The Beatles Boxed Set (16 page)

            Wanting
to nudge John to the right direction, Mimi lobbied hard to get John an
interview at Liverpool Art College. With the help of the school’s headmaster, John
got accepted to the college.

            Meanwhile,
though John was now attending Liverpool Art College, he still found time to
talk about music with Paul. And when Buddy Holly emerged just as John and Paul
began their musical friendship, they immersed themselves in Holly’s music by
devouring his music and studying them. Buddy Holly would later form his band,
the Crickets.

            When
Paul joined the Quarrymen, he already had a collection of original song lyrics
and chord changes. And when he appeared for his first rehearsal with the band, Colin
Hanton, the band’s drummer, recalled that Paul set about sharing his ideas. “He
set right in telling me how to play and what to do. There was no shyness about
him.”

            John
and Paul worked on their own Lennon-McCartney catalog. They had raw material
which would later become
I Lost My Little Girl, That’s My Woman, Thinking of
Linking, Years Roll Along, Keep Looking that Way,
and
Too Bad About
Sorrows
. The list also included instrumentals:
Looking Glass
and
Winston’s
Walk
.

            Early
on, it was clear that Paul already had the songwriting ability that John still
had to master. When he was 18, he wrote his very first song,
Hello Little
Girl
, which would become a UK top 10 hit for The Fourmost five years later.

            The
Quarrymen had their first paid gig on August 7, 1957 at the Cavern Club in downtown
Liverpool. Paul was away with his brother, Mike, at Scout camp in the village
of Hathersage. Alan Sytner started the club as a hangout for like-minded
purists, and he was worried that rock ‘n’ roll might attract rough customers. And
when Sytner booked the Quarrymen as an opening act, he made it clear that they
should stick to skiffle.

            John,
who didn’t care a bit about Sytner’s instructions, went through Del Vikings’
Come
Go with Me
, Presley’s
Hound Dog
and
Blue Suede Shoes
. Sytner
didn’t like it, and the Quarrymen were not invited to the club again.

            In
September, when John was sixteen, he entered Liverpool Art College. He exuded
the persona of a full-blown Teddy Boy, complete with greased hair, drainpipes
hugging his skinny legs and rude attitude. His appearance was what his college
peers considered ridiculous. It differed greatly with the rest of the student
population who wore turtlenecked bohemians and didn’t strive to look tough.

            At
Liverpool College of Art, John would spend the first two years studying
drawing, composition and perspective, lettering and life drawing. His last two
years would emphasize on independent work. Among the popular classes were those
on life drawing of nudes, and one day John sat on a model’s naked lap.

            This
was where John met Stuart Sutcliffe, the most talented painter in the class.
Though he was a year younger than most of them, Stu was admitted at the college
for his stunning portfolio. Soon, John found himself drawn to Stu. If Paul was
his musical intimate, then Stu was his artistic soul mate.

            Stu’s
talent stirred something new in John, and soon he would be hanging out with his
art crowd day and night, sometimes in the common room or the cafeteria or at
the Jacaranda coffee bar run by Allan Williams.

            Since
the Liverpool Institute was just beside the Liverpool College of Art, Paul
would usually stop by the canteen at lunchtime, and that became a key rehearsal
period for the Quarrymen. Paul performed with the group on October 18, 1957, at
New Clubmoor Hall. The band was also booked in Wilson Hall in the suburb of
Garston.

            Some
accounts claimed that it was in Wilson Hall in February 1958 that George
Harrison first heard the group play. George was only 14 then and came from
Speke, where the McCartneys once lived.

George Harrison, shown here with Paul

            John
would later discover that Paul and George already knew each other then. George
was behind a year at the Liverpool Institute and shared an interest in music
and guitar-playing. They continued meeting on their daily bus on their way to
the Institute. One day, Paul heard him playing
Raunchy
, a Western
instrumental popularized by guitarist Bill Justis.

            Paul
was impressed enough that he had George play
Raunchy
for John. However,
John didn’t allow him to become a member yet of the Quarrymen as he was too
young, but would admit him into the band later on.

            By
this time, John was sharing a flat on Gambier Terrace with Stu, and they would
invite their friends to their place for a night of drinking sessions and
all-night parties. Paul would also drop by, sometimes taking his guitar with
him for a bit of playing and songwriting. John had also learned to take
Benzedrine and other drugs to fuel their all- night parties.

            Gradually,
the Quarrymen became different than what it was before. Some of the original
members were kicked out, including Eric Griffiths, Len Garry, Rod Davis, and
Pete Shotton. With these departures came an addition to the band, George
Harrison, a pianist named John Lowe and Stuart Sutcliffe as bassist. Lowe
didn’t stay long with the band, and drummer Colin Hanton also decided to leave.

John’s
world came crashing down the evening of July 15, 1958 when he was 17 years old.
That night, he went to his mother’s house and waited for her to come home with
her live-in boyfriend and their daughters. They had grown closer in the last
couple of months. Though the relationship was not quite maternal, John was
thankful that they were friends. Judy had seemed to make up for the lost time,
and John was only too happy to visit often.

            As
it turned out, Judy was at his house to visit with Mimi. She bade goodbye at
about 9PM and spoke briefly with Nigel Walley who came looking for John. She
then set out across the street to wait for the bus home.

            When
Judy stepped out of the hedge that traced the edge of a grassy median, she was
hit by a speeding car. The impact sent her flying a hundred feet down the road.
Walley, who had seen the accident, ran to her side and knew that she was dead.

            Judy’s
death was a devastating event for John – who was already scarred from losing
his mother when he was a child – just when things were going ok between them.
He was too distraught that he couldn’t talk about it with Paul though he knew
that Paul went through the same loss when his mother died less than two years
ago.

            John
became a recluse, only leaving the house to go to a pub and drown his misery
with a drink or two. And when drunk, he would snap at his friends or pick
fights with strangers. He also neglected practicing with his band mates. The
guitar that Judy had bought him gathered dust in the corner.

            A
few weeks later, John allowed Paul to sit with him and to try to write songs.
Then Paul organized rehearsals at John’s house to make it convenient for him.
They went through this arrangement throughout the fall as they returned to
their respective schools. John’s behavior became even more hostile that,
according to friend Bill Harry, “A lot of people lost their patience with
John.”

            Throughout
John’s mourning for Julia, Paul never left his side. Paul would sometimes sneak
away from his classes to join John at the Jacaranda coffeehouse or drink and
listen to rock ‘n’ roll songs on the jukebox at Ye Cracke pub. Though they
never talked about the pain of losing their mothers, the feelings of loss made
their friendship even stronger.

As
it was getting harder for John to stay at Mendips, he agreed to move in with
Stu Sutcliffe and used his art college as an office for his music. It was also
around this time that John had himself a steady girlfriend, a brunette named
Cynthia Powell that he met from his lettering class. They quickly found out each
of them suffered from myopia but were too proud to wear glasses.

            They
first met when John, who never brought any drawing materials with him, borrowed
pens and pencils from Cynthia. She would find out that John was only there
because other teachers refused to instruct him. Surprisingly, John, along with
his friend Geoff Mohammed, would make fun of Cynthia by stopping their
conversation when she walked in the room, saying, “Quiet please! No dirty
jokes; it’s Cynthia.”

            Cynthia
once heard John give a compliment to a girl with blonde hair who looked similar
to the French actress Brigitte Bardot. A few days later, Cynthia showed up at
the college with her hair several shades blonder. John quickly noticed and
said, “Get you, Miss Hoylake!” (John’s nickname for her).

John and Cynthia Powell, who would be his
first wife

            At
a college party, John asked Cynthia if she would like to go out with him.
Cynthia responded by saying she was already engaged to a young man in Hoylake,
to which John replied icily, “I didn’t ask you to fuckin’ marry me, did I?”

            They
eventually began dating, with John now referring to her as “Cyn.” Cynthia ended
her engagement to be with him and John ended his relationship with another art
student, Thelma Pickles.

            Their
mutual friends were surprised by the couple’s romance. They knew John as a
tough guy who sometimes turned violent, particularly when drunk, and Cynthia as
a quiet girl who was completely different from the rest of John’s friends. But
Cynthia didn’t escape John’s violent streak completely. John could be overly
jealous, like one time when he saw her dance with Stu. He slapped her across
the face for doing so. She broke up with him for three months but reconciled
with him after he apologized profusely. There was also one time when a cleaning
lady saw John hitting Cynthia and suggested that she stay away from him.

            Though
John physically hurt her and was rarely faithful, Cynthia stood by him.

The
Quarrymen continued gigging sporadically.

George Harrison found the band a gig in December 1958
playing for his brother Harry’s wedding at the Harrisons’ in Speke. That gig
was followed by another and another at family and private events. The Quarrymen
also played on New Year’s Day, 1959, for George’s father’s Speke Bus Depot
Social Club’s belated Christmas party.

The summer of 1959, they learned that there was a new club
opening up called the Casbah Coffee Club run by Mona Best who had turned her
large basement into a dance hall. One of her two sons was Pete, a shy but
good-looking guy who became “the Lost Beatle.” Pete would eventually become the
band’s drummer.

The band went through different name changes beginning in
early 1960. Stu suggested that they use the name Beatals as a tribute to Buddy
Holly and The Crickets. They used the name until May, when they began using the
name Silver Beetles. This name would evolve to Silver Beatles by July and to
the Beatles by the middle of August.

The band, under the name the Silver Beetles, got a small
break in early 1960 when Allan Williams found them a job backing the singer
Johnny Gentle. By then Williams was serving as the band’s manager, and he came
up with Tommy Moore as the band’s drummer. The boys were excited and they all
dropped their school commitments for the 10-day tour of Scotland’s dance halls.