47 Years Ago Today

July 6, 1957 - an important day in my life - though it would be 5 years more before I was born.

On this day in 1957, 15 year old Paul McCartney of Liverpool, England and his pal Ivan Vaughn went to a church fete in the Liverpool suburb of Woolton. Legend has it Paul and Ivan went to the party for two reasons: girls and to hear a band. Ivan's friend John Lennon (age 16) had a band called the Quarrymen who played that day.

Long story short - Paul hears John massacre the words to "Come Go With Me", Ivan introduces his mutual friends during a break. After the show, Paul teaches John the correct words to the song, then teaches the Quarrymen to play "Twenty Flight Rock" (by Albert Lea native Eddie Cochrane), and to top it all off, shows John how to tune a guitar.

Some say that John asked Paul to join the Quarrymen that very day, other sources say it was a few days later. Either way, within the month, the seed germinated and the Beatles were born.

What about Ivan? I suspose he is one of many who earned the title "Fifth Beatle". I was able to dig this up online. These are Paul's comments during an April 30, 2001 interview with Terry Gross on Fresh Air.:

" Well, Ivan Vaughn was one of my best friends at school, who was born on exactly the same day as I was in Liverpool. So when we discovered this fact in the playground chatting, we became instant good mates. And he was a really lovely man. He turned out to be a classic scholar. He went to Cambridge to study Greek and Latin. And the other important thing was that he actually introduced me, one day, to John Lennon because he was very good friends with John, part of John's crowd. And Ivan said to me, 'Come along to this village fair.' That was in the village of Walton where John and Ivan lived. And he said, 'Why don't you come along? It'll be quite a bit of fun,' you know. He said, 'And my friend's playing in one of the bands.' So I arrived there and saw John, and so I was introduced. So it was Ivan who actually introduced me to him.


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