The Quarrymen - Early Years

Early Years

In the mid-1950s, there was a revival in the UK of the musical form "skiffle" that had originated in the USA and had been popular in the US in the 1920s, '30s and '40s. In addition to its popularity among British teenagers as music to listen to, it also spawned a craze of teenage boys starting their own groups to perform the music. One of the primary attractions was that it did not require great musical skills or expensive instruments to be played. Early British skiffle was played by traditional jazz musicians, with the most successful British proponent of the genre in the 1950s being Lonnie Donegan. The Quarrymen's initial repertoire included several songs that Donegan had recorded. When Lennon wanted to try making music himself, he and fellow Quarry Bank school friend, Griffiths, took guitar lessons in Hunt's Cross, Liverpool, although Lennon gave up the lessons soon after, as they were based on theory and not actual playing.

As Griffiths already knew how to play the banjo, Lennon's mother showed them how to tune the top four strings of their guitars to the same notes as a banjo, taught them the chords of D, C, and D7, and the Fats Domino song, "Ain't That a Shame". They practised at Lennon's aunt's house (called Mendips) at 251 Menlove Avenue where Lennon lived, or at Griffiths' house in Halewood Drive. They learned how to play "Rock Island Line", "Jump Down Turn Around (Pick a Bale of Cotton)", "Alabamy Bound" and "Cumberland Gap", and later learned how to play "That's All Right" and "Mean Woman Blues".

Lennon started his own skiffle band (very briefly called The Blackjacks) with Griffiths in the summer of 1956, and recruited his best friend, Shotton, even though he could not play an instrument. Shotton elected to play the washboard, as it simply required percussive strumming and no lessons, so his mother supplied a washboard she found in the shed, and two thimbles from her sewing box. A week later Shotton asked Bill Smith, another school friend, to play a home-made tea chest bass, and Griffiths invited another school friend, Rod Davis (who had just purchased a banjo), to join the group. After a few days the Blackjacks name was abandoned. Both Lennon and Shotton have been credited with coining the name Quarrymen after a line in their school's song: "Quarrymen, old before our birth. Straining each muscle and sinew". The choice of name was tongue-in-cheek as Lennon regarded the reference in the school song to "straining each muscle and sinew" as risible.