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The Beatles · S1 E7
July 6, 1957
St. Peter's Church fête, Woolton. John plays with the Quarrymen on a flatbed truck. A mutual friend introduces him to Paul McCartney. The most important meeting in the history of popular music
St. Peter's Church fete, Woolton, July 6, 1957. A sixteen-year-old in a checked shirt plays rock and roll on a flatbed truck while a fifteen-year-old in the crowd watches every chord his fingers make.
One of the first songs Lennon and McCartney ever wrote together, born from the partnership that begins at this church fete. The opening count-in is the sound of two boys from Liverpool launching something unstoppable.
I Saw Her Standing There (1963)
Paul wrote the original lyric as "She was just seventeen, never been a beauty queen." John told him it was rubbish and suggested "you know what I mean," which transformed a clunky line into something sly and electric. That single exchange is the Lennon-McCartney dynamic in miniature. They wrote the song at Forthlin Road, facing each other with guitars. The driving bass line and Paul's breathless vocal made it the opening track on Please Please Me.
The Garden Party
The Quarrymen play the afternoon slot at St. Peter's annual fete, squeezed between the Morris dancers and the police dog display. John is the frontman: loud, confident, making up lyrics he cannot remember. Ivan Vaughan, a school friend who knows both boys, has brought Paul McCartney along specifically to see the band.
TAP TO REVEAL: What did Paul play in the church hall that convinced John to let him in?
“I was impressed by John. He was clearly the leader. He was singing Come Go with Me by the Del-Vikings, but he didn't know the words so he was making them up. It was great.”
— Paul McCartney, The Beatles Anthology, 2000
Two of Us (The Beatles)
From Let It Be (1970). John and Paul singing face to face, acoustic guitars, the simplest arrangement imaginable. Written near the end of the Beatles' journey, it sounds like a memory of the beginning: two boys at a church fete, two boys in a Liverpool living room.
St. Peter's Church, Woolton
Church Road, Woolton, Liverpool. The site of the garden party where the Quarrymen played on a flatbed truck and John Lennon met Paul McCartney. The most important introduction in the history of popular music happened in the church hall afterwards.
Paul McCartney joins the Quarrymen, and the two most important songwriters in pop history begin writing together in a Liverpool living room. Next season: a fourteen-year-old guitarist named George Harrison auditions on the top deck of a bus.
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