Scan - The Beatles, Germany, June 1966. Scanned From The Beatles: Inside Beatlemania.

Me and John, we’d known each other for a long time. Along with George and Ringo, we were best mates. And we looked into each other’s eyes, the eye contact thing we used to do, which is fairly mind-boggling. You dissolve into each other. But that’s what we did, round about that time, that’s what we did a lot. And it was amazing. You’re looking into each other’s eyes and you would want to look away, but you wouldn’t, and you could see yourself in the other person. It was a very freaky experience and I was totally blown away. There’s something disturbing about it. You ask yourself, ‘How do you come back from it? How do you then lead a normal life after that?’ And the answer is, you don’t. After that you’ve got to get trepanned or you’ve got to meditate for the rest of your life. You’ve got to make a decision which way you’re going to go. I would walk out into the garden - 'Oh no, I’ve got to go back in.’ It was very tiring, walking made me very tired, wasted me, always wasted me. But 'I’ve got to do it, for my well-being.’ In the meantime John had been sitting around very enigmatically and I had a big vision of him as a king, the absolute Emperor of Eternity. It was a good trip. It was great, but I wanted to go to bed after a while. I’d just had enough after about four or five hours. John was quite amazed that it had struck me in that way. John said, 'Go to bed? You won’t sleep!’ 'I know that, I’ve still got to go to bed.’ I thought, now that’s enough fun and partying, now … It’s like with drink. That’s enough. That was a lot of fun, now I gotta go and sleep this off. But of course you don’t just sleep off an acid trip, so I went to bed and hallucinated a lot in bed. I remember Mal coming up and checking that I was all right. 'Yeah, I think so.’ I mean, I could feel every inch of the house, and John seemed like some sort of emperor in control of it all. It was quite strange. Of course he was just sitting there, very inscrutably.“

Paul McCartney for Barry Miles in “Many Years From Now” 1997)

When John and Paul met each other

           “That was the day, the day that I met Paul, that it started moving.” –John Lennon.

The Quarry Men was the Skiffle group featuring John Lennon, Pete Shotton, Eric Griffiths, Colin Hanton, Rod Davies, and Len Garry. They performed on the afternoon of 6th July 1957 at St Peter’s Church Fete, Woolton, Liverpool.

‘I remember coming into the fete and seeing all the sideshows. And also hearing all this great music wafting in from this little Tannoy system. It was John and the band.

I remember I was amazed and thought, ‘Oh great’, because I was obviously into the music. I remember John singing a song called Come Go With Me. He’d heard it on the radio. He didn’t really know the verses, but he knew the chorus. The rest he just made up himself.

I just thought, ‘Well, he looks good, he’s singing well and he seems like a great lead singer to me.’ Of course, he had his glasses off, so he really looked suave. I remember John was good. He was really the only outstanding member, all the rest kind of slipped away.’ –Paul McCartney, 1995.

It looks like a love at first sight story.

That evening, Ivan Vaughan (the Quarrymen’s sometime tea-chest bass player and John’s friend) introduced the band to one of his classmates from Liverpool Institute, that 15 little boy called Paul McCartney! So the magic happened… John Lennon and Paul McCartney met each other. Macca came wearing a white jacket with silver flecks to John, who wore a checked shirt. 

The pair chatted for a few minutes, and McCartney showed Lennon how to tune a guitar - the instruments owned by Lennon and Griffiths were in G banjo tuning. McCartney then sang Twenty Flight Rock.

 ‘Right off, I could see John was checking this kid out,’ says Pete Shotton (The Quarry Men), who was standing behind John, off to the side. ‘Paul came on as very attractive, very loose, very easy, very confident. – wildly confident. He played the guitar well. I could see that John was very impressed’. 

When I visited Liverpool, I had the chance to go at the St Peter’s church hall. And I saw this message that Paul sent to Church:

Ah yes, I remember it well.

I do, actually. My memory of meeting John for the first time is very clear. My mate Ivan Vaughan took me along to Woolton here and there were The Quarry Men, playing on a little platform.

I can still see John – checked shirt, slightly curly hair, singing Come Go With Me by The Del Vikings. He didn’t know all the words, so he was putting in stuff about penitentiaries – and making a good job of it.

I remember thinking ‘He looks good – I wouldn’t mind being in a group with him’.

A bit later we met up; I played him Twenty Flight Rock and he seemed pretty impressed – maybe because I DID know the words.

Then, as all you know, he asked me to join the group, and so we began our trip together. We wrote our first songs together, we grew up together and we lived our lives together. And when we’d do it together, something special would happen. There’d be that little magic spark.

I still remember his beery old breath when I met him here that day. But I soon came to love that beery old breath. And I loved John. I always was and still am a great fan of John’s. We had a lot of fun together and I treasure all those beautiful memories.

 So I send you all in Woolton and Liddipool my best wishes today.

And thanks for remembering – there’s no way that when we met here we had any idea of what we’d be starting. But I’m very proud of what we did. And I’m very glad that I did it with John.

I hope you all have a wonderful day and God bless all who sail in you.

Paul McCartney

Thanks Lennon and McCartney. Thanks for everything you gave to the world.

           “The most important day in his life was the day he met me” – Paul McCartney. 

Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love.

Neil Gaiman, The Sandman

1965 Beatles Interview

Source: YouTube

Oh.. :-) … look at these two sweet and shy boys!

The Song of Achilles, Madeline Miller

Paul’s adorable reactions to John’s teasing