Fact #51584

EYE WITNESS : THE DAY THAT JOHN LENNON MET PAUL McCARTNEY
compiled and written by Johnny Black


John Lennon : That was the day, the day that I met Paul, that it started moving.

Rod Davis (banjo, Quarrymen) : The Quarrymen's link with St. Peter's goes back much earlier than 1957. As six-year olds, many of those in the band were in the same class at Sunday School. Nigel Whalley, who became The Quarrymen's manager; Geoff Rhind who took the famous photo of the band at the fete; John Lennon, Pete Shotton, Ivan Vaughan and myself. Most of us became members of the church youth club and Jack Gibbons' bible class. John was also a member of the church choir.
(Source : interview with Colin Hall, Rock'n'Reel, March 2008)

Paul McCartney : I had a friend called Ivan Vaughan, who was my best mate at school … Ivan was from a place called Woolton, which I didn't really go to much, it was a little bit posh for me. But he said he had a mate up there who had a group, his mate was called John. And he said they were going to be playing at the Woolton Village Fete and invited me along.

Colin Hanton (drummer, Quarrymen) : In the early afternoon we went round the village playing off the back of a float, ending up at St Peter's, which is where our equipment was usually stored anyway, in the Scout hut.

Julia Baird (sister of John Lennon) : The entertainment began at two p.m. with the opening procession, which entailed one or two wonderfully festooned lorries crawling at a snail's pace through the village on their ceremonious way to the Church field. The first lorry carried the Rose Queen, seated on her throne, surrounded by her retinue, all dressed in pink and white satin, sporting long ribbons and hand-made roses in their hair. These girls had been chosen from the Sunday school groups, on the basis of age and good behaviour.

The following lorry carried various entertainers, including the Quarry Men. The boys were up there on the back of the moving lorry trying to stay upright and play their instruments at the same time. John gave up battling with balance and sat with his legs hanging over the edge, playing his guitar and singing. He continued all through the slow, slow journey as the lorry puttered its way along. Jackie and I leaped alongside the lorry, with our mother laughing and waving at John, making him laugh. He seemed to be the only one who was really trying to play and we were really trying to put him off!
(Source : from the book Imagine This by Julia Baird, 2007)

Paul McCartney : The idea was that I would see John and his band, Ivan would introduce me and we'd hang out. That's all we were going to do. It was a gorgeous, sunny day and my first memory is of me and Ive – who was known as 'Jive with Ive, the ace on the bass' - because he'd been in their band, coming into this field where the fete was and going past the usual kind of stalls with the hoop-la and such. At the edge of the field there was a stage. (Source : interview with Colin Hall, Rock'n'Reel, March 2008)

Geoff Rhind (school friend) : I knew all the Quarry Bank School boys, but this was the first time I'd seen them play. I remember it being extremely loud, although they only had one mike and one amp for the vocals. We weren't used to things being so loud in those days.

Paul McCartney : They were playing Come Go With Me which I knew as a song by the Del-Vikings. The band were doing the song great and I thought the singer was really great. He was wearing a check shirt, had slightly curly hair and long sideboards, as we called them. Ive said, 'That's my mate John' All these guys were Ive's mates so I just looked at them and enjoyed the group, paying particular attention to John. Liking music, having a guitar and singing a little bit myself, I was listening to how he was singing the song, and lso the words – which weren't the words to Come Go With Me. He was making them up! 'Come come come come come, go with me, down to the penitentiary. I thought, 'That's kind of bluesy, but they're not the words … he's making them up." (Source : interview with Colin Hall, Rock'n'Reel, March 2008)

Geoff Rhind : My mother had bought me a camera for my birthday, a black plastic Kodak Comet S. I was very shy, but I really wanted to get a picture of them, so I pushed my way through the crowd. I took just the one shot. That's all you did back then.

Rod Davis (banjo, Quarrymen) : If you look at the picture, you'll probably see I'm looking down at my fingers. I wasn't totally incompetent, but I was very short-sighted and couldn't see the audience, so it helped to look at what I was doing. We did Maggie May, Cumberland Gap, Midnight Special, a lot of things we'd heard Lonnie Donegan do. We played some rock too, but John was the keenest of us all on rock.

Another thing you can see from the picture is that John is playing a very odd-looking chord. That's because his mum played four-string banjo, which uses different chords than the guitar. John would tune his guitar to the banjo tuning, and play banjo chords on it. So in the picture he's playing a banjo C chord.

Bob Molyneux (friend of the band) : I didn't even know that The Quarrymen were going to be playing. I went along in the afternoon because I belonged to the church and the youth club, same as John Lennon did, and this was our big event for the year. All the stalls for the fete were laid out in the field behind the church, and the Quarrymen were effectively just one attraction among all those stalls. You could walk right past, or stop and listen if you wanted to.

Mimi Smith (John Lennon's Aunt) : I was having a cup of tea in the refreshment tent. Suddenly, in the midst of everything, came this … this eruption of noise. Everyone had drained away from where I stood, into the field next door. And there on the stage I saw them, John and that Shotton.

John saw me standing there with my mouth open. He started to make words up about me in the song he was singing. He sang, 'Mimi's coming down the path.'

John Lennon : Mimi had said to me that day that I'd done it at last. I was now a real teddy boy. I seemed to disgust everybody that day, not just Mimi.

Bob Molyneux : I noticed that my friend Rod Davis was playing banjo with them, and they had one of those double-basses made out of a tea chest with a broom handle stuck onto it and a length of string stretched out. They had a washboard too, which you played by scraping it with a thimble. I didn't play much more attention than that, except that I made a note to come back in the evening and tape-record them, because I enjoyed making tapes.

Actually, I was a bit miffed because our regular youth club session was cancelled for this Grand Dance in the evening. At the Youth Club, we could hear all the latest records, Chuck Berry and that, which was great for the jiving.

Paul McCartney : Ivan and I went back-stage at the church hall – a small room where there was an old piano. A couple of the guys had their guitars and things and we just hung out for a bit. (Source : interview with Colin Hall, Rock'n'Reel, March 2008)

Len Garry (bass, Quarrymen) : We were sitting round a table having coffee when Ivan and McCartney came in. McCartney was wearing a white jacket and black drainpipes. There was a bit of a stony atmosphere at first. I think Ivan had told John about Paul being a great guitarist, so he felt a bit threatened.

Pete Shotton (guitarist, Quarrymen) : Both John and Paul acted, at first, almost stand-offish. John was notoriously wary of strangers, while Paul impressed me with his cool reserve. But shy he wasn't…

Paul McCartney : And they were having a few beers and stuff. I was actually a little bit young for that. John was a year and a half older than me. But they were just hanging out, and someone had a guitar and, at some point, I thought, well, you know, 'I've got to have a go on this.'

Being left-handed I used to have to turn guitars upside-down. No-one would ever let me change the strings. So I had to turn it the wrong way round, and because I'd done this rather a lot with my mates' guitars, I could play a couple of songs upside-down providing they only had three chords. I played Twenty Flight Rock and the great thing was that I knew all the words to it, and this was true status. Anyone who knew all the words to a thing was, like, quids in! So I remember John looking at me like, wow, you know, this guy's got something here.

John Lennon : I was very impressed by Paul playing Twenty Flight Rock. He could obviously play the guitar. I half-thought to myself, 'He's as good as me.' I'd been kingpin up til then. Now, I thought, 'If we take him on, what will happen?' It went through my head that I'd have to keep him in line if we let him join. But he wa good so he was worth having. He also looked like Elvis. I dug him.

Len Garry : I also seem to remember him playing Little Richard's Long Tall Sally and doing little show-off stunts with the guitar behind his back.

Paul McCartney : I started messing around on the piano. I knew a little bit of Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On by Jerry Lee Lewis and started playing with that. I remember John leaning over my shoulder. He'd been drinking beer and I could smell the beer on his breath. Being younger, I wasn't impressed and thought, 'He's got a show to do!' But I lied him a lot. He was obviously a very witty guy, a big friend of Ivan's and clearly the leading force in this group, so I was impressed with him. (Source : interview with Colin Hall, Rock'n'Reel, March 2008)

Rod Davis : We played twice in the afternoon at the fete then, in the evening we supported the George Edwards Band at the Grand Dance.

Bob Molyneux : After I'd been home to have my tea, I lugged my tape recorder up the hill from Allerton road, where I lived. It was two shillings to get in. Basically it was the same as on any youth club night. It was a particularly big hall with canvas and metal chairs around the edge. Must have been two or three hundred people in there.

Ivan Vaughan (friend of the band). I knew this was a great fellow. I only ever brought along great fellows to meet John.

Rod Davis. John played very fiercely, because his guitar wasn't amplified, so he often broke strings. He broke one that night, because I remember him handing me the guitar. He continued, using my banjo, while I put a new string on his guitar, and gave it back to him in time for the next number.

Bob Molyneux. Half the music at the dance was The George Edwards Band. They were an old-fashioned dance group, doing quicksteps and foxtrots, and waltzes. Useless really. The youngsters wanted to get jiving, you see. The Ouarrvmen were verv well received. There was no special lighting, so it was very dim in there. My first priority was just to get plugged in to the nearest power socket, which was in an adjoining room, so I had to run an extension lead through.

I had this Grundig TKB tape-recorder, heavy, but just about portable. It had cost me eighty-two guineas, which was a lot of money then, so very few sixteen-year-olds had anything like it.

I didn't have to get any permission. I just walked in and did it. I don't think they even noticed me, it was so dark. I had to keep my leads near the wall so the dancers wouldn't trip over it. I positioned myself about fifteen yards back from the stage, and held the mike up in my hand. I got them doing Baby Let's Play House, which was an Elvis Presley thing, and Puttin' On The Style, which was Lonnie Donegan's Number 1 at the time. My arm kept getting tired so I didn't record evervthing.

Rod Davis : The local paper reported that Colin didn't play drums with us that night, but there's definitely a drummer on the tape, and he's so bad it must be Colin.

Bob Molyneux : To be honest. I didn't particularly rate them. There were so many little bands then, all doing skiffle. John didn't move much when he was singing, but during the instrumental breaks he'd dance about and sing in a screechy type voice. You could see, though, that he was the leader. He had a very commanding presence.

The real reason I recorded it though was to have a record of the youth club I had been
attending from thirteen year of age. That's why I kept it. It didn't matter to me if it was
John Lennon. He meant very little to me then.

Pete Shotton. Once Paul had gone, John asked what I thought of him. I said I liked him and John asked what I would think about having him in the group. I said it was OK with me, if John wanted him in and if Paul was keen to join.

Paul McCartney : A few days later, one of their mates, Pete Shotton, came cycling up to me, when I was on my bike in Woolton. He said, 'Hey, they want you to join the group.' I said, 'I'll have to think about it.' A couple of days later, I agreed, and there I was on the road to fame.

(N.B. This is an expanded version of an Eye Witness feature first written by Johnny Black for Q magazine)
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Additional quotes.
Paul McCartney : I remember coming into the fete and seeing all the sideshows. And also hearing all this great music wafting in from this little Tannoy system. It was John and the band. I remember I was amazed and thought, 'Oh great', because I was obviously into the music. I remember John singing a song called Come Go With Me. He'd heard it on the radio. He didn't really know the verses, but he knew the chorus. The rest he just made up himself. I just thought, 'Well, he looks good, he's singing well and he seems like a great lead singer to me.' Of course, he had his glasses off, so he really looked suave. I remember John was good. He was really the only outstanding member, all the rest kind of slipped away.
(Record Collector, November 1995)