That evening the group were due to play again, minus Colin Hanton, this time at the Grand Dance in the church hall on the other side of the road. They were due on stage at 8pm, and admission to the show, in which the Quarrymen alternated on stage with the George Edwards Band, was two shillings.
While setting up their equipment to play, the Quarrymen’s sometime tea-chest bass player, Ivan Vaughan, introduced the band to one of his classmates from Liverpool Institute, the 15-year-old Paul McCartney.
This historic occasion was the first time McCartney met John Lennon, a year his senior. McCartney wore a white jacket with silver flecks, and a pair of black drainpipe trousers.
The pair visited for a couple of minutes, and McCartney demonstrated to Lennon generally accepted methods to tune a guitar – the instruments claimed by Lennon and Griffiths were in G banjo tuning. McCartney then sang Eddie Cochran’s Twenty Flight Rock and Gene Vincent’s Be-Bop-A-Lula, alongside a mixture of tunes by Little Richard.
July 6, 1957, the day John Lennon first met Paul McCartney.
Our companion, Thom Wolke, once dealt with the Quarrymen. He sent us this family photograph from Rod Davis. The photo was made amid a parade on the back of a lorry.
It was taken a few hours before by Davis’ dad before the more popular photograph by Geoff Rhind was taken.
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
I also knocked around on the backstage piano and that would have been A Whole Lot Of Shakin’ by Jerry Lee. That’s when I remember John leaning over, contributing a deft right hand in the upper octaves and surprising me with his beery breath. It’s not that I was shocked, it’s just that I remember this particular detail.
John Lennon, Philip Norman
The particular detail was later recalled by McCartney in his introduction to Lennon’s first book, In His Own Write:
At Woolton village fete I met him. I was a fat schoolboy and, as he leaned an arm on my shoulder, I realised he was drunk. We were twelve then, but, in spite of his sideboards, we went on to become teenage pals.
In His Own Write, John Lennon
The two were extremely awed with each other. As John reviewed, “I dug him.” So much so John requested that Paul join his juvenile band the following day. John expressed that he settled on the pivotal choice fairly begrudgingly. “I was the kingpin”, John said-much more capable than his kindred bandmates. Be that as it may, he knew how capable Paul was from the underlying meeting. Therefore, with Paul’s undeniable ability and identity, his settled upon and unchallenged position as the gathering’s “pioneer” would be in danger, or possibly, reduced to some extent. “I needed to choose whether to make myself more grounded or make the gathering more grounded”, John reviewed. Luckily for music fans the world over, John chose to “make the gathering more grounded” and requested that Paul join.
Well thank you for this gift!