John and Paul Meet, Part One
A Synth Post
Chasing Down the Date
This is the first of a three part series about one of the most famous days in Beatles history, the day John and Paul met at a fête at St. Peter’s Church in Woolton, Liverpool. In Part One, I will talk about nailing down what the actual date was of the fateful meeting. Part Two will be about how authors have told the story over the years and Part Three will be about eyewitness accounts of the day.
For the record, I know that most current sources agree that John and Paul had had some level of interaction previous to their meeting at St. Peter’s Church. Paul has even talked about it. But that is another discussion. For now, we’re talking about the famous meeting at the church fête. We start in 1963, with The Beatles (Monthly) Book.
In issue #2 of the magazine, published in September of 1963, John is quoted as saying about their meeting, “We can both remember it quite well. We’ve even got the date down. It was June 15th, 1955.”1 Now I’m not going to go into my doubts about whether John actually said that or if it was just attributed to him by the magazine. That kind of thing was sadly commonplace at that time. But we do have a date. There are at least ten books released between that time and 1980 that repeat that date. Interestingly, one of those books, called The Beatle Book (but not affiliated with the magazine), repeated the date but went on to say that Paul was 15 years old. So we have our first problem. The 15th of June, 1955 was three days before Paul’s 13th birthday. So Paul was either not 15 or else it is the wrong date.
The First Update
In 1968, Julius Fast, in The Beatles: The Real Story, very simply states that John and Paul met in 1956. No more detail than that. But Hunter Davies to the rescue. He wrote, “On June 15, 1956 [Ivan Vaughan] took another friend from his school to meet John…”2 He was, of course, referring to Paul. So you see, it was just a simple mistake, right? The date was right but the year was wrong… By 1984, at least 15 books had given this date their official approval.
Getting Closer, My Salamander
Moving ahead to 1977. The stated date is still the same, the 15th of June, but the year changes to 1957. This also didn’t get much traction overall. In fact, only one author wrote it, John Swenson. It appeared in his 1977 The Beatles: Yesterday and Today, and his 1981 The John Lennon Story. You may wonder why I have chosen to include such a small piece of information here, but there is a reason. Something that I have not yet been able to figure out is why, though the years updated, did the date of the 15th of June stay the same? The closest I can come up with is that no one ever thought to question the date but were perplexed by the idea that Paul was supposed to be 15 years old when the meeting took place. Changing the year to 1957 made that at least close. What do you think?
Mark Lewisohn, Who Else?
As I mentioned a couple of week ago, I regularly cite The Beatles (Monthly) Book. As a reminder, that magazine originally ran from August of 1963 until December of 1969, a total of 77 issues. The publication was re-started in May of 1976 and the first 77 issues of that run, ending in September of 1982, reprinted the original 77 issues and added new information. During this time, Mark Lewisohn began researching and writing for the magazine and he began to make a name for himself. He was hired, at the age of 18, by Philip Norman, to do some research. One of the subjects he worked on was this:
“the date John Lennon first met Paul McCartney (variously reported elsewhere as 1954, 1955, 1956, 1957, and 1958)…as a result, Shout! [by Norman] became the first-ever book to contain the true date Lennon met McCartney – 6 July 1957.”4
Philip Norman’s Shout!, which was published early in 1981, did indeed include the famous date. And since then, countless books have followed suit. What I don’t get is how many books that were published after 1981 still get the date wrong. But that is a commonplace occurrence in books about The Beatles. Research can sometimes seem to be at a minimum. Incidentally, there actually was one place I’ve found that the correct date appeared before the release of Norman’s book. But Lewisohn is not a liar. It was not itself a book. The Sunday Times tribute to John Lennon, published in December of 1980, contains a chronology that shows the correct date. Prominently displayed at the beginning of the chronology is that it was compiled by…Mark Lewisohn.
Hey! Before I Go
How would you like to hear what the fateful meeting sounded like? Well, remember back at the end of January, I posted an introduction to Eric “King Mixer” Howell, creator of “A Day in Their Life: An Audio Drama of The Beatles Story.”: https://synthesizingthebeatles.substack.com/p/king-mixer How much do you want to bet that the audio drama in question has covered the meeting between John and Paul? Well, here’s a little clip for you to check out: https://www.youtube.com/clip/Ugkxyt32v4YL6Rt_z0qTyqFNHmbpkVlYOTqG
I’m happy to say that in the next two parts of this post, and on into the future, we’ll be hearing more fantastical King Mixer audio. If you want to jump ahead and check it out yourself, go to:
As always, thanks for being here and reading. I really do appreciate it. Please leave comments to let me know what you think and to add any relevant information to the discussion. Please follow or subscribe to
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Next up: John and Paul Meet, Part Two: The Authors Tell the Story. Looking forward to that!
- Adamson
Photo: Quarrymen exhibit at The Beatles Story, by Roblespepe, 21st of June 2018, Creative Commons Attribution – Share Alike 4.0
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Quarrymen_-_Museo_Beatles.jpg
Quotes:
1) The Beatles (Monthly) Book, issue #2, September 1963, p. 9.
2) The Beatles, by Hunter Davies (W.W. Norton, New York, 2009 ed.), p. 21.
3) The Paul McCartney Story, by George Tremlett (Popular, New York, 1977 ed.), p. 124.
4) The Beatles Live!, by Mark Lewisohn (Henry Holt, New York, 1986), p. 9.