Johnny🪲 :
"Dear John,
I remember when we first met, at Woolton, at the village fête. It was a beautiful summer day and I walked in there and I saw you on the stage. And you were singing Come Go With Me by the Dell Vikings, But you didn’t know the words so you made them up. “Come go with me to the penitentiary.” It’s not in the lyrics.
I remember writing our first songs together. We used to go to my house, my dad’s house, and we used to smoke Typhoo tea with this pipe my dad kept in a drawer. It didn’t do much for us but it got us on the road.
We wanted to be famous.
I remember the visits to your mum’s house. Julia was a very handsome woman, very beautiful woman. She had long red hair and she played a ukulele. I’d never seen a woman that could do that. And I remember having to tell you the guitar chords because you used to play the ukulele chords.
And then on your 21st birthday you got £100 off one of your rich relatives up in Edinburgh, so we decided we’d go to Spain. So we hitch-hiked out of Liverpool. And we got as far as Paris, and decided to stop there for a week. And eventually got our haircut, by a fellow named Jürgen, and that ended up being the ‘Beatle haircut’.I remember introducing you to my mate George, my schoolmate, and him getting into the band by playing Raunchy on the top deck of a bus. You were impressed. And we met Ringo, who’d been working the whole season at Butlin’s camp – he was a seasoned professional – but the beard had to go, and it did.
Later on we got a gig at the Cavern Club in Liverpool, which was officially a blues club. We didn’t really know any blues numbers. We loved the blues, but we didn’t know any blues numbers. So we had announcements like “Ladies and gentlemen, this is a great Big Bill Broonzy number called Wake Up Little Susie.” They kept passing up little notes: “This is not the blues, this is not the blues. This is pop.” But we kept going."
2026-05-25 11:33:11