Tune In
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‖ They played about twenty hours on this visit, adding to perhaps 1,090 from the previous four. As imprecise as these calculations must be, the Beatles’ Hamburg total was ±1,110 hours in thirty-eight weeks of playing—the equivalent of three hours every night for a full year.
NOTES
THE PROLOGUE: Another Lennon-McCartney Original
(January 1958)
1 Said by Paul McCartney to Hunter Davies, May 3, 1981. (The Beatles, by Hunter Davies, Jonathan Cape, London, 1985 edition, p471.)
2 The Beatles, by Hunter Davies (William Heinemann, London, 1968), p35. Unless otherwise specified, all “Davies” attributions in this book refer to the original 1968 British hardback edition of his authorized biography.
3 Interview by Alan Rowett and Geoff Barker for Paul McCartney’s Routes of Rock, BBC World Service, Oct–Nov 1999.
4 John Lennon interview by Howard Smith, WPLJ-FM, New York, January 3, 1972. John did say “Baby Let’s Play House,” but while there’s a small laugh at its end he may have meant “Mystery Train,” where Elvis all but breaks up with laughter—something that caused much speculation and discussion among his fans.
5 Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now, by Barry Miles (Secker & Warburg, London, 1997), p46.
6 Interview by Jean-François Vallée for French TV, April 4, 1975.
7 Interview by author and Kevin Howlett, June 6, 1990.
8 This couplet is from a rough, jokey recording made eleven years later, one that quickly spiraled into nonsense; the lack of a rhyme here probably was part of the messing about, but the original words aren’t known.
9 An off-the-cuff January 3, 1969, recording of John and Paul singing “Because I Know You Love Me So” is included within the 2003 album Let It Be … Naked, on the second disc, Fly on the Wall.
10 Filmed conversation at Twickenham Studios, January 6, 1969.
11 Interview by author and Kevin Howlett, June 6, 1990. Though John and Paul were inspired by the knowledge that Buddy Holly wrote his own songs, numerous names were listed as composers with no consistent pairing: Holly himself, Petty, Allison, Hardin (a Holly pseudonym, though this wasn’t realized yet) and others. Composer credits on Elvis Presley records also varied song by song.
12 Interview by author and Kevin Howlett, June 6, 1990.
13 Ibid.
14 Paul from The Beatles Anthology, by the Beatles (Cassell & Co, London, 2000), p23; John from interview by Andy Peebles, December 6, 1980, for BBC Radio 1.
15 Interview by Sandra Shevey, the Hartford Courant, November 26, 1972.
16 Interview for Earth News Radio, July 1976.
17 Interview by Chris Hutchins, NME, September 25, 1964.
18 Interview by Mike Read, October 13, 1987, for BBC Radio 1.
19 Interview by author and Kevin Howlett, June 6, 1990.
20 The porch measures 5ft 5in by 3ft 10in, the roof 7ft 8in, an area of 21 square feet (165 × 117 × 234cm, or 1.9m2).
21 How “Love Me Do” was created—whether the tune or the words came first or arrived together—has never been recalled. The title may have been inspired by the Elvis film Love Me Tender (in Liverpool in January 1957) or from music press ads for a record actually called “Love Me Do” released in Britain in February 1957. Such influences are likely to have been subliminal at best, though; Paul probably conceived the title as well as most or all of the words.
22 Interview by David Sheff, September 24, 1980, for Playboy. The best-available publication of this Q&A is in Last Interview: All We Are Saying—John Lennon and Yoko Ono (Sidgwick & Jackson, London, 2000).
23 His typewriter was an Imperial Good Companion Model T.
24 Interview by author and Kevin Howlett, June 6, 1990. In this and other interviews, Paul aligned the mention of Edinburgh and “a dentist” with a further indication of John’s middle-classness: someone in his family “who worked for the BBC.” BBC staff records do not reveal a John Lennon relative, and surviving members of the Stanley side of the family can’t think who Paul meant by this. (The dentist was John’s Uncle Bert, second husband of his Aunt Elizabeth, aka “Mater.”)
25 Interview by Mike Read, October 13, 1987, for BBC Radio 1.
26 Interview by Peter McCabe and Robert D. Schonfeld, September 1971. The best-available publication of this interview is in John Lennon: For the Record, by McCabe and Schonfeld (Bantam Books, New York, 1984).
ONE: In My Liverpool Home (1845–1945)
1 Author interview, April 6, 2009.
2 Daddy, Come Home, by Pauline Lennon (Angus & Robertson, London, 1990), p29.
3 Letter from Mimi Smith to Kathy Burns, October 31, 1986.
4 Joe McCartney’s style of music has been lovingly re-created by his grandson Paul in such tunes as “Thingumybob” (1968).
5 Ghosts of the Past, BBC1, October 8, 1991, included on the DVD of Paul McCartney’s Liverpool Oratorio, issued 2004.
6 Paul recorded/issued a version of “Eloise”—retitled “Walking in the Park with Eloise”—in 1974.
In a cluster of buildings on West 28th Street in New York City, immigrants or sons of immigrants from Eastern Europe, mostly Jewish, sat in tiny cubicle offices with pianos, writing the rhythms and rhymes that held unchallenged supremacy in the world of popular song. The collective name for this area and enterprise was Tin Pan Alley.
7 Author interview, October 23, 1987.
8 Penny Lane itself was an otherwise undistinguished road, one of a number of tributaries to the main junction where the buses and trams terminated. Its name harks back to Liverpool’s dishonorable past: ship captain James Penny was a key proponent of the eighteenth-century slave trade.
9 Daddy, Come Home, p33.
10 The Beatles Anthology, p33.
11 Both Louises, George’s mother and sister, gave the date of birth as February 25, 1943, which is also how it was registered the next day, and on the baptism certificate soon after, and was always written and celebrated … until the 1990s, when George decided to announce he’d been born on the 24th.
12 Davies, pp38–9.
13 Davies, p149.
14 Author interview, April 11, 2007.
15 A photo of two-year-old George at a VE Day party, with his three elder siblings, is in George Harrison: Living in the Material World, by Olivia Harrison (Abrams, New York, 2011), p14.
TWO: Boys (1945–54)
1 The Beatles Anthology, p34.
2 There was an innocent error of chronology here. He also recalled his first day at school, which came before the move to Admiral Grove. The St. Silas admission register shows he was still living at 9 Madryn Street when his schooling began. The precise date of the move to 10 Admiral Grove isn’t recorded, but it followed soon after. “Condemned” from The Beatles Anthology, p33; thankfully, the terrace still stands, preserving not just Richy’s childhood home but an authentic piece of Victorian working-class housing.
3 The Beatles Anthology, p33. The V sign at 10 Admiral Grove is still over the door, unmoved despite everything that’s happened there since.
4 Thank U Very Much, by Mike McCartney (Arthur Barker, London, 1981), p24.
5 From author interview with Harry Harrison’s daughter Louise, January 30, 2007.
6 Quoted in the US fanzine George Gernal, issue 2, 1967. Family information in these paragraphs from author interview with Louise Harrison (daughter), January 30, 2007.
7 John Lennon, My Brother, by Julia Baird (Grafton Books, London, 1988), p11. Gateacre is pronounced by locals as “Gattaker.”
8 The ad appeared in the Personal column on the front page, Monday, April 15, 1946.
9 Author interview, April 6, 2009.
10 Record Mirror, March 6, 1971. By “Smith’s” Mimi meant the English chain of booksellers W. H. Smith & Son.
11 Davies, p9. John can be seen doing a quick burst of the Charleston in many Beatles film clips.
12 Information from various interviews.
13 Davies, p24.
14 Thank U Very Much, p29.
15 Interview by Mike Read, October 12, 1987, for BBC Radio 1.
16 Paul McCartney’s foreword for Liverpool: Wondrous Place, by Paul Du Noyer (Virgin Books, London, 2002).
17 Interview by Alan Freeman, Rock Around the World, US syndicated radio show, April 11, 1976.
18 Probably two of these three pieces mentioned by John in an interview by Mike Hennessey, Record Mirror, October 2, 1971: “Swedish Rhapsody” (composed by Hugo Alfvén), “Moulin Rouge” (Georges Auric) and Greensleeves (traditional). All were played regularly on the BBC Light Programme.
19 Interview by Ken Zelig, November 27, 1969. Harold Phillips went on to become a teacher; he died many years ago.
20 The Cast Iron Shore was in St. Michael in the Hamlet, situated just beyond the Dingle, heading toward Aigburth. A steep cliff showed children down to the banks of the tidal Mersey, a fatal but popular playground for more than a century. People assumed its name derived from the flotsam and jetsam of shipping washed up on the shore, but actually it was from St. Michael parish church, part-constructed of cast iron. Today, Otterspool Promenade and the site of Liverpool’s International Garden Festival in 1984 cover the Cazzy’s history, but the church is still open.
21 Interview by Elliot Mintz, April 18, 1976; “… a piano at home” from a roundtable discussion with the press, USA, April 1997 (it’s not clear where this piano was). Steble is pronounced to rhyme with “pebble.” The baths building—now a sports center—is one of the few Dingle/Toxteth haunts from Richy’s childhood still standing in the twenty-first century.
22 Interview for Jet magazine, May 11, 1972 (though this section wasn’t included in the published piece). In another interview (by Jann S. Wenner, December 8, 1970, for Rolling Stone) John described the instrument as “a Dobro.” The musician he saw may have been Jim Gretty, who will appear later in this history.
23 Interview by Russell Davies, March 3, 1991; George on George, BBC Radio 4, May 25, 2004.
24 John was responding to a questionnaire for the organization National Book League, for use in the first National Library Week, March 1966.
25 The first was a fourteen-line ditty titled “The Land Of The Lunapots,” published in Mersey Beat, February 27, 1964. It begins “T’was custard time and as I / Snuffed at the haggie pie pie / The noodles ran about my plunk / Which rode my wrytle uncle drunk …”
26 Author interview, February 5, 2008.
27 Davies, p39.
28 John Lennon, My Brother, p16. This is a rare quote from John’s cousin Liela Birch, née Hafez (1937–2012).
29 The official name of the house was Strawberry Field but it was usually referred to as Strawberry Fields, plural. The home accommodated up to forty-eight children between the ages of three and sixteen, at the end of which they would either return to their parents or the home would place them in a job. The children called themselves “Strawbs.” A former Strawb, Carol Rigg, says, “Everybody has the impression we were bad kids. This is completely wrong. All the children were there for the mistakes their parents had made. So we were never locked in: the gates to the road were always open and everybody went out to a normal school every day and made their own way back.” (Author interview, February 14, 2007.)
The original Strawberry Field children’s home was demolished in 1975 and replaced with a modern building (itself closed in 2005). An approximate impression of the original structure can be gained by visiting another Gothic Woolton-sandstone mansion, the former Liverpool Convalescent Home, still standing. Its long entrance driveway is located almost opposite 120a Allerton Road, the house owned for years by George and Mimi, where the infant John lived for the only time with his parents. Mimi worked at this convalescent home in the late 1920s.
For decades, tourists in search of John Lennon’s Strawberry Field(s) have photographed the old gates to the home on Beaconsfield Road: it’s the last surviving remnant of the original building and the only place where the name is visible. John rarely saw these gates because his approach to the house was always gained over the wall in Vale Road, then through the deep trees that are now a housing estate.
30 Leaves from a Liverpolitan’s Log Book, by Peter Claughton, Liverpolitan, January 1949.
31 City of Departures (Collins, London, 1946), p36.
32 November 1949.
33 Davies, pp39–40.
34 From 1970s interview transcript of unknown origin.
35 The theft was reported in the London Evening News (January 9) but Lennon wasn’t named. The shop was Jane Lanwin Ltd, at 265–7 Oxford Street, part of the short stretch between Oxford Circus and Harewood Place. The Marlborough Street court and Wormwood Scrubs prison ledgers are in the London Metropolitan Archives.
36 From author interview with Billy Hall, April 6, 2009.
37 Author interview, February 5, 2008.
38 Paul has described this incident as if he witnessed it, intimating that it happened at Liverpool Institute, but George always said it was while he was at Dovedale Road, and named the teacher; John also mentioned it in one of his last interviews because he was also taught by Mr. Lyon at Dovedale.
39 The Beatles Anthology, p35.
40 Liverpool Weekly News, July 26, 1962.
41 Davies, p151.
42 Davies, p153.
43 Interview by Dave Stewart, Off the Record, HBO, May 2, 2008.
44 Interview by Krista Bradford, The Reporters, Fox, July 22, 1989 (by “my parents” he meant Elsie and Harry); “… a bottle of gin and a large bottle of brown” from interview by Tony Prince, Radio Luxembourg, October 7, 1976.
“Nobody’s Child” was recorded by Hank Snow and issued in America at the end of 1949, authentic C&W with a steel guitar. Richy almost certainly got to hear it courtesy of a “Cunard Yank” bringing the disc back from the States. His other party piece has been mentioned in one interview, the title given as “It’s Someone Like You.” The likeliest number is “Someone Like You,” featured by Doris Day in the 1949 film My Dream Is Yours and also recorded by, among others, Peggy Lee. The Empress is depicted on the front cover of the 1970 album Sentimental Journey, the content of which paid undiluted homage to this period of Richy’s childhood and especially to the songs sung by Harry Graves. Elsie’s and Harry’s photos are included in the artwork.
45 From John Lennon’s review of the book The Goon Show Scripts in the New York Times, September 30, 1973. “My main influences …” from interview by David Sheff, September 24, 1980, for Playboy.
46 Interview by Dennis Elsas, WNEW-FM, September 28, 1974.
47 Shotton from CD enclosed within John, Paul & Me: Before The Beatles by Len Garry (CG Publishing, London, 1997); Hill from author interview, June 1, 2005.
48 John Lennon’s audio diary, recorded September 5, 1979.
49 John from Davies, pp13–14; Hill from author interview, May 26, 2005.
50 John from interview by David Skan, Record Mirror, October 11, 1969; Richy from The Beatles Anthology, p36; George from I Me Mine (Genesis Publications, Guildford, 1980), pp24–5; Paul from Many Years From Now, pp10–11.
51 “Smelled of old people” from The Beatles Anthology, pp18–19. Jim McCartney quote from Young Paul, Beatles Book magazine, issue 27 (October 1965).
52 Jim McCartney from Davies, p31. A Liverpool Echo photographer happened to be present the day Paul went into the cathedral for his choir audition: he’s one of eleven boys in a picture published on April 17, 1953, the first time his photo appeared in a newspaper.
53 Paul’s original handwritten essay is held in the Liverpool Record Office and was published facsimile in The McCartneys: In the Town Where They Were Born, by Kevin Roach (Trinity Mirror, Liverpool, 2009). Paul’s “rubbery legs” quote is from Many Years From Now (p7); “shaking like a jelly” is from a speech he made at the same venue on November 28, 1984 (broadcast by BBC Radio Merseyside).
54 April 1961.
55 It’s unclear why the headmaster was nicknamed The Baz. Ian James, Paul McCartney’s Institute contemporary (and fr
om 1957 his friend), says, “There’s been all sorts of theories about it and you couldn’t say any one of them was correct. I think he was also called something else—The Jack?—but he was The Baz to everyone.” (Author interview, July 18, 2006.)
56 The Beatles Anthology, p18.
57 Ibid., p26.
58 “Red Lion” and “struggling up the hill” from interview by Nicky Horne, Capital Radio (London), September 13, 1974; “She’s a dark horse” from interview by Ray Coleman, Melody Maker, September 6, 1975. Other quotes from The Beatles Anthology, p26.
THREE: “Who You Lookin’ At?” (1954–5)
1 The case of Derek Bentley and his partner in crime Christopher Craig became a cause célèbre, related in songs, films, books and TV documentaries.
2 George quote from Earth News Radio, December 1975; Paul from interview by Janice Long for Listen to What the Man Says, BBC Radio 1, December 22, 1985.
3 Interview by Howard Cosell for Speaking of Everything, US radio, October 1974. John meant “Forty-Ninth State,” not fifty-ninth. Until January 1959, America had forty-eight—prompting the expression used (mostly caustically) in postwar Britain.
4 In My Life, by Pete Shotton and Nicholas Schaffner (Stein & Day, New York, 1983), p47. John took up smoking at 13.
5 The influence of Cool Water can be heard in “Old Dirt Road,” on John Lennon’s album Walls and Bridges, recorded and released 1974.
6 The general view is that John didn’t see Julia for some years, though this is contradicted by what he told David Sheff (for Playboy magazine) on September 24, 1980: “My mother was alive and lived fifteen minutes’ walk away from me, all my life. And I saw her sporadically off and on all the time. I just didn’t live with her.”
7 Davies, p16.
8 The Beatles Anthology, p35.
9 The report is illustrated in Davies, p152.
10 Interview by Elliot Mintz, April 18, 1976. The shop was Park Music & Radio Company at 271 Park Road, since demolished.