December 26, 2019

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July 6, 1957

The basics are pretty well known, but the following details come mostly (except where indicated) from chapter 11 of All Those Years, Volume 1: Tune In, Special Extended Edition), by Mark Lewisohn.

On July 6, 1957, The Quarrymen consisted of John Lennon (vocals, guitar), Rod Davis (banjo), Len Garry (tea chest bass), Eric Griffiths (guitar), Colin Hanton (drums), and Pete Shotton (washboard). The six of them rode on the back of a lorry (flat-bed truck), starting at St. Peter’s Church, riding through the neighborhood, and ending up back at the church for the festivities of the Woolton Garden Fête. They were scheduled to play 35-minute sets at 4:15pm and 5:45pm on a stage in the field behind St. Peter’s. Then, in the evening, they would be one of the bands to play at the dance in the church hall.

Ivan Vaughan was a schoolmate of Paul and a neighbor and friend of John. He thought Paul might like to meet his friend who was in a band, and if that wasn’t enough to convince 15 year old Macca to come to the fête with him, it was probably going to be a good place to meet girls, and Paul wasn’t likely to pass on that. The two of them apparently arrived while The Quarrymen were playing, so Paul was able to watch John’s impressive ability to make up words to songs when he didn’t know the lyrics.

There were a few hours between the afternoon performances and the evening performance, so that was the opportunity to introduce John and Paul. Paul asked to borrow John’s guitar. It was tuned like a banjo, so Paul had to not only change it to guitar tuning, but also deal with the fact that it was right-handed. So on an upside down guitar, Paul played Eddie Cochran’s “Twenty Flight Rock.” Extra bonus: he knew all of the words. For good measure, Paul also sat at the piano and showed John that he could sing like Little Richard. 

The next part of the story is hazy. It has been remembered a few different ways by the people who were there. John, in 1980, said that he asked Paul to join The Quarrymen right there on the spot. Others have said it took a few weeks. Pete Shotton’s memory was that John asked the other band members and got their approval first. Then, two weeks later, Pete ran into Paul at the corner of Vale and Linkstor, nearly behind John’s house, and asked Paul if he wanted to join The Quarrymen. Bet you can guess what the answer was. John’s half-sister, Julia Baird, seems to at least somewhat corroborate this story in chapter 22 of her book, Imagine This. She says that John “sent Paul a message via a friend.”

Colin Hanton, in chapter 24 of his book Pre:Fab!, says that he unfortunately missed the whole “audition” process because he had gone home to eat before returning to play the evening show. But he does add one interesting memory. Apparently, the events of the fête were running late and The Quarrymen only played one afternoon set, starting at around 5:15pm. Baird also seems to corroborate this. She says that they played three times that day: on the lorry riding through the neighborhood, then once in the afternoon and once in the evening. Hanton remembers that while they were waiting, he saw Ivan and John talking to “a dark haired lad I had never seen before.” This suggests that there actually was a short introduction between Paul and John before The Quarrymen played, assuming that was Paul.

So the actual, perfect story of what happened that day may never be known (there are even stories out there that though this was a “formal” introduction, that John and Paul had seen each other and even shared a few words before this date). But in the end, it doesn’t really matter. Whatever the specifics, it was the day that started the ball rolling, and what a historic ball it was!

July 6, 2017 – The 60 Years Project

So on the 60th anniversary of the meeting of John and Paul at St. Peter’s Church in Woolton, Liverpool, Barmy Old Codger was released into the world. No music yet, none even recorded yet. But it was time to get some social media going:

The main website is www.barmyoldcodger.com. 

To listen to Barmy music (and please do!), visit https://soundcloud.com/barmy-old-codger. 

There is also a Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/barmyoldcodger) 

and a Twitter account (https://twitter.com/BarmyOldCodger). 

YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest, and maybe Snapchat and TikTok will be coming before too long.

The first message was “It begins at the end,” which was a very clever (if I do say so) play on the first song that would be recorded (more on that in a couple of weeks). The following day was July 7, Ringo’s 77th birthday. So there were a few things to talk about immediately.

There was, by the way, a lot of back and forth about the first song. Technically, it was written by Paul on piano at the age of 14, before he even had a guitar. It was never played by The Quarrymen nor recorded by The Beatles (with the exception of a snippet from the “Get Back” sessions). A piece of it was eventually included on Paul’s first solo album, but not a complete song. So there was a question of whether or not it should be included. In the end, the decision was that anything that could be found that was written by John, Paul, George, and/or Ringo before the break-up of The Beatles would be part of the project. So the first song was chosen, and we’ll get to that soon…

Next time I’ll talk about the importance of 1960 to the story of The Beatles. Please leave a comment, even if it’s just to say “hello!” And sign up for notifications if you want. Stay tuned!

Naming.

So why Barmy Old Codger? It’s a fair question. At first I thought I would come up with some clever name based on something in The Beatles’ history. You know, something that everyone would immediately be able to identify as referencing The Beatles. Well, guess how many clever names based on something in The Beatles’ history have not been used by someone already. Go ahead, guess…

Yeah, it’s basically none. Boy, The Beatles sure were and are popular…

So fast forward to Harry Potter. The books, not the movies. If you’re not familiar with the characters, then first, bear with me for a minute, and second, are you kidding me?!?! 😉 Okay, so in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Harry frees the Malfoy’s house-elf servant Dobby by tricking Lucius Malfoy into presenting Dobby with a sock. Makes sense, right? The newly freed Dobby eventually finds himself working at Hogwarts (for pay!), and in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Harry runs into the now free elf. Their conversation turns to Professor Dumbledore, who has arranged for Dobby’s employment. Dobby tells Harry that despite the fact that enslaved house elves are not allowed to speak ill of their masters, that Dumbledore had insisted that Dobby “is free to call him a – barmy old codger if we likes…” (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by JK Rowling, page 380). This scene is unbelievably not included in the film…

Over the years, the term became sort of a running joke between my daughter and me. When she was very young, she would make up games and stories and I would always insist that my character’s name was “Barmy.” For those who aren’t familiar, “barmy” is an informal British term meaning “crazy.” “Codger,” by the way, is an informal British term meaning “elderly man.” (Okay, I know that most people reading this probably already know all of these things, but I’m just trying to be thorough). Okay, so it really all just seemed to make sense. Old codger does seem to describe me, and this whole project is barmy (okay, I guess I am as well), so it was the logical choice, don’t you think?

Recording.

A few more decisions really needed to be made before jumping in. For example, how would the songs be recorded? Well, that was actually pretty easy. I still had all of my old equipment including guitars, bass guitars, keyboards, sound processors, a drum machine, and most importantly, a digital multi-track recorder. I already had grand ideas that maybe I could recruit some other musicians to be involved, but at the very least I had everything I needed in order to get started on my own. 

Also, what to actually do with the recorded songs? Well, I could be satisfied to just record them and then file them away for my old(er) age, but I still had enough of the old musician attitude in me to think that maybe some other people would like to hear them! So I got busy developing a website and starting some social media accounts. It would, of course, be ridiculous to think that is was worth trying to sell anything (maybe one day!), so the songs were to be put up on Soundcloud, where anyone could listen to them any time they wanted.

Once the basic song list was complete and the equipment was out of basement storage and basically set up, it was time to get started. But first we would take that trip to the UK. We left Nashville on June 14, 2017 and flew to London. A few days in London was followed by a short stop in Cardiff before heading to The Cotswolds for a week. Then it was on to Liverpool on the 25th. We only had about two and a half days before we had to be in Edinburgh, so things went pretty fast. On my self-devised walking tours we saw the Liverpool College of Art, John Lennon’s birthplace, the Jacaranda, Percy Phillips’ studio, Julia Lennon’s house, the site of Quarrybank High School, St. Peter’s Church, Strawberry Field, Calderstones Park, Ye Cracke, and other sites. If you find yourself in Liverpool with little time and want guided tours I would recommend three (we did them all): The Magical Mystery Tour bus, which is very touristy but gets you to all sorts of cool sites; The National Trust Tour, which is the only way you can actually enter Mendips (John’s house) and 20 Forthlin Road (Paul’s house – did you see Carpool Karaoke? Well, my daughter played that piano before Paul did!); and the tour so amazing I couldn’t even imagine it, The Casbah Coffee Club, with Pete Best’s brother Roag as our tour guide. You want to see stuff behind glass? Go to a museum. You want to HOLD John’s harmonica, flask, and lighter; Paul’s microphone, and George’s beads from India in your very own hands? Go to The Casbah (update - some of those particular items actually ARE behind glass now, at The Magical Beatles Museum. But The Casbah is worth it, nonetheless). 

As you might imagine, I was pretty pumped to get started when we returned to Nashville on July 5. The next day Barmy Old Codger would go live. Next time I’ll talk about July 6, the date on which John met Paul as well as the date on which Barmy Old Codger went live. Please leave a comment, even if it’s just to say “hello!” And sign up for notifications if you want. Stay tuned!

Finding Material.

It is not uncommon that people have heard Barmy songs and have then commented that they’ve never heard the originals before, so how were they found? Well, the idea that there were unreleased songs had already been pretty well established. When The Beatles Anthology was released in 1995, it included the first official release of “In Spite of All the Danger” along with many other songs that had never before seen the light of day on an official release. The big questions were: Where could I find information on other songs that had not been released? And how could I hear them, since how can you record a song if you don’t know how it goes?! 

I truthfully don’t remember specific moments that I discovered particular resources, but the first big break was when I found the Early Beatles Songs site (https://earlybeatlessongs.weebly.com). To be sure, Mark Lewisohn’s amazing All Those Years, Volume 1: Tune In names seemingly all of the songs known to have been written by The Beatles in their formative years, but you cannot hear a song through the pages of a book. The Early Beatles Songs website has links to recordings of many of the songs, pulled from many different sources.

In doing this research I made another amazing discovery. In January of 1969, during the filming of what ended up being the film Let It Be, also known as the Get Back sessions, something like 100 hours of rehearsals were recorded. During those rehearsals, The Beatles not only played the songs that ended up in the film and on the album, but they also played, just for fun, many of the songs that they had written as teenagers. “One After 909,” for example, was one of these, but, of course, that one made it on to the Let It Be album. And though some of these songs have still never been released on anything other than bootlegs, the internet has its ways of getting you to those recordings.

You may or may not know the process involved in getting permission to record cover versions of songs. When there is a registered copyright, you can record any song you’d like as long as you pay a modest fee. If you want to do a video to post on YouTube or wherever, there are more hoops to jump through, but it can still generally be done (YouTube can be difficult, actually). Incidentally, if a song exists but there is no registered copyright, that doesn’t mean that the author has relinquished their rights. In fact, it means that the author retains the right of first release, and must expressly give those rights to someone else in order for them to record the song. Huge numbers of people disregard these rules, and it isn’t incredibly common that anyone is stopped. In the case of Barmy Old Codger, the rules will all be followed. The project is too big not to do so. And that does mean that there are a few songs out there that were written by The Beatles that have no registered copyright, even though they can be heard on bootleg recordings. There will be no released Barmy versions of those songs, though there may be conversations about them.

Following rules.

It’s not that I love rules (well, maybe a little), it’s just that I wanted the project to be consistent (besides, you can’t have the fun of breaking the rules if they don’t exist!). So decisions would have to be made about when to record songs. As I’ve said before, in the case of official releases, the 60th anniversary would be based on the date of the original date of release in the UK. For example, the first official Beatles release was the “Love Me Do”/”P.S. I Love You” single, which was released on October 5, 1962. Therefore, our release would happen on October 5, 2022. That was easy.

But what about the ones that had not been put out during the official release years of 1962-1970? What I ultimately decided was that I would use as many resources as possible to pin down the earliest known reference of a song, and a date as close as possible to the 60th anniversary of that time would be used for the Barmy Old Codger release date. There could be exceptional cases. For example, there is a specific recording date associated with “In Spite of All the Danger,” so that was the date used. But that is a rarity. 

Other questions came up, of course. What about songs that The Beatles recorded that were covers of other people’s songs? The decision: that’s not what this project is about, so only songs written by John, Paul, George, and/or Ringo would be included (now, if you’ve heard some of what we’ve already done you will know that rule has already been broken, but I’ll get to that later). Then what about songs that were written by our boys, but were given to other artists to record? Well, since they were written by our boys they would be included, and the release dates would match the earliest known reference to the song as opposed to the other artist’s release date. And what about songs that were originally intended to be Beatles songs but ended up being released only on Beatles solo albums? Those would also be included, and again, the release date would be based on the earliest found reference of the song.

Anyway, with these things in mind I began putting together a spreadsheet of every song that would be included in the 60 Years Project. It’s quite a list! Based on the original idea, by the time this project is over it would include new recordings of well over 300 songs. Next time I’ll talk about how we came up with our name and about the early recording process. Please leave a comment, even if it’s just to say “hello!” And sign up for notifications if you want. Stay tuned!

Travel Planning.

Come June 2017, we would be going to spend three weeks in the UK. We’d go to London, Cardiff, the Cotswolds, and Edinburgh. And oh, yes, we’d go to Liverpool. Now, I admit that travel planning is one of my favorite things to do. But planning travel to Liverpool takes it right to the next level. I won’t go into the details here of all of the sites we ultimately visited, that’s not what this is all about, but I spent much of March and April of 2017 doing the research and making the reservations. The more I looked into the locations where The Beatles grew up, the more I became fascinated with the circumstances surrounding the formation of what would become the most successful musical group of all time. 

The beginnings of the idea for the 60 Year Project started coming to me while I was checking into the location where The Quarrymen recorded “In Spite of All the Danger,” the Percy Phillips Studio. I thought it would be fun to record a tribute version of the song, and why not put it out on the 60th anniversary of the original recording. What’s so special about 60 years? Well, nothing. It was simply a round number and fairly close, only a little over a year away. And I would need that year to prepare. As a musician, I was mighty rusty.

From there, the world of fantasy began to take over. Why not record tribute versions of every Beatles song for their 60th anniversaries? And since official Beatles releases wouldn’t hit their 60ths for five more years, why not record all of the songs that they wrote when they were teenagers that had never been released? I was completely aware of how crazy the idea was (this would become an important thought very soon), but two words just kept coming into my mind that I couldn’t shake: “Why not?”

I began to collect books (I already had some, but needed more!) and to search websites for all of the information that I could find about unreleased early songs (or at least, songs that were not released on official Beatles releases between 1962 and 1970). I also had to adopt a set of rules that would delineate exactly when each song should be recorded. The official releases would be easy, the new versions would be released on the 60th anniversaries of the original UK release dates. But the early songs would be a challenge. I have long been kind an aficionado of spreadsheets, so I actually had quite a good time performing these setup tasks, and had a pretty extensive list by the time of our June trip to the UK.

(Those of you who have followed for a while may already know that the idea of recording every single Beatles song has been tweaked a bit. But more about that in future posts).

Crediting Sources.

For information about the early songs of The Beatles as well as their early lives, I have relied heavily on five books at this point. To be sure, I have read others that will be of enormous help in the future, but this project has basically covered from July 6, 1957 to November of 1959 at this point, and these five books have been indispensable.

All Those Years, Volume 1: Tune In (Extended Special  Edition) – Mark Lewisohn

The Unreleased Beatles– Richie Unterburger

Get Back– Doug Sulpy and Ray Schweighardt

Pre:Fab!– Colin Hanton with Colin Hall

John Lennon: The Boy Who Became a Legend– Michael A. Hill

I’ll go into more detail about information learned from these sources in future postings, but I am deeply indebted to all of these authors for their hard work. The internet has, of course, also been a fantastic source of information. I still visit these sites regularly, and I can’t thank the people who run them enough.

The Beatles Bible - www.beatlesbible.com

The Beatles Source - www.beatlesource.com

Early Beatles Songs - https://earlybeatlessongs.weebly.com

The Paul McCartney Project - www.the-paulmccartney-project.com

The Original Quarrymen - http://www.originalquarrymen.co.uk

Beatles Liverpool Locations - http://beatlesliverpoollocations.blogspot.com/

They May Be Parted - https://theymaybeparted.com

Next time out I’ll talk in more detail about the process of finding material. Please leave a comment, even if it’s just to say “hello!” And sign up for notifications if you want. Stay tuned!

Welcome to the first installment of the Barmy Beatle Blog. And thank you very much for checking it out. We really do appreciate it. If you have followed us on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or checked out our website, you guys are the best! If this is the first you’ve heard of Barmy Old Codger and you came here to check us out, well, you’re the best as well!

And so this is where it begins.

However you got here, I would assume that if you made it here you already have some idea that this blog somehow relates to The Beatles. In case you’re not sure what we do, the primary function of Barmy Old Codger is the “60 Years Project,” which provides celebrations of the 60th anniversaries of dates in Beatles history. And the biggest part of how that is done is through the recording of new interpretations of songs written by The Beatles that will be released on or near the 60th anniversaries of their original UK release dates. But there are also stories to be told and conversations to be had about The Beatles, birthday greetings, pictures of historic Beatles sites to be shared, and looks into the atmosphere of the music of the time by studying the UK and US Singles charts. But before I get too far here, I want to let you know where Barmy Old Codger can be found on the internet. This blog is just one place. 

The blog address is www.barmybeatleblog.com. 

The main website is www.barmyoldcodger.com. 

To listen to Barmy music (and please do!), visit https://soundcloud.com/barmy-old-codger. 

There is also a Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/barmyoldcodger) 

and a Twitter account (https://twitter.com/BarmyOldCodger). 

YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest, and maybe Snapchat will be coming before too long.

As for me, I’m Barmy (by name and by nature), the curator of everything that makes up Barmy Old Codger. I’ll be trying to go into more detail here than on the short posts that usually show up on social media. And hopefully starting some conversations. But I’m getting a late start on this blog thing. The “60 Years Project” technically began on July 6, 2017, the 60th anniversary of the meeting of John and Paul at St. Peter’s Church in Woolton, Liverpool. So there’s a lot to catch up on! That should be fun! There’s a lot of information to come. I hope you enjoy it! And let’s start with the…

Origin Story.

When you live in Nashville, many people just assume that you must be a musician. And they’re very often right. As stereotypical as it may sound, there are really just a lot of musicians here. And the number of them who are tremendously talented is staggering. Now me, well, I was a wannabe musician many years ago, but not in Nashville. I was in Chicago. I played in two bands between 1985 and 1995. The first was a pretty straightforward rock band of the time, maybe in the vein of REM or something. The second was of the noisier variety. Someone said we were like a cross between Ministry and Pink Floyd, if that conjures up any images. Yeah, probably doesn’t add up to anything but confusion. Neither of those bands amounted to much in the end, and in 1995 I stopped playing altogether at the ripe old age of 31. 

The fact that I ended up in Nashville in 2008 was pure coincidence. A decision based on a job. And not my job, but my wife’s. Our toddler and myself were simply along for the ride. It was not much more than an amusing anecdote that I had landed in Music City after those years playing in Chicago so long ago. Thing is, you meet musicians here. I met Ian Saylor when our kids were in pre-school together. I met Matt North when our kids were in elementary school together. I met Donnie Apple when our kids were in middle school together. Sense a pattern? We talked about music along with other things, but that was about it. It wasn’t until 2017 that anything more started to rise up from the dust.

So…you know when your teachers or even job interviewers would ask you to tell them something interesting about yourself? Well, I’ve got one. One that takes on so much meaning if you let it, but is really just a funny coincidence. I was born on February 9, 1964. No lie. For those of you who need the reminder (or aren’t from the United States), that was the day The Beatles first appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show, and America was conquered by the British at long last. I don’t tend to believe that this fact is why I became such a fan of The Beatles, but it’s a nice story to have, especially since it’s true!

And so in one way or another, my life has revolved (revolvered?) around The Beatles since the day I was born. By the time I was 10 or 11 in the mid-70s, I was fully obsessed with them. They were the reason that I learned to play the guitar beyond the few chords I learned at the age of 7. They were why I wanted to play in bands in Chicago. And they were why, in the Spring of 2017, I was busy planning a family trip that would take me to Liverpool for the first time in my life. Stay tuned…