The Day John Met Paul and Love me Do!

BP FALLON, a former member of John Lennon’s Plastic Ono Band, plunges backwards into a Beatle world with the two books, The Day John Met Paul, by Jim O’Donnell and Love me Do! by Michael

It took the twin demons of scandal and tragedy to create a world where The Beatles could not only be recognised but be lauded and loved. Before then, pop music was something stuck in the attic of the mind, some perversion of taste that had only gotten worse with the appearance of that foul animal named Rock'n'Roll.

Oh, it was all right, almost tolerable, when the charts were ruled by Italianite crooners like Frank Sinatra. But when the likes of Elvis and Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis - delinquents to a swagger, dirty, nasty and undoubtedly the very root of all juvenile misbehaviour - thrust their animalistic heads over the parapet, all hell broke loose.

If you wanted you could blame Bill Haley, a mild-mannered man with a kiss curl and a dodgy eye and all the charisma of a potato. Bill Haley’s song, ‘Rock Around the Clock’, bled from the soundtrack of the film, The Blackboard Jungle, and the idea was to go to the movie and cause a riot, slashing the cinema seats and maybe even sticking your hand down the front of your best friend’s sisters dress

Young John Lennon, a Teddy Boy with Art School aspirations, he bopped along to see The Backboard Jungle, and was ferociously disappointed when the audience was sedate and well-mannered, as he told Michael Braun in Love Me Do!

The Profumo affair in Britain, an intrigue of Cabinet ministers, hookers, Russian spies and dodgy doctors - and the assassination of President Kennedy in America, forced the media to seek out something Fab and gear and irreverent and irrepressible to put a smile on their readers’ faces The Beatles fitted the bill perfectly: witty, bright, and from somewhere north-west of London called Liverpool.

Love Me Do! is the Beatles’ progress during three months in 1963/64 when Michael Braun accompanied them from playing in cinemas around Britain to storming the charts and hearts of America First published in 1984, a disc jockey on Radio Eireann named Terry Wogan reviewed the book in the RTE Guide. It was no good, young Terry said, because it was as if Michael Braun had gone around with a tape recorder and written everything down. But that is why it is a great book. The music paper, The New Musical Express, called Braun’s book ‘an image killer’ and got upset that George Harrison was quoted using bad language.

Many years later having slagged off Hunter Davis’s official and homogenized authorised Beatles biography John Lennon said: "Love Me Do! was a better book. That was a true book. He wrote how we were, which was bastards. You cant be anything else in a situation such pressure." Actually, The Fabs were no more horrible than any ambitious group, then or now. And they did have humour:

PAUL:" Ask Ringo what kind of music he likes."
MICHAEL BRAUN: "Ringo, what kind of music do you like?"
RINGO: "l like all sorts of music -- especially Shakespeare’s."

Later, in New York, we have jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie asking George for his autograph and then telling him: he’s "going to sell it for two Count Basie records".

The world that spawned The Beatles is gone, as are many of the principal characters: Stuart Sutcliffe, John Lennon, Brian Epstein, Road Manager Mel Evans, Ringo’s first wife, Maureen, even Dick Rowe who turned The Beatles down for Decca, all gone to that great ballroom in the sky.

It’s years since you could see The Beatles at the drop of a whim. In August 1963, I saw them at the Cavern in Liverpool one night, at the Grafton ballroom in Liverpool the next night when they did two half-hour sets and then the third night, they were being screamed at in the Blackpool Opera House. What a hoot.

But even before that - is that possible? - a world existed where not even Cliff Richard had a hit record. On July 6, 1957, a lout with intellect and bad eyesight met a wide-eyed guy with a pretty face who knew how to play Eddie Cochran’s ‘Twenty Flight Rock’ all the way through. Thus John Lennon met Paul McCartney and pop music would never ever be the same again.

Jim O’Donnell, in The Day John Met Paul, transforms what might have been some elongate conceit of an idea and turns it into a living documentary, beautifully written, a world of Dixon of Dock Green and misty side-streets and John Lennon sideboards and everything in black and white. That Britain has gone, too.

As you walk down Mid Abbey Street to where the Sunday Independent is housed you pass the skeleton of the Adelphi Cinema. There, in 1963 and 1964, John, Paul, George and Ringo played on the little stage. There, the Rolling Stones appeared with Brian Jones and when they returned, Brian already had his own dressing room. And then in 1966, a guy from Minnesota played there, backed by a ramshackle combo who looked like a cross between spacemen and cowboys: Bob Dylan and The Band.

Yesterdays have gone but Love Me Do! and The Day John Met Paul steer us into our back pages, where innocence wore drainpipe trousers and an understated smile that dare to say will Rock'n'Roll.

And they did....

Back to the Top

Custom Search

Home ¦ News ¦ Irish Heritage ¦ Irish Stories ¦ Newsletter ¦ Noticeboard ¦ John Lennon ¦ Paul McCartney ¦ George Harrison ¦ Ringo Starr ¦ Beatles Bits ¦ Links ¦ Beatles Fact Files ¦ Disclaimers ¦ What is Beatles Ireland? ¦ Plans for the Future ¦ Requests for Information ¦ Copyright Information ¦ Privacy Statement ¦

© 2006 Beatles Ireland. All rights reserved. No part of these publications may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form by means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without express written permission of Beatles Ireland.
Beatles Ireland is a non-profit site.