There Beneath The Blue Suburban Skies

 

Liverpool is a relatively compact city, I was driven all over it on a tour, looking for the places important to the story of The Beatles.

Some great Beatles sights and info on this tour: Ultimate Beatles Ticket To Ride Half Day Shore Excursion, available on Viator. Jean knows her Beatles. She even knows someone whose mother was delivered by Paul’s mother.

The Beatles!

These four young men from Liverpool met in the Fifties, rose to the highest heights of fame in the Sixties, parted in the Seventies, and in the twenty-twenties are pretty much acknowledged legends. I’ve been interested in finding out where they came from. 

Liverpool is a British port city in northwest England that made its living from shipping (and, way back, that meant the slave trade). Modern Liverpool is experiencing a resurgence as a thriving city. Back in the fifties, it had just weathered World War II. The boys who became the Beatles were born during the conflict. And postwar England could be a grim place to grow up. For them, rock n’ roll made the difference.

They came from different parts of the city, but wound up together and developed into Liverpool’s favorite sons by bringing their music to the entire world. Therefore, they now have monuments and memorials all over the city. 

The Beatles Statues are on Pier Head, where they walk toward the River Mersey on their way to conquer the world. 

Sculpted by Andrew Edwards, they were donated by the Cavern Club (yes, that Cavern Club) and are lined up larger than life as they walk along the streets of their home town. Edwards modeled them on this photo (taken by Dezo Hoffman) of the Beatles outside the BBC recording studios in London:

They weigh 1.2 tons, that’s a lot of Beatle. There are many little touches to the statues that observers can find if they know what to look for. 

First of all, their order has been changed - the way the statues are lined up reflects their usual stage lineup; Paul and George to the left, Ringo set back from the others, and John at the right. Paul and George are conversing; they were the first of the Beatles to meet. 

In his left hand, Paul holds a camera. He has spent most of his life surrounded closely by photographers. His younger brother, Mike, took up photography as a teen and has documented quite a bit of the lives of his brother and friends before they were famous. The Beatles, being super famous, always had photographers around. Paul married a photographer, Linda Eastman, whose lens captured the end of the band, plus much of the McCartneys’ family life post-Beatles. Now, their daughter Mary is a photographer. As observed at a recent exhibition of photos Paul took in the Sixties, he’s quite a good photographer himself. According to the sculptor, that is Paul’s own Pentax he is holding.

On George’s belt is a mantra in Sanskrit. It translates, roughly, to “The Infinite Beyond Conception, we meditate upon that Light of Wisdom, which is the  Supreme Wealth of God.” The inscription reflects George’s dedication to meditation and Indian spirituality.

Under Ringo’s foot is etched ‘L8,” which is his childhood home’s post code.

John clutches two acorns in his right hand. In June 1968, shortly after they became a couple, John and Yoko planted two acorns in the garden of Coventry Cathedral. After their marriage in 1969, they sent a pair of acorns to a number of world leaders, asking them to plant the acorns for peace. The acorns held by John’s statue are cast from actual acorns that were picked up in New York’s Central Park, near the Strawberry Field memorial (located just across the street from the Dakota apartments, where John’s life tragically ended.)

The beginning of the Beatles’ story was simply a meeting between two teenage boys who then lived only a mile apart, but on different sides of the proverbial track.  John Lennon, 16, was the leader of a band made up of a group of his pals - many Liverpool boys were getting together in groups to play “skiffle,” a precursor of rock n’ roll. They would need a couple of guitars or banjos, a drummer if they could find one, a bass made out of a tea chest, and maybe a guy to play the washboard. This wasn’t difficult for a charismatic youth like John to assemble. He had been playing guitar for awhile, mostly influenced by Elvis, Chuck Berry, and Buddy Holly. His mother, Julia, taught him to play; she was a banjo player, and he learned to play using banjo chords. 

John and his friends wanted to call their band the Blackjacks, but that name was already taken. They went with the Quarrymen; most of them attended Quarry Bank Grammar School. Ivan Vaughan, who lived in the house behind John’s and had known him since they were small boys, played tea chest bass for the Quarrymen before his parents made him quit goofing off with “that John Lennon” to concentrate on school. Fifteen-year-old Ivan attended the Liverpool Institute for Boys, a  grammar school only slightly more prestigious than Quarry Bank (students in England at the time, who managed to pass the difficult entrance exams, attended grammar school from ages 11-17. Its overarching purpose was to prepare students for university. Those who didn’t pass went to “normal school” and generally into the trades.)

The Quarrymen got on about as well as any teenage band in the area, and played a couple of 

(unpaid) gigs.  On July 6, 1957 the Quarrymen undertook a “booking” to play at the annual fete at St. Peter’s Church in Woolton. 

An auspicious occasion.

St. Peter’s was John’s local church, and he sang in the choir when he was younger. It would not have been difficult for his band to land the church gig. The Quarrymen rode in as part of the procession on the back of a flatbed truck. They were to play three sets; one at about 4 pm in the church garden, to entertain the children and teenagers in attendance; a second set in the garden at 5:45; and finally at 8 pm in the church hall, for dancing.

St. Peter’s Church, Woolton, Liverpool

Among the attendees at the St. Peter’s fete was John’s neighbor and pal, Ivan Vaughan, who brought along a friend of his from the Liverpool Institute. Ivan wanted to introduce this friend to John, as both of them played guitar and were obsessed with music.  His name was Paul McCartney.

Paul, around the time of his fifteenth birthday. Photo by Mike McCartney

Paul, who had just turned fifteen, didn’t really want to go to a church party to meet Ivan’s friend, but he thought it likely there would be teenage girls there. So he put on a white sport jacket and dark drainpipe trousers, slicked his hair back in an Elvis quiff, and went along. He and Ivan arrived in time to watch the Quarrymen playing in the garden on a little stage, surrounded by small children. 

John was singing “Come Go With Me” by the Del-Vikings (a favorite of Paul’s) but he couldn’t remember the words, so he was making them up as he went along (“Come and go with me, down to the penitentiary”). Paul, fortunately, found his improvisations to be clever. He thought Ivan’s friend sang well, and looked good onstage, but the group’s guitars were out of tune and the chords were strange.

What Paul saw. Photo by Geoff Rhind

The Quarrymen finished their sets, and traipsed off to the church hall across the street to have a tea break (or maybe something stronger) and get ready to play for the dance.  Paul and Ivan, having nothing better to do, hung around the fair in anticipation of watching the evening set, and maybe meeting some girls to dance with. Eventually, which better researchers have narrowed down to between 6:48 and 7:00 pm, they wandered over to the church hall.

The church hall in 2024

Paul and Ivan might have walked in this way, through the side door

This illustration, by artist Eric Cash, hangs in the church hall at St. Peter’s today. Paul doesn’t remember whether he actually brought along his guitar or not, but I tend to think he didn’t haul it around with him all day and borrowed John’s or one of the other Quarrymen’s guitars. Although Paul is left-handed, he’s capable of playing a right-handed guitar upside down, as he was back then; if he did, that was likely to impress John even more.

The plaque mounted outside St. Peter’s Church Hall

Anyway, nobody remembers  much of what was actually said between the two boys when Ivan introduced them at St. Peter’s church hall  in the summer of 1957. They must have sized each other up, John in his checkered shirt and jeans, Paul in his where-are-the-girls-at ensemble. As teenage boys do, they pretended to be nonchalant (remembered by both John and Paul.) Paul brought up that the band’s guitars were out of tune- and he offered to tune them. None of the Quarrymen knew how to do that. At some point, he probably pointed out John’s use of banjo chords. And then, whether he was asked to or not, Paul played and sang a perfect version of Eddie Cochran’s song “Twenty Flight Rock.”

Go listen to “Twenty Flight Rock” - that is not an easy song, especially for a fifteen-year-old boy who has been playing for a bit less than a year.  It seems as though Paul was actually interested in impressing John. One thing that is said about Paul is that he’s an excellent mimic and probably sounded a great deal like Eddie himself. Anyway, John WAS impressed. He made sure not to show it, though.

For good measure, Paul the born performer played “Be Bop A Lula” (a favorite of John’s) and then showed off his Little Richard imitation on the hall’s piano. 

The spot where John and Paul met. The hall mostly hasn’t changed. There was a stage along the back wall, which has been removed and is now in the Museum of Liverpool. The boys were sitting on metal chairs in front of the stage.

After their meeting, it appears not much happened right away, because John was weighing the idea of whether he wanted Paul in his band or not. On the one hand, he knew the kid would be an asset; on the other, he might be a bit too good and try to take over the leadership role. About a week later, in typical teenage fashion, John mentioned to his best friend Pete Shotton (who was the Quarrymen’s washboard player) that if Pete happened to see that Paul McCartney around, he should ask him if he’d join the band. 

As it worked out, Pete ran into Paul not long after. Paul said he’d be interested, but his family was going off on summer holiday and it would be after that. Paul didn’t publicly debut with the Quarrymen until October, but history was already made. (His debut would set the stage for more history regarding one of Paul’s closest friends.)

But wait, there’s more, we have not left St. Peter’s yet. In the graveyard is a famous headstone designating the Rigby family plot.

The Beatles’ hit song, “Eleanor Rigby,” was written primarily by Paul in 1966. He recalls casting around to find a name for his titular character, taking “Eleanor” from the actress Eleanor Bron and “Rigby” off a shop sign. It just sounded right to him. But back in the fifties, he and John spent a good amount of time hanging out in the graveyard at St. Peter’s with friends, it was just a good place for teenagers to meet, talk, have a smoke or a drink.  This is the view of the gravestones that the boys would have had while sitting on the perimeter wall, hanging out. It’s almost certain, which Paul admits, that he probably pulled “Eleanor Rigby” out of his subconscious, especially the imagery associated with “died in the church and was buried along with her name.” (There’s also a stone with the name “McKenzie” on it, although Paul’s story is that he originally sang the priest’s name as “Father McCartney” and changed it to McKenzie to avoid  confusion with his own father. He probably got McKenzie from somewhere, though.)

Eleanor is not the only Beatles-adjacent occupant of the graveyard, John’s Uncle George is also in a family plot here.

Up next: Paul and John on their Liverpool childhoods