“It was something that we did together quite a lot cementing our friendship, getting to know our feelings, our dreams, our ambitions together. “John and I used to hitch-hike places together,” McCartney says in Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now by Barry Miles. The name that would become synonymous with modern music was a combination of beetles and beat, hence the Beatles.įorging a friendship that would become the basis of their singer-songwriter partnership in the future, Lennon and McCartney would often go away together, playing acoustic sets in small pubs. Sutcliffe and Lennon are often credited with coining the name the Beatles, though various stories abound on the actual origins. An art school student and friend of Lennon’s, Stuart Sutcliffe, was brought into the band to play bass. The name of the band was in flux during this period, which would witness the group play under monikers Johnny and the Moon Dogs as well as The Silver Beetles and The Silver Beats. READ MORE: How Michael Jackson Bought the Publishing Rights to the Beatles' Song Catalog at the Advice of Paul McCartney The band got their name by combining the words 'beetles' and 'beat' Professional bookings included venues such as the Casbah Coffee Club in Liverpool and Hippodrome in Manchester. Throughout 19 the Quarrymen gigged whenever they could, including local parties and family events such as the reception for Harrison’s brother’s wedding. Though still performing as the Quarrymen, Lennon, McCartney and Harrison would go on to form the core that would soon become the Beatles. Influenced by rockabilly, his guitar licks would help shape the group’s early sound. Harrison, the son of a bus conductor and shop assistant, joined the Quarrymen as lead guitarist at age 15. “Things were going fine, but when the moment came in the performance I got sticky fingers I thought, ‘What am I doing here?’ I was just too frightened it was too big a moment with everyone looking at the guitar player. “For my first gig, I was given a guitar solo on ‘Guitar Boogie.’ I could play it easily in rehearsal so they elected that I should do it as my solo,” McCartney said in the Anthology documentary. McCartney, the son of a former band-member and nurse, would play his first official event with the group in October, but things didn’t go exactly as planned. While setting up their instruments for the evening performance, the band’s bass player introduced Lennon to a classmate, 15-year-old McCartney, who would join in on a couple of numbers that night and soon would be offered a permanent spot in the Quarrymen. Sixteen-year-old rhythm-guitarist Lennon, the son of a merchant seaman, was performing with the Quarrymen, a skiffle (folk music blended with jazz or blues) band booked to perform at events at a church fete in Woolton, Liverpool. Lennon and McCartney first met while playing in a skiffle bandĪ fateful meeting between two music-loving teenagers in 1957 is where it all began. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, it was difficult to imagine a band hailing from the relatively poor northwest port city of Liverpool, England, could get a gig in the thriving London music scene of the south, let alone export their eventual homegrown success to a world eagerly opening up to the counter-culture movement of the '60s and the burgeoning phenomenon that was called rock 'n' roll. Never could John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr have imagined they would go on to form one of the most successful groups in modern history, influencing the popular culture in not only music, but also fashion, film and global representation. Before John, Paul, George and Ringo became the Beatles, they were simply four teenagers from Liverpool.
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