•John spent £17 on a new brown suede coat for Cynthia as he started to make some money from the Cavern performances. Mimi was reportedly not happy, as she thought that the money that he now had coming in should not be spent on "her" (Coleman).

•Mimi bought John a £17 guitar after the £5 one that she had bought earlier was not satisfactory for public performances. The guitar was "Guaranteed Not To Split". Mimi said, "I resented paying that even though I'd been giving £12 each for his school blazers".

•John: I only got one beating from Mimi - for taking money from her handbag. I was always taking a little, for soft things like Dinky’s, but this day I must have taken too much (Anthology p. 9).

•Mimi: "Why John even had a pony when he was a little boy. He certainly didn't come from a slum. None of the boys did (Giuliano).

•John: After I left Penny Lane I moved in with my auntie, who lived in the suburbs in a nice semi-detached place with a small garden and doctors and lawyers and that ilk living around, not the poor, slummy image that was projected. I was a nice, clean-cut suburban boy, and in the class system that was about a half a niche higher-class than Paul, George, and Ringo who lived in council houses. We owned our own house, our own garden; they didn’t have anything like that (Anthology p. 7).

•...John's Aunt Mimi relented and bought him a guitar from Hessy's music shop in Whitechapel...Over the years most of the Liverpool bands bought their instruments there-usually on very favorable credit terms. Shop manager Jim Gretty sold Mimi a spanish model with steal strings for around £17(Porter, A. Before They Were Beatles, p. 23).

•During John's childhood Mimi would rent out two extra rooms occasionally to medical students to make extra money.

•Mimi Smith: "The Harrison's weren't as well off as other families, perhaps, but George wasn't from a slum either, the way the press had it...and that's why you never saw photographs of John's boyhood home.

•John's Uncle George, when he died at age 52, left his Aunt Mimi £2000 (Harry. JL Encyclopedia, p. 819).

•Mimi also liked to give off the impression that she and George were reasonably well-off. The truth is that finances were at times stretched and they took in lodgers, primarily students, to help cover expenses at Mendips (Porter, A. Before They Were Beatles, p. 20).

•"The guitar's all right for a hobby, John, but it won't earn you any money"-John's Aunt Mimi.

•John's allowance was 5s a week until he was fourteen years old. But John would sometimes go to his Uncle George for an extra shilling. (Brown, p. 16).

•Mimi paid for John’s first year of art school out of her savings until he was eligible for a government loan (Brown, p. 28).

Concerning Paul:

•The Woolton Fete where John and Paul first met charged 6d for adults and 3d for children to attend. The dance where John's Band played was 2/-.

•Paul: ...He was not the big Working-Class Hero he liked to make out. He was the least working class of the Beatle actually. He was the poshest because his family almost owned Woolton at one time (Interview from the 80's fr. Giuliano, Glass Onion).

•John: He (Paul) had a good guitar at the time, it cost about £14. He got it in exchange for a trumpet his dad had given him (Anthology p. 12).

•..."Frankly, one of the most interesting things to me about John was that, by my standards anyway, his people seemed to have quite a lot of money. I mean my family was from the trading estate, you know, like the rest of the Beatles, but John's relations were really like another world from what I was used to. I remember being very impressed in Mendips with seeing the entire works of Winston Churchill, and knowing that John had actually read them!".

•"You see, my mum was a nurse and my dad was a cotton salesman, so we always lived in the mid-wives house on the estate. So to actually see this sort of middle class thing was just fascinating to me".

•"Christ, I can even recall John getting one hundred quid for his twenty-first birthday off of one of his aunties".

•"I remember John talking to me about his family knew who worked for the BBC. Personal friends who were dentists, and aunties and uncles up in Scotland, so it was all very exotic to me. As a child the only places I had ever been were Pelheli, Scagness, and Lemington Spa. That had been the whole of my travels. But not that lot [John's family]. Why, apparently John had been up to Edinburgh several times on his own by the time he was twelve."

•"...he'd [John] often be busy writing at the typewriter in his famous In His Own Write style. Honestly, I never knew anyone who personally owned a typewriter before".

Early Childhood:

•George Smith owned a dairy farm in Woolton. People would go for fresh milk ladled straight from the churn.

•A man who worked on for the dairy would come in two times per week to look after the garden at Mendips.

•Jerry Furman, he was our eggman. Every Saturday Jerry would come round and Mimi would give him a bob for a dozen eggs.

•When he was on a trip to visit his Aunt Elizabeth and Uncle Bertie John played 'The Happy Wanderer' on the harmonica that was given to him by a student lodger at Mendips. The bus driver told John that a passenger on the bus the previous day had left a harmonica on the bus and that John could have it if he'd come to the bus station in Edinburgh. "This was John's first professional musical instrument" (Harry, B. Lennon Encyclopedia, p. 121).

•From 1950-1955 the average number of guitars sold in Britain was about 5,000. By 1957 sales were up to about 250,000 (Porter, A. Before They Were Beatles, p. 18).

Concerning Julia:

•John's mother brought him back on a train to the Lime Street Station and had forgotten to buy a train ticket. She was apprehended by the police, and released with the understanding that she return with the money the next day. She did.

•Alfred Lennon sent money and some letters until John was eighteen months old.

•The musically inclined Julia scraped together the £10 and soon John was the proud owner of a 3/4 size Gallotone flat top acoustic guitar (Porter, A. Before They Were Beatles, p. 22).

•Julia Stanley's Husband would keep his tips from his job as a waiter in a jar. Occasionally John and Pete Shotton, with permission, would get a "lucky dip" into the jar and leave Allerton with a handful of change.

•John's mother Julia at one time worked as a cinema usherette and a waitress in Penny Lane.

Concerning Pete Shotton:

•When the two were boys Pete Shotton said that John told him, after not sharing his candy with John "...not to be such a tight a*** c*** all your life...You've got to share out in this f***ing world (Shotton).

•John was surprised that his friends would actually deposit their pennies in the church collection box as instructed instead of spending it on bubble gum (Shotton).

•John and Pete Shotton ran a dart stall (game) at a school fundraising event. They made £28 4s at the end of the day. They ended up giving £12 4s to the school and keeping the rest for themselves (Shotton).

•Pete Shotton and John took some old discarded lunch tickets for the school. They sold about forty of them at half-price and made about £5 each. The school never discovered their actions.

General:

•For an account of John's guitar purchases go to voxtalks.com. An excellent site for information.

•Johnny and the Moondogs played at a talent show in Manchester, November 1959. The contest was judged by audience applause when each band was brought back up on stage. The applause portion of the show was too late for the group to stay because John, Paul, and George had to catch to last train by to Liverpool. They could not afford a hotel (Porter, A. Before They Were Beatles, p. 91).

•Charles McBain (who booked the group for the New Clubmoor Hall) also booked the Quarry Men for the Walton Hall in Garston. The band received 2 pound 10s or 10 shillings per member (Porter, A. Before They Were Beatles, p. 64).

•Alan Sytner began fining bands (late '57) that played a rock songs at The Cavern (Porter, A. Before They Were Beatles, p. 64).

•The day after the Quarry Men's first Casbah gig John entered into a hire-purchase agreement with Hessy's Music store for a Hofner Club 40 electric guitar (Porter, A. Before They Were Beatles, p. 86).

•The Quarry Men recorded their August '58 sessions onto acetate because creating a master tape would have added two shillings and sixpence to the cost (Porter, A. Before They Were Beatles, p. 75).

•Paul talked about the group (Quarry Men in late '58) playing under the name The Rainbows because "we all had different colored shirts and we couldn't afford any others" (Smith, Alan. Close-Up on a Beatle, New Musical Express. Aug '63).

•Ken Brown stated that when he and George were in the Les Stewart Quartet the most money they ever received was £2 for a wedding reception. He also stated that working men's clubs never paid them more than 10 bob/shillings (Pritchard & Lysaght. Beatles: An Oral History).

•The Quarry Men played a dance at the Social Club for the Merseyside Passenger Transport Executive. Free drinks were offered to the group as part of the arrangement.

•Pete Shotton commenting on the July 6, 1957, St Peter's Fete: "He (John) didn't have enough money to get drunk. We were drunk at the Rosebery Street celebration but I don't remember John being drunk on the day of the fete." The comment Mr. Shotton makes is in reference to Paul's recollection of smelling beer on John's breath (Porter, A. Before They Were Beatles, p. 56).

•Nigel quickly came to the conclusion that the group would never get a paying gig if no-one knew they existed. Playing in each other's front rooms wasn't the way to get noticed, so he had a series a business cards printed that were posted in local store windows. The cards stated:"COUNTRY, WESTERN, ROCK 'N' ROLL, SKIFFLE THE QUARRY MEN OPEN FOR ENGAGEMENTS" (Porter, A. Before They Were Beatles, p. 43).

•Although John Lennon appeared to have little money of his own to spend, he parted with some of his cash to buy a fragile 10-inch 78rpm record of Lonnie Donnegan's Rock Island Line (Porter, A. Before They Were Beatles, p. 21).

•Playboy: "As hard-bitten refugees from the Liverpool slums-- according to heart-rending fan magazine biographies-- do you feel prepared to cope with all this sudden wealth?"
John: "Yeah, we saw those articles in the American fan mags that said, 'Those boys struggled up from the slums..."
Playboy: "How about you, John?"
John: "Oh, just the same. I used to have an auntie. And I had a dad whom I couldn't quite find."
Ringo: "John lived with the Mounties."
John: "Yeah, the Mounties. They fed me well. No starvation."
(Beatles Ultimate Experience. Playboy Interview With The Beatles. Interviewed by Jean Shepherd in Edinburgh. Copyright © 1965 Playboy Press)

•John Lennon and Paul McCartney. The Tonight Show: May 14, 1968. Guest Host: Joe Garagiola
JG: "If you couldn't have been in music-- if it hadn't happened for you-- what do you think you would like to do?"
John: "Ahh, I don't know. Films for me."

•John, with money he received for his sixteenth birthday, bought a Goons 78 rpm record called the Ying-Tong Song (Harry. JL Encyclopedia, p. 991).

•Julia, John's sister, speaks of an incident when John is on a "date" while he was visiting his sisters: "Both of us giggling like crazy, John sheepishly poked his head up over the wall and begged us to go get lost. Every mortal pleasure however, has a definite price. So in the end, John bribed us a half a crown each not to mention anything to anyone about this little rendezvous".

•Julia: Financially, we were still maintained by our father, which was a real blessing to all concerned, for at least it offered him a continuing sense of participation in our day-to-day affairs. In the summer of 1960, however we did briefly move back in with him and his mother, but after about four months or so we went back home to the Cottage.

•John: I used to have to borrow a guitar at first. I couldn't play, but a mate of mine had one and it fascinated me. Eventually my mother bought me one from a mail order firm. I remember it had a label on the inside which said, 'Guaranteed Not To Split'".

•Leila (relative of John's) was on holiday from her university and working a summer job as a chalet maid at Butland's when she received a telegram stating that Julia had died in a car accident.

•William Popjoy, Headmaster of Quarrybank: "I asked him (John) to write out for for what his principal interests were and he began with salmon fishing. In those days he hadn't thought of making money from it (Skiffle). For instance he came to me and asked for permission to play with the Quarry Men in the interval of the sixth from dance. I said I'd think about it and reluctantly agreed. But it never occurred to him to ask for money (Pritchard and Lysaught. The Beatles: An Oral History).

•In 1957 the Quarry Men played at a golf club where their payment was a free dinner in the club's dining room. A hat was also passed around to collect money for the group (Porter, A. Before They Were Beatles, p. 46).

•Nigel Walley booked the Quarry Men on skiffle night at the Cavern through a contact at Lee Park,also know as Childwall Golf course. The contact was a player at the club, a Dr. Sytner, the father of the owner of the Cavern (Porter, A. Before They Were Beatles, p. 46).

•"...for they (The Quarry Men) had secured their first real paid engagement." For the 750th anniversary of the granting of Liverpool its charter the Quarry Men played at a celebration on Rosebery Street. The gig was arranged because the organizer of the Rosebery Street celebration had a son who knew drummer Colin Hanton (Porter, A. Before They Were Beatles, p. 49).

•Mike McCartney: Just down the road. So to the point you were making was about all this poverty we were brought up in? The reality was quite different! We were actually lower middle class. My dad was a cotton salesman. And my mother was a midwife, again, a highly respected position. Look at John's place on Menlove Avenue. It's bloody posh!

•The Cavern was opened in 1957 as a jazz club in a former wine stone cellar by Alan Sytner (Schultheiss 10).

•John and Eric Griffiths used to bring their guitars to a man in Kings Drive, Woolton to have them tuned for a small fee (Lewisohn. Chronicle p. 12).

•John: My mother was a housewife, I suppose. She was a comedienne and a singer. Not a professional, but she used to get up in pubs and things like that (Anthology p. 7).

•John: Sometimes I was relieved to have no parents. Most of my friend’s relations bore no resemblance to humanity. Their heads were filled with petty-cash bourgeois fears (Anthology p. 7).

•John: One really big one (referring to a dream he had as a child) was about thousands of half-crowns all around me. And finding lots of money in old houses - as much as the stuff as I could carry. I used to put it in my pockets and it was in my hands and in sacks, and I could still never carry as much as I wanted (Anthology p. 8).

•John on Liverpool: It was going poor, a very poor city, and tough (Anthology p. 8).

•John on Liverpool: We were a port, the second biggest in England. The North is where the money was made in the 1800's.

•John: As a kid I used to go to their garden parties with my friends Ivan, Nigel, and Pete. We’d all go up there and hang out and sell lemonade bottles (Anthology p. 8).

•John: I was shot at once for stealing apples...We used to ride on the bumpers of tram cars in Penny Lane and ride miles without paying (Anthology p. 8).

•John: I can’t remember why I took it (the harmonica) in the first place - I must have picked one up very cheap. I know we used to take in students and one of them had a mouth organ and said he’d buy me one if I could learn a tune by the next morning. So I learnt two. I was somewhere between eight and twelve at the time, in short pants, anyway (Anthology p. 8).

•John: When I was fifteen I was thinking, ‘If only I can get out of Liverpool and be famous and rich, wouldn’t it be great? (Anthology p. 9).

•John: As I got older, we’d go on from just stuffing rubbish like sweets in our pockets from shops, and progressed to getting enough to sell to others, like ciggies (Anthology p. 9).

•John: I used to borrow a guitar at first. I couldn’t play, but mother bought me one from one of those mail-order firms. It was a bit crummy, but I played it all the time and got a lot of practice (Anthology p. 11).

• John on the Quarrymen: Our first appearance was in Roseberry Street - It was their Empire Day celebrations...We played from the back of a lorry. We didn’t get paid. We played at blokes’ parties after that, perhaps got a few bob, but mostly we just played for fun. We didn’t mind about not getting paid (Anthology p.12).

•John: I was always thinking I was going to be a famous artist and possibly I’d have to marry a very rich, old lady, or man, to look after me while I did my art. But then rock n’ roll came along and I thought, ‘Ah-ha’, this is the one’. So I didn’t have to marry anyone or live with them (Anthology p. 12).

•John: I really didn’t know what I wanted to be, apart from ending up an eccentric millionaire. I had to be a millionaire. If I couldn’t do it without being crooked, then I’d have to be crooked (Anthology p. 12).

•John: I got more confidence and used to ignore Mimi. I went away for longer spells; wore what clothes I wanted. I had to borrow or pinch, as I had no money at college (Anthology p. 14).

•I think sometimes of the friends who left school at the same time as me, when I made up my mind to go to art school. Some of them went straight to nine-to-five jobs and within three months they looked like old men. Fat chance of that ever happening to me (Anthology p. 14).