his collection). Fellow Liverpool Institute pupil Les Chadwick, who often discussed guitars with George as they rode the bus into school, remembers George always enthusing about Atkins, saying he had an uncle who brought the LPs for him from North America.42 Showing impressive reserves of application once again, George studied Atkins note by note, and he discovered inversions, realizing how the same chords could be used in other positions. During his get-togethers with Paul they learned a piece called “Bourrée” from the 1957 Chet Atkins LP Hi-Fi in Focus. Actually a Bach composition for the lute, Atkins did it as a guitar two-hander, melody and bass simultaneous. Paul would remember “Bourrée” as “a cod-Spanish piece—if anyone ever started talking seriously about the guitar, or any classics, George and I used to play this.”43 They felt it important to have an extra dimension to their playing; rock and roll wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea and it was useful to have something else to show off. John’s party piece was his own arrangement of what people knew as “The Harry Lime Theme”—Anton Karas’s zither tune for the 1949 film The Third Man.‖ Paul also spent many solo hours practicing a tune called “Pink Champagne”: “I learned it, as an instrumental, so if anyone ever asked me if I could play a solo I’d say [in a deepened voice for added gravitas], ‘Well … do you know “Pink Champagne”?’ ”44

  Few Quarry Men bookings in this period were advertised but they included three more for Charlie Mac (two at Wilson Hall in Garston and that return to the Conservative Club in Norris Green) and also a social club dance at the huge Stanley Abattoir, in a tough district of Liverpool called Old Swan. For the first of the Wilson Hall dances, on November 7, they were advertised in the Echo as “Quarrymen Rock ’N Skiffle Group.” Young lads were crisscrossing one another on the buses several nights a week, tea-chests and drums stowed under stairs by conductors, guitars strummed on the upper deck by smoking, swearing, sartorially savvy musicians out to entertain for the night … but paying child fares. Paul had to be at his persuasive best before Jim would let him out, especially if there was school the next day. It was the same old problem: beca
use Paul wanted to dress like a Ted and grease his hair back with Vaseline, Jim assumed he’d be a Teddy Boy by attitude too, and get into fights. So—like John on his first day at college—Paul wore his drainies underneath trousers that Jim deemed acceptable, then stripped off on the top deck of the bus—a bit of an ordeal if people were watching.45

  As ever, all the Quarry Men dates were arranged by John’s mate Nigel Walley, who’d be at the shows too unless dogged by one of his asthma attacks. His father, the senior Liverpool police detective, said the whole thing was crazy, and bluntly told John and Paul too. “He said to them, ‘You’re wasting your time. Go out and find yourself a job. This business of a skiffle group is a load of nonsense!’ ” Nigel was still managing the Quarry Men for an even share of any income, which since many of the bookings didn’t pay at all was more like an honorary position with occasional tips. Charlie Mac did pay—not a lot, perhaps £3 to £5 a night—and, says Walley, Paul quickly had a problem with his cut. “Paul said that, as I wasn’t playing, I shouldn’t get as much as the group members. John stuck up for me, saying that if I hadn’t got the engagement in the first place there’d be no money. Who else was going to do all the chasing about? They weren’t interested in doing that—they just wanted to play. So I got the money and Paul didn’t like it, and we never had the same relationship after that.”46

  John came to Walley’s aid this time, but wasn’t always supportive: he’d often stand back and watch a situation naturally evolve. Walley remembers how Paul was critical of Colin Hanton’s drumming (perhaps on “Peggy Sue”?) and made dismissive remarks about him. “Paul would smile to your face and be catty about you behind your back,” Walley says. John did nothing, perhaps feeling Paul was doing him a favor. Paul was keen for the group to be always at their best musically and was trying to sharpen them up, and John took the leader’s position of letting him get on with it. Another situation was Pete Shotton’s reduced involvement. He was no longer in the group and no longer seeing John at school every day, but the pair remained great friends; Paul was now closer to John day-to-day, however, and Pete was jealous. The relationship between John’s two mates would often carry an edge, but, again, John let it happen, and over the course of these months LennonShotton became LennonMcCartney.

  John was continuing to divide his time between home with Aunt Mimi (plus some lodgers and cats) and his other home with Mum (plus two children and her make-believe husband Bobby “Twitchy” Dykins). As much as it could in such circumstances, his life had settled down to a consistent pattern. Mimi provided the stability he professed not to need, but did; Julia provided the fun, and trumped his loathing of convention with her own. Her genuine interest in teenage music remained, and when she took in a stray cat she called it Elvis, even after it gave birth to a litter of kittens in the kitchen cupboard. Always a cat lover, John veritably melted.

  It was with Julia in mind that John wrote another song in the final weeks of 1957. It was his third attempt, following “Calypso Rock” and a second piece about which he’d remember just as little. (He said only once, some years later, “I did one which had the line ‘My love is like a bird with a broken wing’ which I was very proud of.”) Among the songs Julia liked to sing around 1 Blomfield Road was the 1939 dance-band and film number “Scatterbrain,” and John was fascinated by the rhythmic flow of such lines as “When you smile it’s so delightful / When you talk it’s so insane / Still it’s charming chatter, scatterbrain.”

  John sat with his guitar and started playing around with chords and phrases in the Buddy Holly style and a new song began to emerge, words and music. (It isn’t known which came first; they probably arrived simultaneously.) He called it “Hello Little Girl,” and though it’s nothing like “Scatterbrain,” this was its spring. The earliest known and surviving recording of “Hello Little Girl” is from 1960, and the Buddy Holly influence is overwhelming. For an early attempt at songwriting, it’s a remarkably catchy tune, appealing and direct. The words are written in the first person: he’s besotted with a girl but she never seems to see him standing there, he sends her flowers but she doesn’t care, but still he hopes there’ll come a day when she’ll think of him and “love, love, love.” And this time, having been unable to hang on to his earlier attempts, John found a way of remembering it, going over “Hello Little Girl” phrase by phrase until it was embedded in his head.47

  While John Lennon was greeting his little girl and hoping for joy, Paul McCartney had lost his. He too wrote a song in this same period—his first on guitar—which he called “I Lost My Little Girl.” Again, the influence of Buddy Holly was crystal clear, and Paul described it in one interview as “A funny little song, a nice little song, a corny little song, based on three chords—G, G7 and C.”48 Again, it’s not known whether words or music came first, but “little” is the operative word: there probably wasn’t much more to it than a couple of verses. The words were fairly simple and included a rhyme that would always make Paul cringe (though he never altered it): “girl” with “her hair didn’t always curl.” The song was stronger musically, especially in its melodic counterpoint. These were native skills.49

  As with his earlier piano tunes, Paul was never shy to play it to people. “I liked the idea of being able to say ‘I wrote this,’ ” he’d recall.50 Ian James was among those treated to an early demonstration.

  I was in Forthlin Road once when Paul said, “I’ve written this song.” I couldn’t imagine what it would be like but we went up to his bedroom and while I stood there he sat on the edge of his bed and played me “I Lost My Little Girl.” Whether it was a good tune or not, I was impressed by the fact that he’d written something. I’d never thought about writing a song—I was only interested in playing what had been recorded. He didn’t only want to strum to Elvis Presley or Jerry Lee Lewis, he was more interested in creating something himself. That spark was there from the start.51

  Though they’d conceived their songs alone, it didn’t take long for John and Paul to play them to each other. In 1957, Liverpool was packed with teenage boys strumming guitars, but very few were writing their own songs. Here in the city’s southern suburbs they could have been the only two, and they’d found each other.

  The next step was to write together.

  * * *

  * The American country musician is posing with his instrument on the cover of the 1956 British LP Slim Whitman and His Singing Guitar. A photograph of Whitman had inspired George Harrison to buy his first guitar; another was now instrumental in determining how Paul McCartney played his.

  † Regardless of genre—skiffle, jazz, folk, blues, rock—the Echo advertised all musical attractions under the generic heading “Jazz.”

  ‡ The record spent one week on the NME Top Thirty, at number 30, two months after release. The B-side title, Brooklynese for “young chick,” was sometimes written as “Youngblood.”

  § No one recalls where or when these rehearsals took place, or how many times; presumably it was once the school year began, say from mid-September.

  ‖ This too was recorded by Chet Atkins, on an LP in George’s collection, but Paul says the arrangement John did was his own.

  YEAR 1, 1958

  THINKING OF LINKING

  EIGHT

  JANUARY–MAY 1958

  “WHERE WE GOING, JOHNNY?”

  Paul McCartney’s sticky-fingered solo the first time he performed with the group left a vacancy on lead guitar unfilled in the last months of 1957. John Lennon and Eric Griffiths weren’t up to it. Paul told John he might know just the boy for the job, younger than him but talented, keen to play and properly equipped.

  George Harrison’s arrival in the Quarry Men took place over the course of up to four weeks soon after the start of 1958. Precisely where and when Paul first got him to audition for John’s nod of approval has been subject to several contradictory recollections by those who were there (and maybe one or two who weren’t), which makes it impossible to determine the true sequence of events.r />
  Nine years later, in 1967, George recounted that Paul introduced him to John at a Quarry Men booking at Wilson Hall. Paul had said he should come along, though it seems George went there anyway from time to time to see if he could sit in with groups. He remembered the Quarry Men sharing a bill with the Eddie Clayton Skiffle Group, which means Lennon, McCartney, Harrison and Starkey were in the same hall for the night, playing to a floor full of hard Teds they knew would try to “kill them” the moment they stepped off stage.1 John, who rated the Dingle group, apparently said that if George could play guitar as well as Clayton he could consider himself in. Corralled by Paul, George played Raunchy, the twangy guitar instrumental released in December 1957 and climbing the charts at the start of February 1958. Though he isn’t likely to have been as good as the handy Clayton, he was accomplished enough to impress.

  Another encounter—John, Paul and George all talked about it—happened one night on an otherwise deserted top deck of a Corporation bus. They were all coming back from somewhere, probably heading toward the point where they’d split off home in different directions, when Paul urged George (who, naturally, had his guitar) to seize the moment and demonstrate Raunchy for John. As Paul recalls it: “I said, ‘Go on, George, show him!’ And Little George—he was always little—he got his guitar out of its case and by golly he played it. And we all fell about. ‘He’s in, you’re in, that’s it!’ Audition over.”2

  For all Paul’s encouragement, the decision whether or not to admit George into the group wasn’t his and wasn’t obvious. John was several months beyond 17, George a few days shy of 15—a chasm. It was already big of John to befriend Paul, twenty months his junior, but to add his friend, eight months younger still, was really something to consider. Paul was about the same height as John but George was so much smaller, really still a boy. Nevertheless, though the judgment may not have been as instant as Paul suggests, John never lingered over things. When it came, the word was positive, and George Harrison became the Quarry Men’s fourth guitarist, the only one designated “lead.”