So, about that fanboys versus fangirls thing...

[selenak]

Curious phenomenon: despite a fanbase with, to put it mildly, a lot of women through the ages, biographers both of the Beatles as a group and of individual members tend to be male. (I never got into the biographical industry of another group or rock star enough to tell whether this is true for others as well.) They also tend to be journalists. Now, if you go by certain gender clichés still popular in many a fandom, this should make for restrained writing, but no. It never fails to amuse me that there is almost invariably one point in the saga at which said male journalist biographers throw caution in the air, indulge their inner novelist and make, say, your avarage Kirk and Spock tale penned by fans look positively restrained. (Other fanfics are available, to parody the disclaimer parodied by certain hilarious Doctor Who actors in their audio commentaries.) No, it's not the Hamburg era with the Reeperbahn attractions. Or Beatlemania (and groupies). Or the gory break-up tale (and drugs). The point where all these earnest gentlemen get starry-eyed and throw themselves in purple prose is:



Let's start with the relatively restrained Peter Ames Carlin, because I need this as a contrast to what's to come:

"Like so many big things, it all started with a small, offhand idea. Ivan Vaughan suggested Paul come to a party and take a look at his friend's band. It wasn't that far away, the stone walls of St. Peter's Parish Church were just up the hill and around the corner from Ivan's house in Woolton. (...) He was a bit late - the Quarrymen were already playing on the outdoor stage (actually the back of a flatbed truck) when Paul arrived. As he blended into the crowd, he was struck less by the band itself, whose members were something other than accomplished musicians, than by the charisma of the teenager who stood front and center, taking the stage's sole microphone for himself. (...) John was in a checked shirt and dark trousers, a stray lock of chestnut hair falling across his damp forehead as he strummed his acoustic guitar and sang into the stand-up microphone.
The other Quarrymen - another guitar player, a tea-chest bass, a washboard player, a drummer, and a guy on banjo - followed along. All were competent enough, but Lennon was the one you had to look at. He wasn't a great guitar player, by any stretch. In fact, his playing was downright strange; his fingering was off, he played three-finger chords that Paul didn't recongize from his own guitar studies. And the words he was singing were off, too. Now the guy in "Come Go With Me" was inviting his love to a penitentiary. Another song veered into a reference to someone named Mimi coming up the path, which seemed to be directed to the stern-looking, older woman he was grinning at on the fringe of the crowd. But no matter what he sang in his raw, powerful voice - "Puttin' On The Style," "Maggie Mae", "Railroad Bill", "Be-Bop A Lula" - Lennon projected an anarchic, yet prankish glee. The band played for a while, maybe thirty minutes, then moved quickly to gather up their things and clear the stage. (...) Ivan led Paul in a beeline for the hut, and once they ducked inside, they found the group in a corner, slightly away from a pair of Boy Scouts who were bleating on their trumpets. The Quarrymen drummer, Colin Hanton, looked up from his drums and nodded. "I saw Ivan coming in with this other lad," he says. "Just this guy we didn't know. And then they were talking to John."
At first the head Quarryman projected little beyond disdain. He shrugged, he didn't say much, he noted how young Paul looked - the last vestiges of early-adolescent flab only made him look younger than his fifteen years. (...) When Paul mentioned Eddie Cochran's "Twenty Flight Rock", John's eyes flickered with interest - he really knew it? Chords, words, and all? Paul beamed. Sure! (...) The Quarrymen were impressed. "It was uncanny," Eric Griffiths, the other guitar player recalled. "He had such confidence, he gave a real performance." Ivan beamed. Even John seemed impressed. Delighted to have an audience, Paul kept on. He took a run at "Be Bop-A-Lula" - a gutsy move, seeing how the Quarrymen had just played the song onstage - then a variety of Little Richard hits: Tutti Frutti, Long Tall Sally, Good Golly Miss Molly. Paul had fallen in love with Richard's rollicking bass lines and powerful, high-pitched vocals, and he had spent hours learning how to mimic his every Wop-bop-a-loo-bop and piercing falsetto whoop. "He could play and sing in a way none of us could, including John," Griffiths went on. "We couldn't get enough of it. John was clearly thrilled, too, laughing and clapping along. But when Paul was done, John stopped short of inviting the new boy to join his group. "I'd been kingpin up to then," he recalled to Hunter Davies in 1967. "It went through my head that I'd have to keep him in line if I let him join."
____

So far, so relatively restrained. Carlin can't resist adding a few details (Paul is "beaming", John's eyes are "flickering with interest"), but he's positively dry when compared to Bob Spitz, who had a go at this encounter twice, once in his monumental biography The Beatles, and once in the Young Adolescent version of his book, Yeah!Yeah!Yeah (basically the short version of The Beatles minus the swearing and the sex and with far fewer pages). First the adult version, in a chapter titled "A Simple Twist of Fete". Spitz chooses to describe the Woolton Village Fete from John's and his band's pov:

"Shortly before they were finished, both Eric Griffiths and Pete Shotton noticed Ivan Vaughan standing below them, off to the right of the stage, with another boy in tow. (...) Afterwards, in the Scout hut, Ivan came in like a cannon. He said hello to everyone, then introduced his friend from school - Paul McCartney. Everyone glanced up from around a table, where they were having coffee, and nodded perfunctorily. Colin Hanton remembers, "I was sitting off by myself, just playing drums. But it was clear once Ivan and Paul got around to Joun, there was a lot of 'checking out' being done."
Len Garry recalled: "There was a bit of a stony atmosphere at first. Ivan had told John about Paul being a great guitarist, so he felt a bit threatened." John's eyes slit to pin Paul fast in the taupey lamplit room. McCartney, who was younger and looked it, wore an outfit that required a little getting used to: a white sport coat with an underweave of fine silvery thread that sparkled, depending uon how the light hit it. The jacket, which was meant to convey a cheeky, debonair look, seemed almost comical on Paul, whose body was helplessly p7ump, his moonface putty-soft and pale. He had beautiful eyes, though, like a spaniel's, and his spunk was jacked up several notches, almost to the point of being cocky for a boy who was, for all intents, on foreign turf.
Curiously, Paul had brought his guitar along with him. Sensing an opportunity, he stole the spotlight, running through a version of Eddie Cochran's "Twenty Flight Rock", complete with the sibilant rockabilly phrasing and an Elvisy catch in his throat. (...) "Right off, I could see John was checking this kid out," says Pete Shotton, 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."
Paul must have picked up on it, too. He seemed to zero right in on John, whom he recognized as the band's legitimate front man. Not wanting to lose his edge, he launched into his own rendition of 'Be-Bop-A-Lula'. It impressed John that Paul knew all the words; John could never remember them, preferring to make up his own as the rhyme scheme required. Paul's version of the song drove harder, was sharper, bringing the tonic fifth in on cue, which the band had simply ignored. And he sang it with all the stops pulled out, belting it with complete abandon, as if he were standing in front of his bedroom mirror, without anyone else in the room. The fact that a local band and a dozen Scouts were crowded in there didn't seem to faze Paul. Conversely, the onlookers were riveted by his performance.
"It was uncanny. He could play and sing in a way that none of us could, including John,' Eric Griffiths recalls. 'He had such confidence, he gave a performance. It was natural. We couldn't get enough of it. It was a real eye-opener."
But Paul wasn't finished yet. Knowing even then how to work an audience, he tore through a medley of Little Richard numbers - Tutti Frutti, Good Golly, Miss Molly and Long Tall Sally - really cutting loose, howling the lyrics like a madman, scaling those treacherous vocal Alps that served as the coup de grace.
'After Paul was done,' Colin Hanton says, 'John and Paul circled each other like cats.' Their interest in each other was deeper and more complex than it appeared to anyone watching the encounter. There was instant recognition, a chemical connection made between two boys who sensed in the other the same heartfelt commitment to this music, the same do-or-die. For all the circling, posturing, and checking out that went on, what it all came down to was love at first sight.
After listening to Paul play, John recalled, "I had thought to myself, ''He's as good as me." Now, I thought, if I take him on, what will happen? It when through my head that I'd have to keep him in line if I let him join [the band]. But he was good, so he was worth having. He also looked like Elvis. I dug him."
Paul and Ivan left before the Quarry Men's eveing "dance concert" in the church hall. The Quarry Men packed up their gear afterward and hopped onto various buses home, except for John and Pete, who decided to walk. It was a beautiful night. The storm had drained the humidity from the air, and the boys took a shortcut along a piece of land they called "sthe style", a "slither of rock only as wide as a passageway" that led across the quarry into Linkstor Road.
"John and Pete walked without talking most of the way. at some point during their stroll, John glanced sideways at his friend ans asked, 'What did you think of that kid, Paul?' Shotton was crestfallen at what he interpreted as 'a danger signal,' a warning that their friendship was about to face a serious challenge. 'I'd watched his reaction. In his question "What did you think of him?" he was talking about personally, not musically.' Pete answered John honestly. 'I liked him, actually,' he said. 'I thought he was really good.' Shotton realized then and there that Paul's infiltration was ' a fait accompli.' Even when John immedietly inquired 'What do you think about him joining the band?' he knew the decision had already been made."

____

If you think Bob Spitz let his writerly imagination run away with the instant chemical connection, wait till you read his kid's version of this encounter, in the chapter now titled "An Incredible Discovery":


"Shortly before the Quarry Men were finished, they noticed a mate named Ivan Vaughan standing below them, off to the right of the stage, with another boy at his side. Smiles were exchanged, and somehow it was understood that they would all hook up after the show.
Afterward, Ivan charged backstage to congratulate the Quarry Men on their performance. He said hello to everyone, then introduced his friend—Paul McCartney.
“I think you two will get along,” he said to John, perhaps the understatement of all time.
Paul was only fifteen but looked even younger, with a round, pudgy face, a tight little rosebud mouth, and droopy eyes like a spaniel’s. This isn’t to imply that he was an odd-looking boy. There was a handsome quality that came through in his features, as well as something strong and instinctive. Even as a teenager, Paul was rather clever about people, sizing them up and fitting in. It was clear that he was comfortable around older boys; nevertheless, John expected him to show a little respect, especially in the presence of such celebrated musicians. But Paul wasn’t intimidated; he came on like gangbusters.
Instead of hanging back and observing, he picked up his guitar. “Mind if I play?” he asked, as they sat around on the backstage benches. Without waiting for a reply, he launched into “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On,” a rock ‘n roll hit that the Quarry Men had been unable to learn. Then, Paul recalled, “I did ‘Twenty Flight Rock’ and knew all the words.” In fact, he did more than just play the song, he performed it, cutting loose on the vocals, howling the lyrics with a little catch in his throat that made him sound like Elvis Presley. He wasn’t too shabby on the guitar, either. Nigel Walley remembered, “He played with a cool, authoritative touch.” There was a tricky little chord change that none of them had been able to figure out, and Paul handled it effortlessly, vamping on the guitar strings with the heel of his hand.
John saw right off that the boy had talent, not to mention plenty of nerve. He came on so loose and confident, without any inhibitions; there didn’t seem to be a self-conscious bone in his body. John couldn’t take his eyes off him. “I was very impressed by Paul playing ‘Twenty Flight Rock,” he admitted. “He could obviously play the guitar. I half thought to myself, ‘He’s as good as me.”
In fact, he was better — much better. Paul was a gifted singer and an accomplished musician, while John could barely scratch out three measly chords. Plus, Paul had all the right moves. “It was uncanny,” recalled Eric Griffiths, another member of the Quarry Men. “He could play and sing in a way that none of us could, including John. It was so natural. We couldn’t get enough of it. It was a real eye-opener.”
Afterward, a friend remembered, “John and Paul circled each other like cats.” Their interest in each other was deep, complicated, and strong—a magnetic pull. There was something they recognized in each other, but it also repelled them, perhaps because it struck too close to home. Neither boy knew exactly what it was, but they could feel it. Instead of becoming instant friends, they played it cool, acting polite toward each other, interested but not too interested.
Later that night, walking home with his friend Pete Shotton, John appeared to be lost in thought. He didn’t seem interested in talking about the fun they’d had at the festival or even about the Quarry Men’s well-received performance. At first, Pete suspected that something was wrong, but he shrugged it off as one of John’s moods. Besides, Pete knew not to press his friend. It was a beautiful night, and they walked without talking most of the way. Finally, John broke the silence, “What did you think of that kid, Paul?” he asked Pete.
So that was it, Pete thought. All this time, he had been worried that something serious was up, when John was simply preoccupied with that new boy on the scene, Paul — Paul McCartney. Pete was instantly jealous. He and John were best friends, best mates, and now he sensed someone else creeping onto their turf. Two’s company, three’s a crowd, Pete thought. But he knew how important music was to his friend, so he put his jealousy aside and answered truthfully. “I liked him, actually,” he said. “I thought he was really good.”
John nodded and walked on in silence. He was haunted by Paul McCartney’s display of skill, the way he had handled the guitar so smoothly and with such panache, the way he’d sung all the correct words to the rock ‘n roll songs. All of that led to a more important issue. He was thinking about asking Paul to join the band, but there were some built-in headaches that troubled him. “I’d been the kingpin up to then,” John remembered thinking. “Now I thought, if I take him on, what will happen? He was good, so he was worth having.” And John thought Paul looked a little like Elvis. “I dug him.” Still, the Quarry Men was his band; he was the rightful leader. All the other guys looked up to him. If he let Paul join, he knew they’d have to be equals, and he hated giving up any control of the group. He also feared being shown up by Paul, that Paul would expose his shortcomings as a musician.
John remembered turning over many questions in his head that night. “Was it better to have a guy who was better than the [others]? To make the group stronger, or to let me be stronger?” Then again, would he really lose anything by inviting Paul to play with the band? Could Paul’s incredible talent possibly rub off on him, make him that much better?
Even with all this uncertainty, the decision had already been made. Hearing Paul play and sing that night had really knocked John out. That had sealed it, as far as he was concerned. He couldn’t believe a guy who was relatively close to him in age and living only a short distance away could have so much to offer. What an incredible discovery! There was also something unique about Paul, something John couldn’t quite put his finger on, that intensified his interest. Hooking up with someone like that was too exciting to pass up. John sensed he was on the verge of something important. Sure, they could make some music together and have a little fun, but there was something else, something indescribable that intrigued him. Whatever it was would become apparent in time.
Little did he know it would turn into the Beatles."

____

Little did he know, indeed. I think my favourite sentence is "this isn't to imply he was an odd-looking boy", and Bob Spitz' retrospective care not to hurt teen!Paul's feelings with the description. (Btw, re: the weight issue, younger brother Mike used to call him "fatty", but he lost the baby fat after his mother died, though vestiges were still there in that summer of 1957; apparantly hanging out with John Lennon made for even more rapid weight loss, because by the time George joins and we have photos of the three of them, the baby fat is gone.) Anyway, the all-time winner of the most purple prose rendition of the Woolton Village Fete encounter is Jim O'Donnell with his book The Day John Met Paul:

"It has been one thing for McCartney to hear the music on the radio or on records or to see it in the movies or on stage, or even to see local bands that fool around with it. But he can tell that this guy isn’t fooling around. This music means something to Lennon – and he means business. McCartney holds a sharp eye on this fellow who is in his own age group, in his own city, and playing his own music.
It is as if Lennon is incarnating the music for McCartney – rendering the sound waves into something as real as shore waves; taking the notes McCartney hears in each ear and bringing them together into sharp focus behind his eyes, lifting the music off the radio airwaves and putting it into Liverpool air. The deeper mysteries of rock and roll begin to crystallize behind McCartney’s long, dark brown eyelashes.
(...)
Vaughan’s face is animated as he prepares to introduce McCartney to the band – and especially to John Lennon. It’s a tantalizing prospect to Vaughan: devil-may-care John meeting cherub-cheeked Paul; the guy who has to practice on the porch meeting the guy who has a piano in the parlour; the class clown who’d had a few beers and didn’t tell his aunt he had a band meeting the dressed-to-kill kid who is going to scout camp and is encouraged to play music by his father.
(...)
As is usual with teenage guys, the ‘introductions’ are not so much introductions as glances from a poker game on a fast train. None of them are exceedingly concerned with formal niceties. Vaughan tells the people who the guy with him is and then tells the guy with him who the people are, and that’s about as ceremonious as it gets. So when McCartney meets Lennon, they don’t shake hands – nor do they know that fate is shaking both their hands. In greeting each other, they barely move their lips. Lennon nods faintly, once, involuntarily; McCartney’s mouth makes a small smile that does not reach his eyes.
For a millisecond, they eye each other in motionless tableau – Lennon sitting, McCartney standing. Then their eyes meet squarely and, momentarily, you can practically hear the dust motes settle on Lennon’s guitar next to him on a chair. The sight each beholds is hardly astonishing: brown eyes, brown hair, average height, average weight.... No, the astonishment would surge from something inside the two of them – something behind the eyes, under the hair, over the height, beyond the weight; something about a certain...attitude...towards a certain...kind...of music.
(...)
A few seconds later, Lennon is entranced as McCartney bewitches his guitar into a tuned musical instrument. Destined by his rock and roll instincts, the young Elvis semi-look-alike cuts loose on a song by Eddie Cochran called ‘Twenty Flight Rock.’ His hands sink into the guitar like a sawblade into wood. His voice and playing and movements are extraordinarily fresh and vibrant. The beat of his music thumps against the hall’s marshy green walls. His white jacket flaps around him. The teenager puts his heart and soul and mind on rock and roll autopilot, returning the favour of Lennon’s show with a show of his own.
When McCartney had started playing, Lennon had been staring moodily at the wall; this improbable guitar player was too young to pay any attention to. The fifteen-year-old has been playing only a matter of seconds when Lennon’s eyes cut from the wall to McCartney to the wall...and back to McCartney. The light from the big church hall windows seems shrouded, like the light in a dream. To Lennon, the sound floating through the light is a bouquet of scented notes. For a second, the sound takes away from the very breath that services his brain. His teeth come together suddenly. There is a subdued crunching in his mouth. His skin feels as if it’s biodegrading. If eyes could glow, his would be a couple of coast guard searchlights at 4 a.m. He opens his mouth slightly, but no words come out. For one, the Lennon tongue is tied. He stirs in his chair, adjusting his ego. He steeples his fingers together under his chin and leans forward and stares.
McCartney has Lennon’s rapt attention. Lennon has a sensation of the hall getting smaller and darker, and McCartney getting bigger and brighter. Lennon feels that touch of gentle giddiness one has on a ship at sea when another ship comes up over the horizon. On rocky Liverpool waves, Lennon and McCartney zigzag into each other’s sight.
They see each other.
(...)
In a trice, the older teen has dropped the tough-guy mask and is leaning unsubtly over the younger teen’s white-jacketed shoulder. It’s a photo finish as to which rises first: Lennon or his eyebrows. The action is involuntary. He moves in close to the guitarist as naturally as he had moved close to this music in the first place – no psychological fencing about it. If Lennon stood any closer, he would feel the brush of McCartney’s eyelashes on his face."

In case you dare to doubt a bit of this, err, vivid description, the book is careful to put a quote from John's childhood pal and about to be dethroned bff Pete Shotton on the cover: "Once I started reading this book, I couldn't stop. This is a realistic portrayal of Lennon as a teenager. O'Donnell gets it right." Well, alright then. Carry on, boys.

Comments

[jesuswasbatman]

That use of the word "spunk" has a quite jaw-dropping effect if you're British (if you aren't aware, in British English the American connotations of "courage" are completely non-existent and the word means only a certain male-only bodily fluid).

On biographies generally - there really are very few rock biographies of male artists by women. I think this is quite simply because music journalism always has been and is still very, very sexist. As I keep banging on in your journal when the subject comes up, twenty-five years after Yoko Ono was being savaged for destroying the Beatles and after supposedly decades of pop-cultural feminism, things had if anything got even worse with Courtney Love being directly accused of premeditatedly murdering her husband.

[selenak]

In other words, Bob Spitz could have used a Brit picker. :)

Are there any biographies/critical writings on Courtney Love and/or Cobain by a female writer?

[jesuswasbatman]

There's Poppy Z Brite's semiauthorised biography of Love (Brite still identified as a woman at the time it was written, I think).

[bossymarmalade]

That last one is GOLD. I feel the world is a little brighter now that I know John thought Paul sounded like a bouquet of scented notes!

If Lennon stood any closer, he would feel the brush of McCartney’s eyelashes on his face.

To be fair, I think a person standing on the other side of the room might get a breeze from the blink of Macca's long long lashes. *g*

[selenak]

And don't forget that the mysteries of rock'n roll were hidden in his eyes.:) Though I do worry about John's own glowing eyes in combination of the biodegrading skin. 50s Liverpool = nuclear wasteland?!?

Eyelashes: well...