4 paul and the quarrymen
As a child, Paul showed no particular interest in music. Both he and his brother Michael were sent once for a couple of piano lessons, but nothing happened. ‘We made the mistake of starting them in the summer,’ says Jim. ‘The teacher used to come to the house and all the kids would be knocking at our door all the time, wanting them to come out and play. So I made them go to the teacher’s house, but that didn’t last long.’
Jim also wanted Paul to join Liverpool Cathedral Choir. ‘I made him go, but he deliberately cracked his voice in the audition. Later on he did join St Barnabas Choir, near Penny Lane, for a while.’
Later still Paul was given an old trumpet by an uncle, on which he managed to pick out tunes, teaching himself. This talent for picking up music came from his father. As a boy, Jim taught himself to play the piano. Of all the Beatles’ parents, Paul’s father was the only one with any experience of being a musician.
‘I never had any lessons. I just used to pick out chords on an old secondhand piano someone gave us when I was about 14 and living in Everton. It came from North End Music Stores — NEMS — I can remember the name on it. I had good rhythm and could knock out most tunes. I never disgraced myself.’
Not long after he had started work, Jim McCartney began a little ragtime band to play at works dances. This was around 1919, when he was 17.
Their first public performance was a dance in St Catherine’s Hall, Vine Street, Liverpool. ‘We thought we would have some sort of gimmick so we put black masks on our faces and called ourselves “The Masked Melody Makers”. But before halftime, we were sweating so much that the dye was running down our faces. That was the beginning and end of the Masked Melody Makers.’
Instead they called themselves ‘Jim Mac’s Band’. They all wore dinner jackets with paper shirt fronts and cuffs. ‘They were very good. You could buy paper cuffs twelve for a penny. No one could tell the difference.
‘I ran that band for about four or five years, just part-time. I was the alleged boss, but there was no distinctions.
‘We played once at the first local showing of the film The Queen of Sheba. We didn’t know what to play. When the chariot race started we played a popular song of the time called “Thanks for the Buggy Ride”. And when the Queen of Sheba was dying we played “Horsy Keep Your Tail Up”.’
When the Second World War came, and a family, Jim packed in his playing career, although he often played a bit on the piano at home. ‘Paul was never interested when I played the piano. But he loved listening to music on his earphones in bed. Then suddenly he wanted a guitar, when he was 14. I didn’t know what made him want it.’
His guitar cost £15 and Paul couldn’t get anything out of it at first. There seemed to be something wrong with it. Then he realized it was because he was left-handed. He took it back and got it altered. ‘I’d never been really keen on the trumpet. But I liked the guitar because I could play it after just learning a few chords. I could also sing to it at the same time.’
He’d followed pop music since he was about 12, like most of his friends. The first concert he went to was Eric Delaney’s Band at the Liverpool Empire when he was twelve. At 14 he queued up in his lunch hour from school to see Lonnie Donegan. ‘I remember he was late arriving. He wrote out little notes for the factory girls explaining it was his fault they were late back as he’d kept them waiting.
‘We used to hang around the stage door waiting for anybody and get their autographs. I once queued up for Wee Willie Harris’s autograph.’
He also went to the Pavilion. ‘That was where they had the nude shows. They would strip off absolutely starkers. Some of them were all right as well. It was funny, letting us in at that age. But it was just good clean dirty fun.’
Like John and the others, he was influenced by the skiffle phase and Bill Haley’s early rock numbers, but, like John again, it wasn’t till Elvis Presley that he was really bowled over. ‘That was the biggest kick. Every time I felt low I just put on an Elvis and I’d feel great, beautiful. I’d no idea how records were made and it was just magic. “All Shook Up”! Oh, it was beautiful!’
When he got his guitar, he tried to play Elvis numbers or whatever else was popular. His best impersonation was of Little Richard.
‘I used to think it was awful,’ says his father. ‘Absolutely terrible. I couldn’t believe anybody was really like that. It wasn’t till years later when I saw Little Richard, on the same bill as the Beatles, that I realized how good Paul’s impersonation was.’
‘The minute he got the guitar, that was the end,’ says Michael. ‘He was lost. He didn’t have time to eat or think about anything else. He played it on the lavatory, in the bath, everywhere.’
There was another friend from his class, Ian James, from the Dingle, who also got a guitar about the same time. He and Paul used to go around together, with their guitars. They played to each other, teaching each other bits they’d learned. ‘We used to go round the fairs,’ says Paul, ‘listening to the latest tunes on the Waltzer and trying to pick them up. We also tried to pick up birds. That never worked. I haven’t got the flair for picking them up like that.’
Both Paul and Ian James wore the same sort of white sports jackets — after the pop song ‘A White Sports Coat’. ‘It had speckles in it and flaps over the pockets. We used to have black drainies as well. We used to go around everywhere together dressed the same and think we were really flash. We both had Tony Curtis haircuts. It took us hours to get it right.’
Jim McCartney tried to stop Paul dressing the way he did, but didn’t get very far. ‘Paul was very clever,’ says Michael. ‘When he bought a new pair of trousers, he’d bring them home for Dad to see how wide they were and he would say OK. Then he would take them back and get them altered. If Dad noticed afterwards, he’d swear blind they were what he’d agreed.’
‘I was very worried he’d turn out a Teddy Boy,’ says Jim. ‘I had a dread of that. I said over and over again that he wasn’t going to have tight trousers. But he just wore me down. His hair was always long as well, even then. He’d come back from the barber’s and it would just look the same and I’d say, “Was it closed, then?”’
Paul was just as interested in girls as the guitar. ‘I got it for the first time at 15. I suppose that was a bit early to get it. I was about the first in my class. She was older and bigger than me. It was at her house. She was supposed to be babysitting while her mum was out. I told everybody at school next day, of course. I was a real squealer.’
Paul remembers vividly that day in the summer of 1957 when Ivan mentioned that he was going to Woolton Parish Church to see this group he sometimes played with, though he wasn’t actually playing with them that day. Paul said yes, he’d come along and see them. Might be a few girls to pick up.
‘They weren’t bad,’ says Paul. ‘John played the lead guitar. But he played it like a banjo, with banjo chords, as that was all he knew.
‘None of the others had even as much idea as John how to play. They were mostly just strumming along.
‘They played things like “Maggie May”, but with the words a bit different. John had done them up himself as he didn’t know them all.
‘They were playing outdoors in a big field. John was staring round as he was playing, watching everybody. He told me afterwards that it was the first time he tried sussing an audience, you know, sizing them up, seeing whether it was best to twist a shoulder at them, or best not to move at all.
‘I was in my white sports coat and black drainies, as usual. I’d just got them narrowed again during the dinner-hour from school. They were so narrow they knocked everybody out.