The Beatles Boxed Set (4 page)

            But
Mike refused. His arm was still in a sling; he’d broken his arm after Paul
instigated a cliff-hanging experiment. He was also scared to sing in front of
an audience.

            Paul
then enlisted Jim, who convinced his younger son to join his brother. “It’s only
a bit of fun. What have you got to lose?”

            Mike
finally agreed. It was their first and last time to perform as a duo. Paul sang
Long Tall Sally
in the closing of their set. Though they didn’t won the
£5,000 prize, they won themselves a fan, a girl by the name Angela who sent
lovelorn letters long after the camp ended. The letters were for Mike, but he
read, or saw, none of these letters for years because his jealous older brother
took the letters from the family’s mailbox to read for himself.

            Paul’s
first rehearsal as member of the Quarrymen was one Saturday afternoon by the
end of the summer. The members would usually rehearse at Eric Griffith’s house
because his father had died in the war and his mother was often away working. There
was plenty of space for those who wanted to listen and cheer them on.

            That
afternoon, Paul came with his guitar and wanted to show them how many songs he
knew. Colin recalled, “He was very nice, very polite. Very clean, too, always
very well turned-out. He got John and Eric playing guitar chords, tuning their
guitars properly. He taught them both how to play, I’m pretty sure.”

            Eventually,
the McCartney home would also be open for the members for their rehearsals. And
Paul would often sit in front of the piano and show off what he knew. But it
didn’t end there. Colin recalled, “Paul was very intent on telling me how to
play things,” adding that Paul would sometimes stand next to the drums and used
his fingers to create rhythms in the snare drum that he wanted the drummer to emulate.
He did this too many times that it began to annoy Colin. “I was not best
pleased by that.”

            But
John didn’t seem to mind. In fact, he would tell them, “Do what he says.” But
this seemed a little jarring for the other members, noting how Paul, who was
younger than all of them, was so confident in his abilities. But more than
anything, John had always made it clear that the Quarrymen was his band. No one
can stop him from choosing the members, from assigning the parts, and from
singing their songs. Anyone who challenged him would soon learn the errors of
his ways.

            Rod
Davis said, “John did have a mean streak. He was brilliant and funny, but he
could be unpleasant.”

            It
would soon be clear that Paul was a subject of John’s favoritism. Colin Hanton
said, “If John didn’t like him, he never would have let him near the microphone.
But when Paul joined, he was more than happy to share and let Paul sing his
songs. There was a lot of respect. Mutual respect. You could see the friendship
developing. And they harmonized from day one.”

            John
gave Paul much leeway when it comes to making decisions regarding the band. Paul
suggested what they should wear when performing, how the guys with the guitars
should be up front with the rest behind them. Colin recalled, “So from this
scruffy bunch of skifflers, we became this sort of sharply dressed kind of rock
band.”

            The
band performed on October 18 at a Conservative Club dance in the suburb of
Norris Green. Paul had a solo performance that night. He had rehearsed relentlessly
for his part, but when it came for his solo, he was so nervous he missed his
cue for the solo part and botched most of the notes. Nevertheless, the show’s
promoter invited the band to be a regular attraction at the Saturday-night
dances he was booking across the city that hall.

            It
was a good start for Paul in the Quarrymen.

Even
years after The Beatles disbanded, the friendship between Paul McCartney and
John Lennon continued. From the time they first time they met on July 6, 1957, it
was clear that they hit it off immediately. They had so many things in common,
including their interest in music.

            When
you look at Paul and John, it was easy to see them as mirror image of each
other. When they sat in front of each other, the necks of their guitars pointed
in the same direction, what with one being right-handed and the other,
left-handed. Their personalities mirrored each other as well. John was
hot-headed while Paul was ingratiating. But they also shored up one another’s
weaknesses. Paul’s showmanship was a thing for John, while Paul admired John’s
intelligence and his willingness to say the brutal things that Paul was
thinking but was unable to say.

Paul and John became the closest among
the Beatles

            Aside
from their interest in music, one thing that strengthened their friendship was
being motherless at such a young age. Paul’s mother died of breast cancer when
he was 14, an experience that shocked him and his family.

John’s mother, on the other hand, died when she was struck
by a car on her way home. John was only 17 then. But even before John’s mother
death, he had already experienced rejection after his parents divorced and left
him under the care of his Aunt Mimi.

The weeks and months following the death of John’s mother,
he was sorely devastated. He retreated to his room, and only left it when he
would go to a pub and drown his sorrows with alcohol. He became violent,
lashing out at his friends and picking a fight with strangers. And his violent
behavior led to people losing their patience with him.

But Paul stayed by his friend’s side. He would sometimes
sneak away from his classes to drink coffee at the Jacaranda coffeehouse or
spending the afternoon at Ye Cracke pub where they’d nurse pints and punch rock
‘n’ roll songs on the jukebox. Paul certainly enjoyed hanging out with his
friend than sitting behind his desk and listening to his teachers all day.

            Maybe
they didn’t often discuss their grief with each other, but experts argued that
their experiences further strengthened their friendship. They shared mutual
feelings of loss, and that was something that connected the two of them. It
was, according to Paul, a “special bond for us, something of ours, a special
thing.”

            After
Paul flubbed his solo on his first performance with the Quarrymen, he showed
the lyrics to the first song he wrote,
I Lost My Little Girl.
John liked
it and in turn showed Paul some of the songs he had written. He suggested that
all of the songs they wrote would be credited to Lennon-McCartney, whether they
worked together on it or not.

Paul and John were the major songwriters
of their band

            In
just a few years, the band, which by then went by the name The Beatles, was
propelled into stardom after performing in Hamburg and breaking international sales
records. It was the birth of Beatlemania, but it also meant that it would strip
them of their privacy. However, Paul and John still wrote the majority of their
songs. When they were writing
I Want to Hold Your Hand
, John recalled,
“Paul hits this chord, and I turn to him and say, That’s it! Do that again! In
those days, we really used to write like that – both playing into each other’s
noses.”

            But
it came to the point when the duo would write songs with little to no help from
each other. In fact, some of the Lennon/McCartney originals that they wrote for
other artists were written by Paul alone.

            John
had described once the difference between their writing styles. “Paul said,
Come and see the show. I said, I read the news today, oh boy.”

            Paul
would say years later, “We saw ourselves as very much the next great
songwriting team. Which, funnily enough, is what we became.”

Music writers would later support the myth that it was Paul
who wrote the happy tunes that celebrated the everyday while John wrote the
self-revealing songs. This was not true, for Paul could describe a personal
heartbreak (in
Yesterday
) and John could describe normal life (in
Good
Morning, Good Morning
). They would sometimes compete over which of their
songs would be released as singles. And more often, it was Paul’s. John was
sometimes overcome with jealousy over this, once saying, “
I Am the Walrus
was the B side to
Hello, Goodbye
. Can you believe it?”

But what would mar the friendship between Paul and John was
the disbanding of The Beatles. One of the reasons why they broke up was the
death of their manager, Brian Epstein, and the hiring of another. John was all
for accountant Allen Klein but Paul voted for his new father-in-law, Lee
Eastman.

Paul also found himself trying to bring together four
individuals who grew tired of performing together in the studio. He was willing
to tour with the group, but the others didn’t have any plans. And so Paul
worked with his solo album. His band mates urged him to push back his upcoming
album and not say anything about the break-up. But Paul wrote in an interview
sheet packaged with advanced copies of
McCartney
, “Q: Are you planning a
new album or single with the Beatles? A: No.”

John recalled, “I was a fool not to do it, not to do what
Paul did, which was use it to sell a record.” And Paul wrote in his official
biography, “I think it was just straightforward jealousy, Ringo left first, then
George, then John. I was the last one to leave! It wasn’t me!”

In 1970, during an interview with
Rolling Stone
, John
said, “we got fed up with being sidemen for Paul” and “I thought Paul’s (debut
album) was rubbish.” He also felt that Paul and Linda McCartney’s album,
Ram
,
was full of insults directed at him. But Paul argued that he only inspired the
lyrics “Too many people preaching practices” and “You took your lucky break and
broke in two” in
Too Many People.
John retaliated with
How Do You
Sleep?
Which had many bitter comments about Paul, though John later stated
that some parts of the song were about himself.

Despite these alleged backbiting, Paul and John put their
issues behind them and were back to being friends once again. They came
together along with other artists for an extended recording session that would
later become the album
A Toot and a Snore in ’74.
And John almost joined
Paul McCartney & Wings in studio to record the
Venus and Mars
album.
Paul even spent one night in John’s apartment and watched an episode of
Saturday
Night Live
which offered the Beatles $3,000 to reunite. Paul and John
thought about showing up, but then decided that they were too tired. From then
on, they were rarely together, but they always spoke to each other on the
telephone.

            Paul
and John enjoyed such a strong friendship that some people speculated it was a
romantic relationship, and that speculation ran throughout the years. Philip
Norman, author of
Lennon: The Life
, alleged that John unsuccessfully
pursued Paul in his attempt to further his try-anything lifestyle. But some
people would say that this indicates a misunderstanding of a  deep friendship.

            Sadly,
their friendship never had a true ending. John was only 40 when he was shot and
killed at the entrance of his apartment building. Despite his loss, Paul said
that he was glad he had managed to patch things up with John even before the
Beatles disbanded.