beatleland 💙

Also on July 6: On this day in 1957, Paul McCartney was introduced to John Lennon.

https://tinyurl.com/3c7ky3x3

It happened at St. Peter’s Church in Woolton, between sets at the summer garden fete. The catalyst was mutual friend, Ivan Vaughan - a sometime member of The Quarry Men, who got the notion in his head that his two musical friends, 16 year-old John and just-turned 15 Paul would get on well. while maintaining reservations as to whether Paul qualified as a “great” fellow - the kind he normally would introduce to John. (He’s seen here with Paul and a young George Harrison: https://tinyurl.com/2j7l6xtc)

The meeting took place in the church hall, sometime before the 8pm start time of the group’s second set. (The first had taken place on a stage outside; this was where Paul first heard and saw John, that day at least.) It remains unclear whether Paul had rode his bike home to retrieve his guitar before meeting John, or whether he had it all along; it’s an open question whether or not the left hander would have been able to impress on the opposite-stringed instrument John was playing, though not impossible.

But wow them he did, with run throughs of Eddie Cochran’s “Twenty Flight Rock,” Gene Vincent’s “Be Bop A-Lula,” and - to top it off - some Little Richard, his show-stopper. He also took the trouble to show them how to tune a guitar properly, a skill that had eluded John and the others thus far. The meeting stirred mixed feelings in John as to what decision to make: potentially undermine his own dominance or advance his musical career. In this instance, he made the right call.