|
Home Songs Quotes Facts Films Liverpool Lyrics Shop Forum Site map Imagine: John Lennon's Life & Music in Pictures and Video
The Quarrymen. Saturday, 6th July, 1957. St. Peter's Church, Woolton, Liverpool.
John Lennon's band The Quarrymen (inspired by the name of Quarry Bank High school), were playing in St. Peter's Church field as part of the annual Woolton Fete on Saturday, 6th July, 1957. In the audience was Paul McCartney, who had come along just to watch the band. Lennon and McCartney later talked to each other about music, before the Quarrymen performed a second show in the Church Hall that evening. Paul McCartney recalled: 'There was a guy up on the stage wearing a checked shirt, looking pretty good singing a song I loved, the Del-Vikings' Come Go With Me. He was filling in with blues lines, I thought that was good, and he was singing well.' John Lennon recalled: 'That was the day, the day I met Paul, that it started moving.'
Bob Wooler was a DJ at The Cavern Club and is famous for introducing The Beatles to their manager, Brian Epstein. On this, the only live video footage of The Beatles playing in the Cavern Club, Bob Wooler announces 'It's The Beatles'. The Beatles play the song 'Some Other Guy'. At the end of the song, an audience member shouts out 'We want Pete' (referring to recently sacked Beatles drummer Pete Best), and then John Lennon replying 'Yeah'.
John Lennon and Paul McCartney wrote 'I Want To Hold Your Hand' at 57 Wimpole Street, London (1963). McCartney was living as a guest of Dr. Richard and Margaret Asher. Their daughter, Jane Asher, was Paul's girlfriend. In September 1980, John Lennon told Playboy magazine: "We wrote a lot of stuff together, one on one, eyeball to eyeball. Like in 'I Want to Hold Your Hand,' I remember when we got the chord that made the song. We were in Jane Asher's house, downstairs in the cellar playing on the piano at the same time. And we had, 'Oh you-u-u/ got that something...' And Paul hits this chord (E minor) and I turn to him and say, 'That's it!' I said, 'Do that again!' In those days, we really used to absolutely write like that, both playing into each other's noses."
John Lennon claimed that he wrote the song about himself. He wrote it after wracking his brain in desperation for five hours, trying to come up with another song for Rubber Soul (1965). Lennon told Playboy: "I'd spent five hours that morning trying to write a song that was meaningful and good, and I finally gave up and lay down. Then 'Nowhere Man' came, words and music, the whole damn thing as I lay down".
John Lennon started writing 'In My Life' in 1964. He forgot about the song for a while and then he wrote it again a year later, changing the lyrics. In John's original handwritten lyrics he made reference to several places in Liverpool: "Penny Lane is one I'm missing, Up Church Rd to the clocktower, In the circle of the abbey, I have seen some happy hours. Past the tramsheds with no trams, On the 5 bus into town, Past the Dutch and St. Columbus, To the Dockers Umbrella that they pulled down." However, Lennon found it to be silly, calling it "the most boring sort of 'What I Did On My Holidays Bus Trip' song". He reworked the words, replacing the specific memories with a generalized meditation on his past. Very few lines of the original version remained in the finished song. According to Lennon's friend and biographer Peter Shotton, the lines "Some (friends) are dead and some are living/In my life I've loved them all" referred to Stuart Sutcliffe (who died in 1962) and to Shotton himself.
John Lennon's music room was in the attic of his house (Kenwood, Weybridge, England) and contained tape recorders, a mellotron, an electric organ, a piano, a Vox AC30 and several guitars. Many Beatles songs were composed here, either by Lennon working alone or by Lennon and McCartney when Paul McCartney visited for their songwriting sessions. 'Girl', 'Eleanor Rigby', 'We Can Work It Out', and 'Good Day Sunshine' were some of the songs written at John's home Kenwood.
Julian Lennon, came home from nursery school with a drawing he said was of his classmate, a girl named Lucy. Showing the artwork to his father, Julian described the picture as 'Lucy, in the sky with diamonds.' The Lucy referred to in the song was a classmate of Julian's at Heath House School in Weybridge named Lucy O'Donnell (Born: 1963 - Died: 22 September 2009). The song first appeared on The Beatles 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
John Lennon wrote the song taking inspiration from a nineteenth century circus poster for Pablo Fanque's circus which he purchased in an antique shop in 1967, while filming the promotional video for the song 'Strawberry Fields Forever' in Kent, England. Mr. Kite is believed to be William Kite, who worked for Pablo Fanque from 1843 to 1845.
John Lennon was producing Harry Nilsson's album 'Pussy Cats' in Los Angeles, 1974. Paul McCartney visited John Lennon and joined in a jam session with John for the first time in the studio since the split of The Beatles. At John's Santa Monica beach house, the two Beatles were relaxing with Keith Moon & May Pang by the swimmimg pool when this picture was taken. It is the last ever photograph of Lennon and McCartney together.
John Lennon appeared at the Grand Ballroom of the Hilton Hotel in New York City to perform on 'A Salute to Sir Lew Grade'. On this television special, John performed 'Slippin and Slidin', 'Stand By Me', and 'Imagine'. John changed the lyrics of 'Imagine' to 'brotherhood and sisterhood of man'. John's backing band, Etcetera (aka BOMF) wore unique two-faced masks that John had designed to project his true feelings about Sir Lew Grade. The band later changed their name to 'Dog Soldier', which were words from the John Lennon song 'Incantation'.
|
