Chapter Text
John Lennon had no idea how he was supposed to play the guitar properly while standing on a moving lorry.
“This is not what they told us,” muttered Eric, shuffling uncertainly across the dirty copper-coloured metal platform, gripping the neck of his own guitar tightly. He was in the same boat, or perhaps worse. If it came down to deciding who was the better guitarist, John beat him by a mile.
“At the slightest bump, the cymbals are going to go flying,” Colin complained, pointing at his instrument, the most expensive one in the band.
“With all the noise, nobody’s going to hear us anyway,” said Pete, looking down at the washboard hanging from his neck by a belt, resignation written across his face. “I wouldn’t worry about it.”
That was another problem: the noise.
When John had accepted on behalf of all the Quarry Men an invitation to play at the parish fête during the Rose Queen procession, they had known they would have to compete with the sound of whatever vehicle was carrying them.
What they had not counted on was there being several lorries rather than one. Judging by the sound of their engines, one could have assumed they had already paid for themselves many times over by the end of the war. On top of that, since there was no way to plug in any sound equipment on a moving lorry, John would have to shout to make up for the lack of a microphone. Add to that the sounds of the neighbourhood itself: housewives stepping out of their homes to watch the spectacle, children running about, and barking dogs.
For now, only the first curious onlookers were gathering around the procession, which remained still. But John knew things would change once they reached Menlove Avenue, the backbone of the neighbourhood.
Deep down, John felt a little too old to be part of all this, but he had not been able to turn down the opportunity to be heard.
“Well, at least it’s not raining, lads,” he said, with more irony than sincerity. In Liverpool, the chances of an unexpected drizzle on the sixth of July were few, but never nonexistent. “We’ve never had it so good[1],” he added, putting on the exaggerated London accent of the BBC journalists he listened to, much to his friends’ amusement.
The procession was led by a parade of the local Boy Scout and Brownie groups, carrying banners and flags, followed by a Morris dancers’ performance, right before the Rose Queen, who that year was…
“John!”
John’s expression shifted completely as he recognised a familiar voice. His sister Julia was waving at him, beaming from ear to ear. She was wearing a long white dress and holding a small bouquet of flowers, looking like a young bride. She was standing on the back of the main lorry, the centrepiece of the event, decorated as it should be, quite unlike the vehicle carrying the Quarry Men, which was festooned with sad, sun-faded bunting and closed the procession.
Julia stood on a wooden crate between two Union Jack flags, limp in the still air. Around her was a small entourage of local girls dressed far more modestly, in their Sunday best, among them Jacqueline, John’s other sister, two years younger than Julia.
John waved back, smiling.
“Look! Do you like my dress?” Julia asked, spinning on the spot so the fabric lifted slightly, revealing the white shoes she only wore on special occasions.
John had seen that dress before. He knew it had belonged to their mother. Aunt Mimi had dug it out from God knows where and spent the past week altering it so it would fit Julia like a glove. John didn’t know the first thing about sewing or housework, but even he could tell she’d done a remarkable job.
“Her Majesty looks splendid today!”
Julia’s face lit up as she let out a laugh, half embarrassed and half delighted at John bowing to her.
“John!” Jacqueline shouted. “What about me?”
“Jacky, my dear, you’re the envy of Woolton and the whole Royal Family!” John called back, drawing the same reaction from his younger sister.
Some of the girls looked from John to Julia and Jacqueline with expressions ranging from admiration to envy to mild irritation. John wasn’t surprised: being Rose Queen was a big deal if you were a girl from the suburbs. And besides, he knew Julia and Jacky liked to boast at school that he was their brother. Apparently, having an almost seventeen-year-old brother in a band that actually played outside the front rooms of neighbourhood families carried quite a bit of status among her classmates.
When he turned back, John saw Pete and Colin watching him with amused smiles. But when it came to indulging his sisters, John had no shame whatsoever.
“What?” he said with a grin, challenging them to say something.
“Nothing,” Pete and Colin replied in unison.
“Looks like there’s movement up front,” Len observed, with his hand above his eyes.
John narrowed his eyes. It was true, the Boy Scouts were beginning to rise from the pavement and form up in orderly lines, like a small militia.
He turned back to the band, focused now. It was about to begin.
“Right then. Let’s just play our best. And if anyone doesn’t like it, they can watch the Boy Scouts.”
Without warning, the truck lurched into motion. All six boys staggered across the platform before managing to regain their footing.
John removed his foot from Len’s tea-chest bass and carefully lifted his guitar. He had already decided that if he lost his balance, he would rather land flat on his back than risk damaging it. His mother had bought it for him the previous year behind Aunt Mimi’s back, and it remained his most treasured possession.
Their appearance in the procession was only the first of three performances scheduled for the day. The second would take place in the grounds of St Peter’s Church at four o’clock, and the third in the parish hall at eight that evening, after all the day’s festivities had come to an end and the families with younger children had gone home. John was already looking forward to that final show. But first, they had to get to the church.
“Cumberland Gap,” he said, offering no further instructions. “One, two, three.”
And the band began to play.
The Quarry Men’s repertoire was not particularly extensive, but it was better and more varied than that of most groups John knew, especially since he had decided to add several rock and roll numbers despite objections from some members of the band.
The loudest complaints had come from his best friend, Pete Shotton, backed up by Rod. They played the washboard and the banjo, instruments that had little place in a rock and roll band. But the group did what John wanted, and at that moment, he was fascinated by the American music arriving in Liverpool, a city that often seemed forgotten by the rest of England, after the devastation inflicted by the Germans more than a decade earlier. John had fallen in love with the almost sexual, rhythmic energy of the music, which seemed to rise straight from the soul. More than anything, he longed to possess the same hypnotic power over an audience that his idols held over him.
However, how exactly was he supposed to achieve that while standing on the back of a moving lorry whose engine could be heard almost as clearly as his guitar? The only advantage John could think of was that when they passed through Menlove Avenue, Aunt Mimi would not be standing outside watching the spectacle in horror… yet. Nothing could be heard from the kitchen at Mendips.
On the stage in the church grounds, at least, the organisers had gone to the trouble of setting up three microphones connected to a loudspeaker, whose power cable disappeared through a rear door of the church that had been left strategically ajar.
“Now this is more like it,” remarked Pete, ever the optimist.
John was not nearly as convinced. The infrastructure the church volunteers had placed at their disposal was only marginally less rudimentary than the arrangements for the procession. But there was nobody to complain to, at least nobody who would take them seriously. If anything, they ought to be grateful. These skiffle boys, wasting their time with guitars and washboards instead of bringing money home. Yes. That was probably what most adults would tell them.
John surveyed the church grounds, with not a single patch of earth visible beneath the grass. Normally, the place was quiet. Hardly a soul ever crossed it, perhaps with the exception of Father McKinsey, who seemed to think better while walking, or the occasional child driven outside by boredom during one of his Sunday sermons. At times like those, watching ivy creep up the church’s stone walls could pass for excitement, John knew from experience.
Yet that day, the grounds were alive. The housewives volunteering for the event, some of whom John recognised as the mothers of boys from the neighbourhood, had set up folding tables covered with lemonade and sandwiches, wearing their summer dresses. Around them, children ran in every direction. The neighbours who had not yet arrived would eventually appear as well, not because anything particularly remarkable was happening, but because in Woolton, as in any Liverpool suburb, attending community events like this was simply what one did.
Julia Baird’s coronation as Rose Queen was as brief as it was charming. John and the band were able to watch it from the back of the crowd. Someone gave a speech about the traditional virtues of the British people, followed by a little girl that had been on the lorry with Julia earlier reciting a poem. John paid little attention, but, still, when Julia was finally crowned with what appeared to be a tiara woven from fresh white flowers, he applauded enthusiastically.
The audience had only just begun to disperse to resume the rest of the activities, when Nigel Walley came sprinting across the grounds to where the band was.
“Where were you?” asked Colin when he saw him.
“You just missed the big moment,” Pete said. His tone suggested he was only moments away from yawning.
Nigel bent over, hands planted on his knees.
“Guess who I’ve just been talking to,” he managed between breaths.
“The Queen?”
“Elvis?”
“Brigitte Bardot?”
“A bird!” Len suggested.
John and Pete immediately shook their heads with complete conviction, as though Len had proposed that the sky was green.
“Nah, mate. That’s impossible.”
Nigel frowned at the taunt.
“One day your career’s going to take off not because of your questionable talent, but because of my charisma as your manager. And this is how I’m treated?”
“Go on then,” said John. “Out with it.”
“I got to talk to Sytner.”
“Who?” John asked.
Nigel stared at him and Eric rolled his eyes.
“The Cavern’s guy.”
“Oh.”
“Well, his father, technically. Dr Joseph Sytner,” Nigel clarified. “Turns out he loves golf.”
A grin spread across John’s face.
“Well, now we’re talking.”
At fifteen, Nigel had come to the conclusion that studying was not for him, so he had given it up to become a golfer. He was still only an apprentice, but it had allowed him to meet a lot of people. He had also been a member of the Quarry Men, briefly, until he lost his instrument by accident and decided that he was more useful to the Quarry Men if, instead of using his questionable skill playing the tea chest, he used his new contacts to get them gigs and thus help them become known around the city.
“Well,” Nigel continued, straightening up proudly, “I’ve suggested he talks to his son, to see if he’ll let you play at The Cavern. He didn’t dislike the idea, but you’ve got an audition at the golf club in two weeks.”
The members of the band looked at each other. The possibilities of what Nigel was offering them seemed endless.
“If you do well,” he added, savouring the silence, “The Cavern’s yours.”
John nodded enthusiastically. Pete shook his shoulders, laughing.
“Nigel, that’s brilliant,” Rod exclaimed.
“Don’t mention it, lads!” Nigel said. He started walking towards the food stalls, chest out.
The Quarry Men began their set as the police dog demonstration organised for the occasion came to an end, the same tricks as in previous years. The children and teenagers who had formed a circle to watch them were now in the front rows. The Quarry Men felt as though they were playing for them, and not for the rest of the crowd, the adults who paid them only half attention, standing a little further back from the stage, ready to judge them if they went too far with the black music they played.
John recognised some of them. They were his neighbours, the women Mimi met for tea, but also his Quarry Bank schoolmates, and some of John’s own gang. Ivan Vaughan, tilting his head to the rhythm of the music, was one of them.
And there were girls too, to their delight, since they were all at that age. John enjoyed watching them in moments like these. They always went around in groups, arms linked, looking everywhere, whispering to each other, which made them seem untouchable. One had to be rather brave to ask a girl out, but the task became quite a feat if she was accompanied by her friends as well, ready to inspect anyone who came near from head to toe.
But that did not mean they would stop trying to catch their attention. That day, the boys had made an effort with their appearance. John wore an orange checked shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, a Christmas present from his mother, which, unintentionally, made him stand out from his friends, who wore lighter clothes, almost freshly ironed. They had also styled themselves in their own way, brushing their hair forward to imitate teddy boy quiffs, setting it with wax.
A little further back, Julia and Jackie had taken off their shoes and were dancing the jive[2] on the grass, with as much enthusiasm as little precision. If they had been teenagers, the girls their age might have raised an eyebrow at them, but luckily they were children, and all children danced with the same lack of self-consciousness. Still, John recognised the technique behind their movements: there was only one person who could have taught them to dance like that.
John almost felt sorry to end Hound Dog, forcing his sisters to stop dancing. But the youthful audience rewarded them with applause.
“Come Go With Me,” John announced into the microphone. “One, two, three.”
And the music began again. Come Go With Me was a small exception in the Quarry Men’s repertoire, which briefly set aside skiffle and rock ’n’ roll to pay tribute to the smooth melodies of doo-wop, although, deep down, John considered it all to be part of the same thing.
As if thinking of her had summoned her, John noticed the unmistakable red hair of Julia Lennon approaching the stage. Her hips moved to the rhythm of the music, in the same way he had seen hundreds of times at home when she put on one of her records. It was a contagious joy, which, apparently, had no effect whatsoever on the female figure accompanying her, who was, of course…
John found it harder to learn lyrics than guitar chords. More often than not, he improvised on the spot. That time was no exception, and seeing his Aunt Mimi approaching the stage in a huff, eyes fixed on him, only fuelled his mischievous imagination.
“Oh, oh, here comes Mimi down the aisle now,” he sang to the melody of the song, with feigned concern, which made his friends burst out laughing.
When the set by the four finally ended, the Quarry Men jumped down from the stage to applause, immediately surrounded by all the teens of the neighbourhood. It had been a success.
“Let’s get some lemonade,” John announced, chest swelling with pride. He was speaking to his gang, but at moments like that he did not care if everyone knew where they were going.
The Quarry Men soon found themselves leaning against a nearby wall by the food stalls, enjoying the pleasant shade. Then Ivan appeared, with a boy John did not know, wearing tight black trousers and a white jacket. John had not seen him in the crowd, but given his severe short-sightedness, that did not mean anything.
“Alright, Ivy!”
“Alright! Can we join you?”
“No,” Pete and John said at the same time.
As if they hadn’t heard him, Ivan and his friend joined the group anyway. As he came closer, John casually snatched Ivan’s sandwich out of his hand without warning and ate it in one bite.
“You’re a n idiot,” Ivan laughed.
“Yeah, well, you can join now,” John said, smiling with his mouth full.
The group laughed.
“It’s alright, Hanton can go get you another one.”
“Why me?” Colin protested, who hadn’t said a word until then.
“Because I said so,” John replied, waving a hand dismissively.
“Ignore him, Hanton, I’m fine. I’ve had enough anyway,” Ivan said.
John could hear the laughter and the rest of the group talking, but he was no longer really listening. His attention had drifted to the boy who had come with Ivan. As they got closer, he noticed the way he straightened his posture, as if trying to make himself look taller, even though he already fell within John’s height range and was clearly taller than Ivan, perhaps trying to make up for the babyish face John could now see properly, with round features and not a hint of facial hair. John had the vague feeling he had seen him before, but he couldn’t quite remember where.
“And you are…?” he asked, nodding towards him. His tone was not unfriendly, but nor was it particularly warm.
The question made the members of the band suddenly pay attention to the stranger. His downcast eyes, which until then had been scanning the scene as if trying to work out what kind of people he had ended up with, widened as they landed on John, like a fawn’s, and his thin, pencil-like eyebrows rose slightly in surprise, an expression that faded as he broke into an easy smile.
“Paul McCartney. Pleased to meet you.”
John had expected the voice of a boy who was still finishing off the last stretch of puberty, no longer quite a child, but still high-pitched, prone to cracking. It wasn’t like that. It was a little higher than John’s, certainly, but without his roughness; instead it was warm and melodic.
“We go to school together,” Ivan clarified. “Same class.”
“You from Woolton?” Pete asked.
“Allerton.”
John took a drag from his cigarette.
“John Lennon,” he said, a hand to his chest. “And this is Pete Shotton. And over there you’ve got Rod Davis, Len Garry, Eric Griffiths, Colin Hanton, and Nigel Walley.”
Paul gave a friendly nod to the group.
“Did you see us play?” Rod asked.
“Yeah, it was good,” Paul replied.
“Aren’t you nice,” Nigel said with an ironic smile. “It was bloody awful, really.”
Colin and Rod each gave him a light thump.
John exhaled sharply. He was bored. At this point, neither he nor the rest of the boys were quite sure what to do other than wander around the church grounds. They had to kill time somehow until eight o’clock. Pete had “pulled” at the lemonade stall, if exchanging a few words with a girl John considered fairly average counted as pulling. But that day there was a bigger problem: anyone who wasn’t occasionally glancing over to see what the Quarry Men were up to would inevitably end up hearing about it anyway, because someone would tell them.
It was one thing to dress up a bit and strut around the neighbourhood with a guitar in hand, and something entirely different to actually talk to a girl. And if there was anything more mortifying than being rejected in front of her friends, it was talking to a girl while knowing that all the adults who had known them since childhood were perfectly aware of what they were trying to do. In Woolton, privacy was a luxury for the rich.
“Shall we go?” Pete said.
“Where to?”
“Anywhere.”
“Inside?”
“Alright.”
There was a small room adjoining the church stage where the parish dance was to be held that night, with a battered wooden piano and two worn, sagging armchairs. John was quickest to claim one of them without asking anyone’s permission, and noticing there were more people than seats, the room immediately turned into a small battle for what was left. John watched it unfold comfortably as he lit a cigarette.
Ivan, seeing what was coming, decided to avoid trouble and perched himself on the arm of the empty chair. Nigel was quickest to sit down, but being smaller and lighter than the rest, Pete and Len teamed up to lift him by the arms and push him out. Len managed to secure one end of the chair, but Pete was less lucky, as Eric, the thinnest of them all, slipped in quickly and claimed the remaining space, forcing Len to protest. Nigel eventually managed to sit on the other arm. Pete, refusing to give up, sat on the arm of John’s chair instead, prompting John to try and shove him off, unsuccessfully. Rod and Colin, however, decided not to tempt fate and settled for the wooden floor.
Almost by inertia, listening to his friends in the background, John had started idly picking at the strings of his guitar, which sounded soft and uneven.
The cleverest of them all had been the outsider, Paul McCartney, who, quite calmly, perhaps knowing he was at a disadvantage if he tried to reach the armchair, had taken a folding chair that no one seemed to have noticed, opened it, and had been watching the end of the skirmish with quiet amusement from a spot near John. At least, until John started playing. After that, he began glancing sideways at him, and if he was trying not to be noticed, he wasn’t doing a very good job of it.
“You like rock and roll?” John asked without really looking at him.
“Yeah.”
“And who do you listen to?” John turned his eyes onto him.
“Chuck Berry. Elvis, of course.” Paul’s smile widened. “Little Richard…”
“Yeah, Little Richard’s brilliant,” Colin said.
“Bah, Elvis is better,” John said, looking back down at his guitar.
“Here we go,” Pete muttered, rolling his eyes.
“It’s true!”
Paul laughed, but didn’t take the bait.
“Do you play the banjo as well, Lennon?” Paul asked.
“Why?” John frowned.
Paul tilted his chin towards the guitar.
“Because it’s tuned like one.”
The Quarry Men, while still talking among themselves, had begun to pay attention to the exchange. John’s hands went still.
He had a natural inclination towards art and music (or so his teachers said, eager as they were to get rid of him), but tuning a guitar was something he had never quite mastered, especially without a reference. Sometimes he used the banjo his mother played when John went to see her on Blomfield Road. Of course, John wasn’t about to explain any of that to McCartney.
“I think it’s because I’m used to its sound,” he said.
“Makes sense,” Paul said diplomatically. “I can tune it for you, if you want.”
John looked at Pete, then at Ivan, who was watching the exchange. He didn’t like the idea of a stranger touching his things, especially his guitar, but he couldn’t think of a good excuse. Paul seemed sound, he had to be, if he was Ivan’s friend. Besides, there was still one more number to play. The church wasn’t going to pay the Quarry Men a single shilling for their service, but that wasn’t a reason to allow themselves the luxury of a technically poor performance, if they could help it.
So John took hold of the neck of his guitar and handed it to Paul without a word. Paul smiled as he took it.
“I’ll have it done in a minute.”
John watched him closely, without worrying about seeming rude. He found it curious that McCartney held the guitar the wrong way round, with his left hand on the neck. But he seemed to know exactly what he was doing, turning the pegs with ease to loosen and tighten the strings at will.
He wasn’t lying. It didn’t take long, and in his hands the guitar suddenly sounded wonderful.
“There you go.”
Paul was smiling again as he handed the guitar back to him. But when John went to reach for it, he realised he didn’t take to him. He smiled too much, was too polite, and was clearly trying very hard to be liked by John. The sort of boy adults adored, and therefore, often the sort he and his gang make fun of.
So John didn’t take the guitar.
“Play us something,” he said instead.
Paul’s smile tightened.
“What?”
“You clearly know what you’re doing, don’t you?” The corners of John’s mouth lifted slightly. “Go on. Play something.”
Paul glanced at Ivan, hesitating, but eventually set the guitar back on his lap again, holding it the wrong way round once more.
“Er… anything in particular?” Paul asked, with a shy smile.
That was bold, but it didn’t impress John at all. At his side, Pete began to hum a song the band had performed that very afternoon:
“Well, be-bop-a-lula, she’s my baby.”
Paul’s face lit up, and his hands began to move, picking out the guitar. And when Pete reached the second verse, he joined in as well.
“Be-bop-a-lula, I don’t mean maybe. Be-bop-a-lula, she’s my baby. Be-bop-a-lula, I don’t mean maybe…”
Pete must have decided his presence in the performance was redundant, because he stopped singing. At some point, Paul closed his eyes and furrowed his brow, as if trying to remember exactly how each chord went, but still, he didn’t miss a single one. Colin was the first to start nodding his head and tapping his foot to the rhythm, and the rest of the group followed one by one, some even mouthing the lyrics without making a sound. Nigel was the most obvious about it, his eyebrows lifting and his eyes widening in open surprise. Ivan seemed the least impressed, probably already aware of what Paul was capable of.
John took another drag from his cigarette, his gaze shifting between the floor and Paul’s left hand on the neck of the instrument. His technique was more precise than John’s; the notes sounded clearer, cleaner. John knew the quirks of the song, but Paul didn’t seem to be thinking about them at all. When it ended, the boys nodded in quiet approval.
“There’s another one, Twenty Flight Rock,” Paul said, picking out a few notes whose melody sounded familiar to John. “Do you know it?”
Pete and Eric nodded.
“I do,” John murmured.
“Let me see if I can get it right,” Paul laughed, looking up thoughtfully as he placed his hand in position to start playing again.
Twenty Flight Rock wasn’t part of the band’s repertoire. The lyrics were too fast, and John struggled to remember them, or to make them up on the spot without losing the tempo. But he had the strange intuition that, despite what he was saying, Paul was completely certain he was going to get it right. And he did.
“Show-off,” Eric muttered when the song ended.
The remark made everyone laugh, including Paul. John, however, remained expressionless, glancing sideways at the Quarry Men’s second guitarist for a brief moment.
But the others didn’t notice, they were clearly taken with Paul’s skill, and he didn’t seem to have had enough, because he had already started playing another song, one John was sure he knew but couldn’t quite place, this time without asking permission.
“Last one, I promise,” Paul said, though he didn’t look remotely concerned about the possibility of becoming a nuisance. Suddenly, he straightened and looked behind him. John followed his gaze, which landed on the piano.
“Do you know if it works?” McCartney asked the boys, pointing at it.
There was a general shrug, which didn’t stop Paul. He got up and lifted the lid of the piano. He played a few notes, testing that the instrument was tuned well enough for what he had in mind, and, as it seemed to be, he began to sing at the same time.
John recognised it this time: it was Long Tall Sally, though how could he not. Suddenly, all that could be heard in the room were Paul McCartney’s howls. He looked like he had gone mad. Howls that, at the same time, formed a controlled, almost perfect imitation of Little Richard.
“Oh baby, yeah, baby, whoo-ooh, hoo-ooh, baby. Havin’ me some fun tonight, yeah, ow! Oh.”
At some point, Paul found himself surrounded by the boys, who had forgotten all about the fight for the armchairs and were laughing in disbelief and admiration at the performance, clapping along to the rhythm, even timidly dancing. Perhaps that was what encouraged Paul to mix the chords and lyrics of Long Tall Sally with Tutti Frutti and Ready Teddy, which John also knew.
There was a moment when Paul, smiling, looked John straight in the eye. John wasn’t sure how to read the look, but Paul didn’t seem to be thinking about what he was playing, he seemed to be enjoying it, and John knew that feeling. And yet he felt slightly relieved when Paul looked away and turned his attention elsewhere. When he went to take another drag from his cigarette, John realised he was going to have to light it again.
When Paul finally stopped playing, the band responded with a round of shy applause, solemn nods and more laughter, a lingering sense of excitement still hanging in the room, like the aftertaste of what they had just witnessed.
“Are you in a band?” Colin asked.
“Er, no,” Paul said, shaking his head.
The boys looked at him in surprise. All except John, who, almost by instinct, glanced at Pete on the other side of the piano. He wasn’t surprised to find his best friend looking back at him.
“Why?” Rod asked.
“I’ve always wondered the same thing,” Ivan cut in, having taken the opportunity to sit in John’s armchair, seemingly resigned to not understanding, or even finding an answer to the situation.
John narrowed his eyes. Of course McCartney wasn’t in a band. John had known that before he’d even said it. It was obvious: he wanted to be a Quarry Man. If not, what the hell was he doing here? Why else show up at a parish party in a neighbourhood that wasn’t his, ready to demonstrate his skills if asked?
But the Quarry Men were left without an answer, and in any case Paul didn’t stay much longer. He said he had arranged to meet a friend in Speke and needed to leave if he wanted to get back in time for dinner, so he said his goodbyes with his usual smile, saying he was pleased to have met them.
As soon as he went out through the door, the room fell silent. All eyes turned to John, expectant, like children waiting for their mothers to let them out to play with the kids from the neighbourhood before dinner. Even Ivan, usually discreet, seemed very interested in John’s opinion of what had just happened.
“What’s up?” John said, sitting down in the empty armchair.
“What do you mean, what’s up?” Nigel said, raising his eyebrows.
“Oh God, you hate him,” Eric laughed.
“Why would you say that?” John asked, now slightly irritated.
“Nothing,” Eric replied, with the smugness of someone enjoying a private joke.
Then Pete said something only he would have dared to say in those circumstances, in such a straightforward way.
“Well, we could let him in.”
Nigel pointed at Pete as if he had just taken the words out of his mouth. Eric smiled to himself. There was a general sense of agreement with the idea.
“I don’t know,” John said instead, shrugging. Then, looking directly at Eric, he added: “What would we do with a third guitarist?”
Eric’s smile faded for a fraction of a second before he looked away.
After a while, Nigel and Pete wandered off somewhere in search of more food, and whatever they had been trying to say went with them. But they weren’t away from the group for long, as the break from the adults had already dragged on too long. The time for the Quarry Men’s final performance that day was approaching, and they still had to move their rudimentary equipment to the church stage, a high-ceilinged room with a hard floor, in no way designed for anything resembling skiffle, let alone rock and roll.
John was the de facto leader of the Quarry Men. Although nobody had ever formally decided it, nor had there been any kind of democratic process, it hadn’t been necessary: the idea of forming a band had been his, and he was also the only one who seemed to care about it in any meaningful way. He chose the songs they would play, pushed his friends to practise and improve their musical skills, and decided when and where they rehearsed.
The rest of the Quarry Men generally went along with him, with little or nothing to add. That was how things worked: after all, they were all there to pass the time, Pete included, whom John was particularly fond of. Playing skiffle was cool, being in a band was cool. It was what everyone did, and it also caught the girls’ attention. There wasn’t much more to it than that.
Paul McCartney, on the other hand, seemed to resemble John in a different way. They both appeared to have a broader horizon. You could only have become that skilled on the guitar if you had taken it seriously. But John wasn’t the only one who had noticed that, the rest of the band had as well. And for someone that competent, that impressive, John wasn’t entirely sure he liked the position it put him in. He didn’t much enjoy recalling the image of the boy tuning his guitar as if it were nothing at all.
And yet, John found himself thinking about Paul McCartney several times over the summer. He thought of him before rehearsals at Pete’s house, when he was tuning his guitar; during the audition at the golf club (which, by the way, had been a success), with Sytner and Nigel as their only audience, when he started singing Be-Bop-A-Lula and his friends joined in with their instruments just as John was beginning to sing; the following week, when John went with Pete and Rod to NEMS to check out the latest records, and in the shop window were the newest Little Richard singles on display, at prohibitive prices, as usual.
By that point, sitting upstairs on the bus taking them back to the neighbourhood, John no longer knew what to think about the whole thing. Maybe he had been too quick to close doors that should have been left slightly ajar for the time being.
The journey back to Woolton was the usual one. They needed to take two buses: the first from the end of Great Charlotte Street, in the city’s neuralgic centre, where the record shop was located. That would take them to the Penny Lane bus stop, where another bus would bring them back up to Menlove Avenue, where the boys lived.
During the war, the people of Woolton had been fortunate. The most significant damage the neighbourhood suffered from German bombing was an incendiary bomb dropped in the middle of Woolton Road, which the neighbours managed to put out with sandbags before the authorities arrived. John was too young to remember it, but he had heard the story from Aunt Mimi countless times.
But Liverpool city centre was something else entirely; taking a walk around was enough to see it.
The year John was born, the docks and much of the surrounding area were reduced to ashes by the Germans in the space of a few nights. Even before the war had ended, workers and soldiers from all over England had arrived to rebuild it in a hurry, to prevent the country from collapsing economically altogether.
But there had been other problems that were solved either “with an exasperating slowness or in the form of botched jobs”, or so John had heard his Uncle George say throughout his childhood.
From the moving bus, it was possible to see empty lots scattered all over the city centre, some of which John vaguely remembered once having seen covered in rubble at some point in his life.
In recent years, a few of those still remained, but more often than not they were relatively clear now, used by groups of children playing, happy to have a park in the grey asphalt blocks where they lived, or even community-run vegetable patches where anything that could grow in that poor, ownerless soil was planted.
No one was entirely sure about the legality of it, but if a nosy citizen or any recognisable authority came asking questions, they would have to deal with the sailors who lived nearby because of the docks, which did not strike John as a particularly pleasant situation. It didn’t seem reasonable to argue bureaucratic technicalities with men who got up at dawn every day with no guarantee of bringing any money home.[3]
Elsewhere, things seemed to have started moving again, with buildings that had been half-finished for what felt like an eternity, surrounded by scaffolding, and entire stretches of cobblestones missing, revealing gaps where the heads of workers could be seen doing God knows what kind of urban modernisation projects.
As it happened, the bus had been stationary for a while, because part of the road was being resurfaced and the work was holding up traffic.
While he smoked, John half-listened to a conversation between two neighbours, their voices rising into the air and, clinging to the bus’s metal siding, reaching him through the half-open window, muffled by the sounds of the street. One of them was complaining that her husband had been out of work for six months, and had not done much with himself ever since the factory he worked at had shut its doors and put them all on the dole[4]. The other was talking about someone she knew who had joined the Merchant Navy and was doing very well.
John didn’t want to hear what the first woman said in reply. He got up from his seat as if it had started to burn, drawing the attention of his friends, who were half-asleep.
“What’s up?”
John put his hands on his hips. The bus started moving again, and he had to brace himself against the back of a seat, letting out a frustrated grunt.
Did Paul McCartney hate that bloody city as much as John did? Did Paul McCartney listen to rock and roll for the same reasons as him, that visceral, unshakable desire to be anywhere else? Or was he simply good at the guitar, and John just an idiot who had been impressed by a few well-placed notes?
He would like to know.
“I’m bored,” he muttered to his friends, sitting down on the other side of the bus.
“What are we doing tomorrow?” Rod asked after a strange silence.
John didn’t answer.
“We could go to the cinema,” Pete said. “There’s a good Western on.”
Was there any way of making McCartney his second-in-command? Would he be content with that, or would he want more? Was it worth the risk of no longer doing things his own way, the way that had always worked for them?
“Is that the one, Last Stagecoach West? My brother’s seen it, says it’s rubbish.”
And yet, perhaps that was exactly what John needed. Taking a risk. Looking for friction, throwing himself into it and coming out as something better. And if it all went wrong, he could always take a step back.
“Your brother doesn’t know anything.”
“Oi, hang on…”
Either way, John urgently needed to know how on earth he had learned to play Twenty Flight Rock like that. Putting that song into their set at the Cavern would be an absolute success.
“I’ve been thinking,” John cut into the conversation deliberately.
“That’s new,” Rod muttered.
“I’ve been thinking,” John repeated more slowly, ignoring his friend’s words. He could feel he was running out of patience, but he needed them to understand what he was about to say. “Maybe we should talk to McCartney.”
“About what?”
“See if he’s interested in joining the band.”
Rod and Pete looked at him, confused.
“And why are you thinking about this now?”
“Dunno. He’s alright.”
“What about all that talk of there not being room for three guitarists?” Pete said with a grin.
“We’ll sort that out,” John said, waving a hand dismissively. “Do we know where he lives in Allerton?”
Rod and Pete exchanged a look and shook their heads.
“Right, then we’ll have to ask Ivy,” John said, taking a drag from his cigarette and staring off into the distance.
A little later, when they got off at the Penny Lane interchange, he spoke again.
“What were you saying earlier about going to see whatever it was, Shotton?”
“A rubbish cowboy film,” Rod cut in before Pete could answer.
“What would you know about films?” John blurted out. Pete, his ever-loyal ally, just laughed. “Should we go, then?”
“Oi…”
“You don’t have to come if you don’t want to.”
“No, no, I’ll come with you.”
“Let’s go to the four o’clock showing.”
“Alright.”
“And rehearsal the day after tomorrow,” John said aloud, smiling to himself. “Maybe I’ll add a bit of rock and roll into the Cavern thing.”
“It’ll be full of jazz people. They’ll eat us alive.”
“You think I care?”
“They won’t get us off the stage,” Pete said with a grin.
John’s smile widened at the thought. If things went the way he thought they would, they might not even have to get to that point. Sometimes music could work miracles; a good number could make anyone willing to forgive another tribe’s mischief. That contingency was there, especially if, on stage, they had the diplomatic presence of a certain guitarist.
So, before heading home, John knocked on Ivan’s door, and Ivan gave him the information he needed. But when he got back to his house to pick up his bike and head over to Allerton for a ride, Mimi told him not to be so ridiculous, as it was dinnertime and it wasn’t proper to go round people’s houses bothering them. So he had to let it go.
That night, on his way down to get a glass of water before going to bed, he quietly took the portable radio and carried it up to his room.
It was Saturday. On Saturday nights, after the football, Radio Luxembourg aired the programme that everyone with even the slightest interest in rock and roll was obsessed with, Jamboree, or “120 minutes of exciting, non-stop, action-packed radio,” as its heading put it. Like all the neat things John knew, Radio Luxembourg had been introduced to him by his mother, one night he had stayed over with her, Julia and Jacqueline.
John got into bed and, under the sheets, switched on the radio. With his eyes closed, he turned the dial until he found the frequency he needed. It usually came in reasonably well at night, although sometimes the volume would dip and rise on its own, and there were bursts of interference and whistling[5], so John had to tune his ear, imagine certain chords, and be patient.
But this time he didn’t need to. When he picked up the signal, an Elvis song was just finishing, one John believed was called Teddy Bear[6]. And immediately afterwards, Little Richard’s voice came on, singing Long Tall Sally.
The corners of his mouth shifted slightly, as if something in him had been caught off guard by memory, a childish face, a voice breaking into a sung scream. But it soon settled back into stillness.
The next day, he got up late and didn’t manage to go to McCartney’s house either. In the morning, Bobby asked him if he could please paint the wooden fence surrounding the house where he lived with Julia and the girls, which took quite a while. He had lunch in a hurry there and finished just as his friends knocked on the door to go to the cinema together.
Rod turned out to be right: the film wasn’t very good. They came to that conclusion while having a smoke in Strawberry Field, probably John’s favourite place in Liverpool, a garden that, in summer, looked like something out of a fairy tale, which they could only reach by climbing over an ornate wrought-iron fence painted in a deep red. Despite being in the middle of the neighbourhood, the bushes softened the sound of the street, making it feel, with enough imagination, as if they were in the middle of open countryside.
And then Pete changed the subject.
“I ran into McCartney this morning.”
John was lying on the grass, eyes closed, enjoying the coolness of the summer air. At that, he lifted his head in surprise.
“Really?”
“Yeah.” Pete took a drag from his cigarette, thoughtful. He didn’t seem in any hurry to continue. “I was out on my bike and bumped into him. We had a chance to talk, well… about the band and that.”
“And?”
“Apparently he’s not interested,” he muttered.