Paul McCartney thought John Lennon was “ingenious” the first time he saw him performing with The Quarry Men. There was something about John that Paul instantly connected with, and they became bandmates soon after.
Paul McCartney had seen John Lennon around before they officially met
In The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present, Paul wrote that he’d seen John around Liverpool before they officially met in 1957. Paul said he thought John looked cool, but he doesn’t know if they’d have started talking to each other.
“I’d seen him a couple of times and thought, ‘Wow, you know, he’s an interesting looking guy,’” Paul told John’s youngest son Sean Ono Lennon during a BBC Radio 2 special commemorating what would have been John’s 80th birthday.
Then, Paul saw John at a fish and chips shop and realized he was the cool guy on the bus. “I’m talking to myself, in my mind I thought, ‘I saw that guy off the bus, oh he’s pretty cool-looking. Yeah, you know, he’s a cool guy,’” Paul explained.
All Paul knew at that point was that they both seemed to like the 1950s “Teddy Boy” fashion. “All of us were trying to do a bit of that at that point, so if you ever noticed someone who was trying to do it you thought, ‘I’ll probably get on well with him,’” Paul explained.
“But I didn’t know anything about him. And I didn’t know who he was except that I’d seen him on the bus and I’d seen him in the fish and chip shop.”
Paul also had yet to learn that they had a mutual friend, Ivan Vaughan.
Paul thought John was ‘ingenious’ the first time he saw him perform
In The Lyrics, Paul wrote that Vaughan invited him to come to the Woolton Village Fête at St Peter’s Church on a hot July day in 1957. He initially agreed to go because he wanted to “pick up a girl.” However, he became awestruck once he saw a skiffle group performing on a tiny flatbed truck.
During an interview for The Beatles Anthology, Paul remembered that he landed eyes on John immediately as he came to the church’s field. He seemed “cool,” wearing his checkered shirt and playing a guitar “guaranteed not to crack.”
The Quarry Men were playing The Del-Vikings’ “Come Go With Me.” Eric Griffiths was on the guitar, Colin Hanton played the drums, Rod Davies a banjo, Pete Shotton a washboard, and Len Garry a tea-chest bass.
Paul was amazed. He realized the frontman was the same guy he’d seen on the bus and chip shop and that the “cool” guy seemed just as interested in rock ‘n’ roll. The Quarry Men were good, but they weren’t that good. What was interesting about them was what John was doing.
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Listening closely to what he was singing, Paul realized John only vaguely knew the lyrics and improvised as he went along. “He was singing something like ‘Come, come, come, come, go with me, down to the penitentiary,’” Paul remembered. “Those are definitely not the words, but he must have pulled that from Lead Belly or somebody else. I thought that was pretty ingenious of him.”
Vaughan introduced his friends to one another in between The Quarry Men’s performances. Paul had his guitar with him and played “Twenty Flight Rock” by Eddie Cochran, his “party piece.”
John was impressed Paul knew all the words.
John didn’t directly ask Paul to join The Quarry Men
Paul called his first meeting with John a pivotal moment in his life. However, things changed even more drastically when Shotton asked Paul to join The Quarry Men. It wasn’t John who asked his future bandmate, and Paul later realized that was typical.
“That was a very John thing to do – have someone else ask me so he wouldn’t lose face if I said no,” Paul wrote. “John often had his guard up, but that was one of the great balances between us. He could be quite caustic and witty, but once you got to know him, he had this lovely warm character. I was more the opposite: pretty easy-going and friendly, but I could be tough when needed.”
Paul and John seemed to connect without having met yet. However, joining The Quarry Men would be a big thing for Paul. He didn’t like jumping into anything hastily. So he told Shotton he’d think about it.
During an interview on The Howard Stern Show, Paul said, “I didn’t immediately go, ‘Yeah!’ I’m like that; I don’t rush into things. I think I’m allowed to have a minute to think about it because, wait a minute, ‘Do I want to be in a band? I’ve never been in a band. Do I want to be in this band?’”
In The Lyrics, Paul wrote, “I wasn’t exactly playing hard to get. But I was a careful young fellow. I wondered whether I really wanted to be in a band. Was this a good thing, or should I be trying to study for school?”
Paul decided to join The Quarry Men after thinking about it thoroughly for about a week. “I decided, yeah, we could do something with this band,” Paul said.
Then, Paul and John became inseparable, living inside each other’s pockets, and The Beatles were born.
