|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
General Information: •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/-. The fete raised £1,000. •In the Quarrymen Paul suggested that manager Nigel Whalley shouldn't get an equal share because he didn't play onstage (Norman). •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! •Paul also obtained a job as a lorry driver starting at 6:30am. •Paul: "I know what you mean. When my mum died, I said,
'What are we going to do for money?'" •Paul: "Frankly, one of the reasons they [the Quarrymen] all like Colin was because he happened to have the record, 'Searchin' and again, that was mighty big currency back then. I mean, sometimes you made a whole career with somebody solely on the basis of owning a particular record!" •If I hadn't gone into rock, I probably would have become a teacher, because that's where I was heading, but I don't think I would have become a very good one. •Paul (London '86): I should have been a teacher because of the GEC thing I got. I doubt now whether I would have had the patience, but I like kids ok. I enjoy passing on information (Giuliano Lost Int. p. 300). •Paul: "I was luck enough to get ten bob a week pocket money-but it didn't go far. If I was taking a girl to the pictures I had to work it out exactly-3d for the bus from my house to the pictures, 2s6d each to go in, and about 2s for ices or nuts and a packet of ciggies". •Paul: "I've got one brother, and a father who used to be a cotton salesman down in New Orleans, you know. That's probably why I look a bit tanned... But seriously folks.... he occasionally had trouble paying the bills, but it was never, you know, never 'Go out and pick blackberries, son; we're a bit short this week.'" (Beatles Ultimate Experience. Playboy Interview 1964) •The Labour Exchange sent Paul to Massey and Coggins to wind coils for £7 per week. Paul quit when The Beatles obtained lunchtime gigs at the Cavern. •In the summer of '57 Paul and George took a three week trip along the southern coast of England. They would sometimes sleep on the beach to save a few shillings(Porter, A. Before They Were Beatles, p. 46). •During the interview Paul thought that the Massey and Coggins job was for sweeping up, not winding coils (Flippo, p. 119). •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 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). •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. •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). •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). •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). •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). •The Cavern was opened in 1957 as a jazz club in a former wine stone cellar by Alan Sytner (Schultheiss 10). •Paul's first public performance was at Butlin's Holiday Camp for a talent contest that advertised: Cash Prizes of Over 5,000 Pounds Must Be Won (Flippo, p. 26) •For an account of Paul's guitar purchases go to voxtalks.com. An excellent site for information. •On a trip home from school one day, Paul discovered that he didn't have enough money to pay the fare. George got his mother to pay the fare, and Mrs. Harrison then characteristically invited Paul in for some tea and biscuits (Goldsmith, Martin. The Beatles Come to America, p. 30 •Paul's mother, Mary, became a nurse Alder Hey Hospital at age fourteen and a Nursing Sister at age twenty-four. She traveled to work by bicycle as the family couldn't afford a car (Harry, B. PM Encyclopedia. p. 602). •Paul's brother, Michael, trained as an apprentice hairdresser upon leaving grammar school (Harry, B. PM Encyclopedia. p. 606).
Jim McCartney (Paul's Father): •"...his (Paul's) father had given up opportunities of promotion to be with his sons" (Tremlett, p. 11)
•Jim didn't think much of the Cavern and told Paul that he should be paid "danger money to play down there" (Harry, B. PM Encyclopedia. p. 579). •Jim started at age fourteen at A Hannay & Company, Cotton Merchants for six shillings a week as a sample boy. He became a cotton salesman at age 28 for £5 per week until the exchange closed during the war. When Jim went back to the Cotton Exchange after the war he began making £6 per week. Upon his retirement in 1964 he was making £10 per week (Harry, B. PM Encyclopedia. p. 579). •When the exchange closed Jim worked for Napier's, a munitions factory, as a lathe operator. Since the job was classified work for the Air Ministry the McCartneys were eligible for government housing. When the Napier's job came to an end Jim went to work for the Liverpool Cleansing Department (Harry, B. PM Encyclopedia. p. 579). •When Brian Epstein visited the McCartney home at the time he was becoming their manager, Mr. McCartney remembered buying a second hand piano at the Epstein's store. •Going back generations there had been fishmongers, a tobacco cutter, boilermakers and plumbers. Paul's great-great grandfather had been a coroner. •Paul and Mike were both bought rabbits and new bikes by Jim as youngsters. •Mike McCartney: Dad knew that to be a good businessman you have to have that killer streak, and he just wasn't prepared to be like that. And that would have meant neglecting us and he wasn't prepared to do that either (Tremlett, p. 23). •While still at school Jim McCartney worked at Everton Theatre Royal as a lamp boy. Paul said that he would actually burn bits of lime for the limelights. Jim was also hired to sell programmes before each show. He would collect the discarded programmes at the end of each show, take them home to iron them, and sell them again, but this time pocketing the money for himself (Harry, B. PM Encyclopedia. p. 579). •As Jim Mac's Jazz Band, they played background music for silent movies at the local cinemas and for dances at St. Catherine's Hall or Oak Hall (Flippo, p. 11). •John: "[Paul's] dad told him to get a job, he f***ing dropped the group and started working on the lorries saying, 'I need a steady career'. We couldn't believe it, so I said to him-my Aunt Mimi reminded me of this the other night-he rang up and said that he'd got this job and couldn't come to the group. So I told him on the phone, 'Either come or you're out'. So he had to make a decision between me and his dad then, and he chose me' (McCabe/Schonfeld, p. 30. For the Record). •Jim wanted to raise some money to send his mother on holiday so he gambled in hopes of raising the money. He lost money and went into debt. His boss heard of this and lent him the money to pay the debt and send his mother on holiday to Devon. Jim saved money to repay the loan by walking back and forth to work for a year. (Harry, B. PM Encyclopedia. p. 579).
•"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 [John's house and family] 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".
•Owen [Mohin, Paul's mother's father] emigrated to Glasgow, where he worked as a coal merchant and married a Glaswegian of Irish descent named Mary Theresa Danher, or Danaher as some sources list. The couple moved to Liverpool, where Paul's mother, Mary Patricia, was born in 1909 (The Beatles Irish Heritage by John Vincent) •Unlike John Lennon, Paul McCartney claims Irish heritage
on both sides of his family. Some sources claim that Paul's paternal
grandfather, James McCartney II, a journeyman plumber and carpenter,
was actually born in Ireland; others posit that it was actually
Paul's great-grandfather, James McCartney, who was the first of
the family to leave Ireland (The Beatles Irish Heritage by John
Vincent). |
