John Lennon

John Lennon's Parents: Julia (Stanley) and Freddie Lennon

Never one to make a discreet entrance, when John Lennon came into the world on October 9, 1940, it was amid a Liverpool whose docks and surrounding neighborhoods were under almost constant threat from the bombs of Hitler's Luftwaffe.

©Richard Buskin Liverpool Maternity Hospital, where John Winston Lennon was born at 6:30 p.m. on October 9, 1940. His father, Freddie, was away at sea on the memorable day.

The Battle of Britain had moved into high gear as the Germans attempted to complete their takeover of Western Europe, but Mary Elizabeth (Mimi) Smith was prepared to risk the possibility of flying debris and shrapnel. She ran all the way to Liverpool Maternity Hospital as soon as she heard that her sister, Julia, had given birth to a baby son, christened with the middle name of Winston as a tribute to Britain's unflagging Prime Minister.

Mimi's effort to see her new nephew was rewarded for, as she asserted many years later, "I knew the moment I first set eyes on John that he was going to be something special." Mimi's reaction displayed either great premonition or, more likely, natural favoritism. In any case, she need have looked no further than the little boy's mother to determine the broad shape of his personality.

Julia Lennon (born Stanley) was a carefree, fun-loving woman. Her behavior was sometimes irresponsible and often eccentric, and in sharp contrast to the reserved manners and sober attitude of Mimi. "She was witty and full of fun," Mimi told Beatles chronicler Hunter Davies. "She never took life or anything seriously. Everything was funny, but she couldn't see into people until it was too late. She was more sinned against than sinning."

Julia was a movie usherette before she married ship's steward Alfred (Freddie) Lennon on a whim on December 3, 1938. Both in their mid-twenties, they were at first very happy together, but neither of them was ready, emotionally or financially, to bring up a child.

Freddie's father, Jack, had been born in Dublin and toured the United States as a Kentucky minstrel during the 1890s. Retirement brought him to Liverpool, and after Jack's death in 1921 nine-year-old Freddie tried to continue the showbiz tradition when he ran away from his orphanage to join a children's troupe. The authorities soon put an end to his big-time ambitions, however, and by the age of 15 he was well educated and working as an office boy. It was at around this time that he met Julia Stanley.

A year later he quit the office for the sea, finding employment first as a bellboy and then as a waiter, but his lack of ambition meant that he would progress no further. By the time John was born some twelve years later, Freddie was serving as headwaiter on a ship bound for New York. The home life was not for him, and in spite of the occasional visit and the odd postcard, there was little sign of the elder Lennon over the next few years as he sailed his way around Canada, France, Italy and North Africa.

Richard Buskin 9 Newcastle Road, Liverpool 15, John’s first home before he went to live with his Aunt Mimi and Uncle George.

Julia, in the meantime, was not exactly tying herself down either. Having handed over the responsibility for John's upbringing to Mimi and her husband George, she decided that the best way to mourn Freddie's absence was to go out and have a good time with her friends. For a while everything ran smoothly, but then Freddie spoiled things.

In an attempt to save the faltering marriage, he reappeared on the scene shortly after the five-year-old John had been enrolled in Dovedale Primary School off Penny Lane. Needless to say, he came back too late to do the marriage any good. His wife had set up housekeeping with another man, and she showed absolutely no interest in Freddie's desperate pleas to patch up the relationship.

Freddie's response was to take John to the nearby coastal resort of Blackpool, secretly planning to emigrate with his son to New Zealand and start a new life there. Julia, sensing trouble, arrived in Blackpool and demanded that their son return to Liverpool with her. What followed was a reckless tug-of-love that left emotional scars that John would carry for the rest of his life.

In a ridiculous scene straight out of the movies, the parents presented their child with an ultimatum as to whom he wanted to live with. Totally confused, the sobbing boy first opted for his father, but then, after watching his mother walk out of the door and down the street, he changed his mind and chased after her. Freddie later told Hunter Davies, author of The Beatles: The Authorized Biography, "That was the last I saw of him or heard of him until I was told he'd become a Beatle."

Young John Lennon

John Lennon would not spend the bulk of his childhood living with his mother, Julia Lennon. Having made her point and won her battle when John chose her over his father, Julia Lennon placed her son back in the sedate and comfortable setting of Mendips, Mimi and George Smith's house at 251 Menlove Avenue, situated in the middle-class Liverpool suburb of Woolton.

Dressed in his school blazer, eight-year-old John poses with his aunt, Mimi Smith, in the garden of their Liverpool home.

Here John would spend his days playing with friends, indulging his passion for drawing and, after Uncle George had taught him how, reading books and newspapers in his small bedroom above the front porch. Among his favorite books were Just William, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and The Wind in the Willows.

By the time he was seven he had compiled his own series of jokes, drawings, and cartoons, under the title of "Sport, Speed and Illustrated. Edited and Illustrated by J. W. Lennon." Possibly influenced by occasional outings to the cinema, each installment ended with "If you liked this, come again next week. It'll be even better."

The infrequent visits by Julia added to the household's overall feeling of stability. Looking back on this period Mimi, together with her three other sisters -- Anne, Elizabeth and Harriet -- would recall to biographer Hunter Davies that the pre-teen John "was as happy as the day was long."

That may have been true on the surface, but John's attitude at school displayed an underlying anger and frustration, possibly because of his parents' neglect. The teachers noted his talent for art and his sharp mind, but also suffered a boy with a sharp tongue and an appetite for fighting and mischief making.

Hunter Davies quotes John as admitting, "I fought all the way through Dovedale. I learned lots of dirty jokes very young; there was this girl who told me them … Other boys' parents hated me. They were always warning their kids not to play with me."

Not that this bothered John -- quite the opposite, in fact, for the boy discovered that a shabby appearance only enhanced the effect of rebelliousness. Seeing conformity as a sign of weakness, he hated the idea of a school uniform, and he made this quite clear by wearing a black blazer that often looked more like a crumpled bag, a white shirt that was usually unbuttoned, and gray shorts that would typically be covered in mud.

For the ultra-strict Mimi this kind of behavior was too much to endure. One of John's favorite stories about his aunt centered around the time she was walking down Penny Lane and saw a crowd observing a fight between a couple of "common scruffs." As recounted by Hunter Davies, Mimi confidently assumed that the battling youngsters were from one of the rougher schools in the area, but when the fists stopped flying she saw "this awful boy with his coat hanging off. To my horror, it was Lennon!"

Poor Mimi. Here she was, doing her best to bring John up "properly," and all he could do was let her down! Still, intelligence combined with a minimum of studying saw him through the "11-plus" (high school entrance) test, an accomplishment that earned him a brand new bicycle, courtesy of Uncle George. In September of 1952 John turned up for his first day at Quarry Bank Grammar School. Mimi had decided against the highly respected Liverpool Institute because it was situated farther away, and besides, Quarry Bank was located in a nicer, more residential district.

"I looked at the hundreds of new kids," John told Hunter Davies, "and thought, Christ, I'll have to fight my way through all this lot!"

Richard Buskin Dovedale Primary School, where John began studies in 1946. A painting he did here at age 11 in 1952 later adorned the sleeve of his Walls and Bridges album.

Helping out on this unpeaceful venture was a friend, Pete Shotton, a fuzzy-haired boy who had also made the switch from Dovedale. John, by his own admission, saw aggression as his route to popularity. Never one to simply merge into the background, he had to be the leader, the hero, the center of attention. Shotton was his loyal second-in-command, and together they set about breaking every rule they could.

"We were always looking to get into mischief," Pete remembered in a previously unpublished interview with music researcher David Stark. "Doing things that were anti-social or anti-adult, and which we knew would shock everyone."

Swearing, smoking, fighting, and penning obscene poems and drawings were all part of the rogues' repertoire, as were other petty offenses that found their way onto the John Lennon school report: "Insolence," "cutting class," and "throwing blackboard out of window."

In the book John Winston Lennon, author Ray Coleman quotes Eric Oldman, John's housemaster and chemistry teacher, who remembered that "[John] was awkward, but there was something in him. It wasn't sheer wickedness, but more spirit. ...He seemed determined not to conform to the rules. But he had a wit and a humor and ability."

John Lennon and Pete Shotton: Childhood Partners-in-Crime

Pete Shotton, John Lennon's childhood friend, recollects an incident early on during their time at Quarry Bank Grammar School, when he and John were ordered to report to the Deputy Head as punishment for one of their crimes. Most kids in this kind of situation either just apologize or plead their innocence, but of course Master Lennon had to go one better.

The teacher -- who was sitting between the two boys -- happened to be bald, and so John happily accepted the chance to perform one of his favorite tricks: tickling the man's head whenever he looked the other way. As usual, the victim tried to swat the imaginary fly and as usual John's sleight of hand left his victim totally confused and irritated.

©Richard Buskin Quarry Bank Grammar School, where John Lennon made mischief between 1952 and 1957.

"I couldn't breathe, what with the laughing," Pete recalls. "It would get so that my muscles wouldn't work, I was straining my stomach so much." John showed his own amusement by quite literally wetting himself, there and then, on the spot.

"What the devil is that?" inquired the teacher, hearing a dripping noise and seeing a small puddle on the floor.

"I think the roof's leaking, sir," was John's immediate reply. Never mind the fact that it wasn't even raining!

On another occasion, the demonic duo was sent to the headmaster to be caned. While Shotton waited his turn outside the office, John went in to receive his punishment, and when he came out he was crawling on all fours, groaning. On seeing this, Pete once again couldn't control his laughter, and as a result got an even worse beating.

Canings, in fact, became part of John's staple diet, as the boy set about bullying the teachers, abandoning any form of class work, and allowing himself to slip from a strong position in the top-ranked A-stream class during the first year, to 20th in the C-stream -- bottom of the bottom class -- by the final term of his graduation year. Teacher Eric Oldman remarked to Lennon biographer Ray Coleman that, on John's part, "There was a simple lack of any wish to get on."

For John, indeed, academic success was irrelevant, since much of the subject matter and the method of teaching it were alien to his way of thinking. Rather than flow with the tide, he preferred to confront it head-on; at least that way he would gain some pleasure out of the whole experience, as well as local notoriety.

"People like me are aware of their so-called genius at ten, eight, nine," he remarked to Jann Wenner during a 1970 Rolling Stone interview. "I always wondered, 'why has nobody discovered me?' ... didn't they see that I'm cleverer than anybody in this school? That the teachers are stupid, too? That all they had was information that I didn't need. ... I was different. I was always different. Why didn't anybody notice me?"

"He had a magnetism which attracted everybody," adds Shotton. "Everyone was interested in John, because even as a kid he had a great awareness about everything going on about him. He had an amazingly quick wit, a great sense of humor, an ability to turn serious situations upside down on their head and transform them into surrealistic plays. So in school and out of school people always wanted to be in his company, because he brightened everything up."

Young John Lennon Loses a Father Figure, Gains a 'Sister'

Approaching his mid-teens, John Lennon began to reestablish links with his mother, Julia Lennon, who was living less than two miles away from his Mendips home. Yet the renewal of one relationship coincided with the severing of another: his Uncle George Smith, the kindly ex-dairy farmer who provided the counterbalance to Aunt Mimi's strict rule -- the man who would humor John while his wife was punishing him, and the one who taught his nephew to read, took him for walks, and bought him a bike -- died from a hemorrhage on June 5, 1955, at the age of 52.

©Richard Buskin Menlove Avenue in the Liverpool suburb of Woolton. It was on this street that John Lennon spent most of his childhood with his Aunt Mimi and Uncle George.

John was on a camping holiday in Scotland at the time, and when he returned home a couple of days later and learned of the news, he felt unsure how to express his shock and pain, and withdrew to the safety of his bedroom.

"Then my cousin Leila arrived," he recalled for biographer Hunter Davies, "and she came upstairs as well. We both had hysterics. We just laughed and laughed. I felt very guilty afterwards."

An offhand reaction to a traumatic situation was typical of John Lennon, for this habit would repeat itself time and again throughout the years. On the one hand extremely outgoing, he could at the same time be emotionally withdrawn, especially when it came to betraying signs of weakness. Responding with nervous laughter or simply clamming up was his way of protecting himself against further hurt. It wouldn't be until much later in life that he would begin to confront this problem.

Now, however, with Uncle George gone, his feeling of isolation from those around him intensified, for apart from the free-and-easy Julia and his small circle of close friends, few people in his life appeared to be functioning anywhere near his wavelength.

"It's scary when you're a child," he later reflected during a Playboy interview with David Sheff, "because there is nobody to relate to. ... What the hell do you do? You want to belong but you don't want to belong, because you cannot belong."

Richard Buskin A current shot of “Mendips” in Woolton, once the home of John Lennon. Today, the strategically positioned trees and shrubs block the view of sightseers.

As John became more resentful of the demands of his aunt, his school, and of society in general, he drew closer to his mother, whom he regarded almost as a big sister. He would spend weekends in the suburb of Allerton, at the house Julia shared with her boyfriend, John Dykins -- whose facial tic prompted the ever-sensitive John to christen him with the charming nickname of "Twitchy." Julia would join her son in ridiculing all those whom they considered to be "thickheads." But while it was easy to laugh at others, John still wasn't at all sure as to his own future.

"I didn't really know what I wanted to be, apart from ending up an eccentric millionaire," he remarked to biographer Hunter Davies. "I fancied marrying a millionairess and doing it that way. ... If I couldn't do it without being crooked, then I'd have to be crooked. But I was too much of a coward to be a crook. I'd never have made it."

So, in spite of everyone's best efforts to tie him down, the rebellious side of John's nature had surfaced. All he needed now was a cause that would give him a sense of direction. He found it in music.

John and Julia Lennon's Relationship

During John Lennon's earliest years, music never really played a major part in his life. At the age of eight he sang in the choir of St. Peter's Church near his home, but his career there came to a swift end once it was discovered that he and his friends had been eating the grapes used to decorate the church for the Harvest Festival.

Then, when John was ten, his Uncle George Smith bought him a cheap harmonica that he carried in his blazer pocket. Once, on his way to visit an aunt in Scotland, he played it throughout the bus journey.

Bill Haley and His Comets found enormous success beginning in 1954, but young John Lennon was not enticed by the singer’s friendly, unrebellious image.

"The driver liked it and told me to meet him at a place in Edinburgh the next morning, and he'd give me a good mouth organ," John recalled in an interview with Record Mirror in 1971. "So I went, and he gave me a fantastic one; it really got me going. I also had a little accordion which I used to play -- only the right hand -- and I played the same things on this that I played on the mouth organ; things like 'Swedish Rhapsody,' 'Moulin Rouge,' and 'Greensleeves.' "

At this point, he was showing just a natural child's curiosity about music; it could hardly be said that music was in his blood. Later on, during John's early teens, the first rumblings of rock 'n' roll were heard when Bill Haley and His Comets released popular records such as "Crazy Man Crazy" and "Rock Around The Clock." But Haley, a chubby-faced man with a spit curl, looked more like a parent than a teen idol, and he made very little impression on the young Lennon.

"The Bill Haley era passed me by, in a way," he said in the Record Mirror interview. "When his records came on the wireless, my mother would start dancing around, she thought they were so good. I used to hear them, but they didn't do anything for me."

Maybe, but the fact that he would associate memories of his mother with this era -- despite being raised by his aunt and uncle -- is a sign of just how close the two were becoming. John felt more and more drawn to this bubbly red-headed woman, not only because of the way she encouraged his rebelliousness, but also because of her quirky, often eccentric sense of humor, something that he could readily identify with.

"[Julia] was a fabulous, fabulous woman," says Pete Shotton, John's childhood friend. "She always made us welcome when we were skiving off school, and apart from the fact that she was such good fun to have around, she was more like a friend than a mate's mother. She didn't act like a parent, she didn't talk like a parent. She made a game of everything -- she would even dust the furniture moving around as if she were a ballet dancer -- and the things that she did showed her eccentricity."

Among the more notable examples was the time she met the two boys in public, wearing a pair of knickers (bloomers) on her head in place of a scarf. Pete Shotton remembers, "They were the old-fashioned kind of knickers, you know, so the legs were hanging down over her back. People were staring, but she was just so cool about it, it was hysterical!

"Then there was another occasion, when we were walking along with her and she was wearing a pair of specs with no glass in the frames. No one really noticed, until she'd go up to someone she knew, start talking to them and casually rub her eye by poking her finger straight through the frame. We'd be watching all this, literally crying with laughter!"

Yet, while matters seemed to be taking a definite turn for the better in his private life, back at school John was still going nowhere fast. Showing no concern for either his studies or his future, his main interest lay in disrupting the class. There was, however, a productive side to his antics.

The homework session at the end of each day wasn't supervised by anyone, and John therefore saw this as a great chance to put his budding artistic and poetic skills to the test. Grabbing hold of old exercise books, he would fill them with cartoons, nonsense verse, and outrageous caricatures of the teachers. The cover of each book would bear the title The Daily Howl, and these would then be passed around, under the desks, to the delight of his schoolmates (and, quite often, the teachers, as well).

The poems, which usually contained more rhyme than reason, displayed a love for wordplay that John would later put to good use in classic songs such as "I Am The Walrus." By switching letters, replacing them, or omitting them completely, John could not only make words sound different, but sometimes imbue them with a double meaning.

So it was that the then-popular Davy Crockett was lampooned in The Story of Davy Crutch-Head, while other little gems included Tales of Hermit Fred and The Land of the Lunapots, as well as a weather report stating that "Tomorrow will be Muggy ... followed by Tuggy, Wuggy and Thuggy."

Until now, these compositions were one of the very few outlets for John to express his individuality, to mark himself out as different from the rest. Little did he realize that just around the corner an event was about to take place that would totally reshape the face of Western popular culture, and, along with it, his own life as well as those of millions of others. It would hit with the impact of an earthquake, the tremors of which are being felt to this day.

The Influence of Elvis Presley on John Lennon

Popular (and therefore white) songs of the early 1950s were invariably pleasant, a smooth voice crooning about the joys and heartaches of love, urging people to dance, or asking "How Much Is That Doggie In The Window?" Then, on May 11, 1956, a record entitled "Heartbreak Hotel" entered the British charts.

Sheet music for the song that redefined popular music in 1956, and inspired the next generation of rock artists. “Nothing really affected me until Elvis,” John Lennon would later say. “Without him, there would be no Beatles.”

The song was performed by an unknown 21-year-old singer out of Memphis, Tenne­ssee -- Elvis Presley. The song's theme -- about the feelings of loneliness following the breakup of a relationship -- was nothing new in itself, but the morbid lyrics, harsh instrumental sound, and creepy atmosphere were something else entirely.

Clearly, since his "baby" left him, the singer had been suffering from a near-suicidal case of the blues, and he was now inviting the listener to join him in his misery and self-pity. His voice was both sensual and threatening, and the echo that it was buried in gave the impression that he was delivering his message from the farthest corner of some melancholy, deserted town.

Hearing this performance for the first time, late at night on Radio Luxembourg, was almost like a call to arms for John Lennon. Luxembourg, the British teenage alternative to the BBC, continually broadcast the new pop songs as opposed to the lighter music that parents preferred.

Listening to the sounds of Bill Haley, the Platters, and the Drifters had provided John with a pleasant-enough diversion, but now here was this mysterious stranger from across the water, talking to John about the loneliness that they both shared. It was a subject that he understood, and the language appealed to him.

His reaction was immediate: He had to find out more about this Elvis character. Soon, photos in British magazines and movie newsreels confirmed the unlikely rumors he'd been hearing: The man with the raw, bluesy voice was, in fact, white.

Even more surprising was his actual appearance, which was anything but conventional. His top lip seemed to be fixed in a permanent sneer, his eyes were circled by heavy lids and dark shadows, and his long hair was greased back in a style similar to that of movie star Tony Curtis. Similar, but not identical. Curtis was clean-cut; Elvis wore sideburns, that vaguely threatening trademark of the sullen lower classes. He looked odd, all right. He even had an odd name!

"Nothing really affected me until Elvis," John later reflected, and this simple statement just about says it all. At that moment the effect upon him was total, almost as if everything that had happened to him until then didn't matter. Sure, John had been impressed by James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause, and by the spectacle of the classroom violence instigated by the menacing young Vic Morrow in The Blackboard Jungle, but that was only acting. Elvis, on the other hand, was the living reality.

Elvis Presley behind the wheel of a Cadillac convertible in 1956. By the time “The King” met the Beatles in his Hollywood mansion in August of 1965, he was a virtual prisoner of his own fame.

John acted quickly. Out went the old clothes and the conventional image, to be replaced by an Elvis hairstyle, Elvis sideburns, extra-tight jeans -- called "drainpipes" -- and crepe-soled shoes. He has turned himself into a full-fledged Teddy boy so called in Britain because of the long, Edwardian-style drape coats that the rock 'n' rollers wore. As such, he now had the perfect excuse for looking mean and moody; that's the way Elvis looked, and Elvis was King!

If John had been difficult to handle before, he now became almost impossible, at home as well as at school. His guardian, Aunt Mimi Smith, noticed a change in his behavior right away, especially in terms of his untidiness.

Ray Coleman's John Winston Lennon quotes Mimi as recalling, "He became a mess, almost overnight, and all because of Elvis Presley, I say. He had a poster of him in his bedroom. There was a pajama top in the bathroom, the trousers in the bedroom, socks somewhere else, shirts flung on the floor. … What he wouldn't come to terms with was that I had a house to run. Oh, he was a mess and a problem in those years. Elvis Presley!"

As things turned out, the next few years were ones of constant battles between aunt and nephew. "There's going to be a change in this house," she would shout at him. "We're going to have law and order!"

John Lennon's First Band: The Quarry Men

The emergence of Elvis Presley had been only the beginning, and within a very short space of time John Lennon, like most other British teenagers of the 1950s, was also listening to the sounds of the Americans Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins … and a Britisher named Lonnie Donegan.

An LP of Little Richard, one of the major American artists who influenced John Lennon.

In Britain, Donegan was the man who brought a new form of popular music to the masses. When his 1954 cover version of the old Huddie "Leadbelly" Ledbetter song, "Rock Island Line," suddenly became a hit in January of 1956, it started a craze among teenagers for his particular brand of music, called "skiffle." A crude blending of folk, jazz, and blues, it was not so much the quality of the skiffle sound that caused a sensation, but more the ease with which that sound was produced.

The Lonnie Donegan Skiffle Group featured drums, upright double bass, and two guitarists. Donegan took the lead, playing a basic three-chord style, and performed the whining, nasal-sounding vocals. In 1956 and '57 he enjoyed a succession of hits with "Putting On The Style," "Cumberland Gap," and "Don't You Rock Me Daddy-O." Donegan later charted in America with "Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavor (On the Bedpost Overnight.)" The less-than-sophisticated skiffle sound was cheap and easy to duplicate, and within a short space of time thousands of skiffle groups sprang up all over Britain.

The most difficult and expensive instrument to acquire was the double bass, and so for this the kids improvised. A broom handle would be poked through a hole in an upturned tea-chest, and a length of cord then run between the two, producing an instant "tea-chest bass." Percussive rhythm, on the other hand, would be provided by someone strumming thimbled fingers up and down on an old washboard.

This was it -- do-it-yourself rock 'n' roll! John wouldn't even bother dreaming about trying to match the god-like Elvis, but here was something that was well within his grasp. Now, all he had to do was persuade either his Aunt Mimi Smith (who raised him) or his mother Julia to buy him a guitar; no easy task. Mimi, of course, was dead set against any ideas he might have of imitating the "vulgar" Presley, and Julia didn't want to undermine her sister's authority.

Jerry Lee Lewis was also among Lennon's early influences.

The solution was for John himself to send off for an ultra-cheap mail-order guitar -- "guaranteed not to split" -- and have it posted to Julia's address. The following year, 1957, Mimi would relent, and buy him a better guitar just so that he would "get it out of his system." In Philip Norman's Shout! The Beatles in Their Generation, Mimi remembers that she'd send John outside the front door to practice: "He stood there leaning against the wall so long," she recalled. "I think he wore some of the brickwork away with his behind."

Julia, who could play the banjo, set about teaching her son some of the chords that she knew, and soon the aspiring star was belting out his version of "Rock Island Line" and searching around for fellow musicians to form a band.

He didn't have to look far. At school, Rod Davis had recently purchased a banjo, while Eric Griffiths already had a guitar and knew Colin Hanton, an apprentice upholsterer with a new drum kit. Other friends, such as Bill Smith, Nigel Whalley, Ivan Vaughan, and Len Garry, alternated on tea-chest bass, and the washboard was taken up by none other than John's longtime friend Pete Shotton.

After initially naming the group the Blackjacks, John then settled on the Quarry Men, in surprising reference to Quarry Bank Grammar and a line in the school song, "Quarry men strong before our birth." John made all of the decisions, of course, being the group's undisputed leader, dictating the songs that they perform -- solid rock 'n' roll favorites, such as "Let's Have A Party" -- and taking care of all the lead vocals.

The group's first rehearsal took place at Eric Griffiths's house. So far, so good, but their first audition -- in which they failed to qualify for a TV talent contest -- was a dismal failure, and their first public performance was on the back of a coal truck, at a carnival in Rosebery Street, Liverpool, on June 22, 1957.

John Lennon Meets Paul McCartney

Quarry Men Paul McCartney (playing a right-handed guitar upside-down), Ken Brown, and John Lennon, at the Casbah Coffee Club in Liverpool.

McCartney, in fact, managed to impress John and the rest of the group right away, by playing Eddie Cochran's "Twenty Flight Rock" and Gene Vincent's "Be-Bop-A-Lula," writing down the correct lyrics to these two numbers, and then tuning the guitars of both John and Eric Griffiths. John, for his part, could never memorize the words to songs -- the first one that he learned properly was Buddy Holly's "That'll Be The Day" -- and he couldn't tune a guitar. Paul's abilities in these areas were helpful -- what's more, the new kid even looked a bit like Elvis!

"Later, John and I walked home alone," Shotton remembers, "and John said to me, 'What do you think of him?' I said 'I like him,' and he said, 'What about asking him to join the band then?' So I said 'Well, if he wants to, it's okay with me.' Okay with me! Lucky you, Paul!"

Bespectacled Buddy Holly, with the Crickets, Jerry Allison (top) and Joe B. Mauldin (bottom). Holly’s music influenced John tremendously.

For the first time John had a goal, some form of ambition, but in the meantime what was he going to do in order to keep the adults off his back?

Writer Philip Norman, author of Shout!, notes that John later recalled, "I was just drifting. I wouldn't study at school, and when I was put in for nine GCEs I was a hopeless failure."

The GCEs were the certificates required in each subject at the age of 16, in order for the student to move on to higher education. Five passes were needed, and in John's case none were achieved. For his Aunt Mimi Smith, who raised him, this spelled complete disaster, but the fact that John had failed every subject by just one grade demonstrated to his principal, Mr. Pobjoy, that he had the ability. All he needed to do was put forth the proper effort.

For this reason, Pobjoy put in a good report for the wayward student, helping him to enter Liverpool College of Art. This was a prospect that even John, for once, was looking forward to. Now he would just have to apply himself more seriously.

"I was disappointed at not getting art at GCE," he admitted­ later to biographer Hunter Davies, "but I'd given up. All they were interested in was neatness. I was never neat. I used to mix all the colors together. We had one question which said do a picture of 'travel.' I drew a picture of a hunchback, with warts all over him. They obviously didn't dig that."

John Lennon's individualistic pursuit of the arts had begun.

John Lennon at Liverpool College of Art

Approaching his 17th birthday, John Lennon had, until now, led a fairly conventional existence. Yes, his very early life had been rocky, but since the age of five he had been brought up in an atmosphere of love and stability, and the joys and setbacks he had experienced were not really unusual.

©Richard Buskin Liverpool College of Art, where John spent most of his time either disrupting classes or rehearsing with his band -- when he bothered to show up at all.

Now, however, John was about to embark on a life-long journey that would take in an incredible number of landmark events. Prior to the end of his time at Quarry Bank Grammar School (the English equivalent of a high school) nothing remarkable had happened to him, but after his departure for Art College it was as if everything intensified and accelerated. Over the next 23 years, incidents of great significance would pile one on top of the other, and there would be a constant flow of people passing through his life; enough, indeed, to fill several lifetimes.

Yet all of this would have sounded totally ridiculous, both to John and to everyone who knew him, when he turned up for his interview at Liverpool College of Art in the fall of 1957. Wearing his Uncle George Smith's old brown jacket, plus shirt and tie, with an eye-catching portfolio of his Quarry Bank work under his arm and Aunt Mimi Smith in tow, he gained entry and took what appeared to be his last chance for a secure future.

His school days having been a complete write-off, he was lucky to get this opportunity. Now, he had better do some work, otherwise ... well, Mimi shuddered to think.

The College was situated in Liverpool's bohemian neighborhood near the city center, an area populated by sculptors, painters, writers, and poets. In line with this, the students were typical arty types; young intellectuals, whose favorite music was the traditional ("trad") jazz that they listened to at local cellar clubs such as The Cavern. Smooth in appearance as well as mannerisms, their typical dress would be casual coats, chunky sweaters, and suede shoes.

Then along came Lennon, a vision with greased back hair, long sideburns, pale blue Edwardian jacket, black "drainpipe" skin-tight jeans, lilac shirt, bootlace tie, and crepe-soled shoes. Needless to say, eyes rolled and heads turned when this character showed up for registration.

This was not, however, the reaction of Bill Harry, an ambitious, down-to-earth Liverpudlian who had enrolled at the college a year before. Always drawn to originality, both in life as well as in art, Bill felt that he had little in common with his conventional fellow students, and so when he first noticed John sitting in the canteen -- he could hardly miss him -- he regarded him as a welcome change.

"You have to remember that in those days things were very, very strict," says Bill, "not only in the way that people looked but also in terms of their behavior. They had more respect for their 'superiors,' they did what they were told, they conformed a hell of a lot more. Rock 'n' roll would bring a lot of freedom to young people, but it hadn't done so yet; there wasn't really a rock culture or, for that matter, a youth culture. So word about John soon spread around the college.

"I was already writing for music magazines, and so being heavily into writing, reading and other forms of art, I tended to seek out creative people who I thought I could get on with. After I saw John we soon started talking, and we'd go for drinks at Ye Cracke [a pub near the college] and to friends' places in the evenings."

Against the wishes of his instructors, John developed his penchant for drawing misshapen, satirical figures.

So far, so good. But while he had been looking forward to the opportunity to concentrate on the kind of drawing that he enjoyed doing, and to express himself with the paintbrush, John soon found out that he would instead be attending classes dealing in geometry, architecture, object drawing, and lettering. This was just like being at school!

To make matters worse, he had to put up with strict, narrow-minded instructors who clearly didn't have a clue what he was about, and a bunch of stuck-up college kids who got on his nerves. His response, as usual, was swift.

Determined to ignore the established rules and regulations, he decided to enjoy himself in his own sweet way -- disrupting the classes when he bothered to attend, and drinking with new friends such as Geoff Mohammed and Tony Carricker, when he chose to go absent. In no time at all, John had managed to land himself with the same dubious reputation that he had earned at Quarry Bank.

Imagine the scene: For the weekly "life" class, 15 students would be quietly standing behind their easels in Room 71, sketching the body of 27-year-old nude model June Furlong. Having walked around and passed comment on the various illustrations, the teacher would then leave for a while, at which point John would let out a little snigger from the back of the room. Nobody would take any notice of this, but shortly afterwards he would make a similar but slightly louder noise.

Again, everyone would try to get on with his or her work, and a minute or so would pass before the serious mood would be interrupted by another, more exaggerated giggle, followed shortly thereafter by John's full-scale hysterical shriek. By now, everybody, including the naked model, would be convulsed with laughter, and John would then follow this up by jumping into her lap and necking with her.

The offbeat side of John's nature also became apparent at the end of another life class session, when the afternoon's work was handed in. Whereas the other students had produced straightforward drawings of June, the portrait that John came up with was of the only item that she was wearing; her wristwatch. Highly original, but it didn't amuse the teacher.

Soon, relations between John and his instructors had deteriorated to such an extent that he actively went out of his way to annoy them. Mimi recalled waking up at 3 o'clock one morning and going downstairs to see him painting furiously, preparing work that had to be handed in within a few hours.

She sat there in the living room, watching him finish his masterpiece and then smother it with salt, pepper, and sugar that he had fetched from the kitchen. Writer George Tremlett's The John Lennon Story reports what happened next:

"What on earth are you doing?" Mimi demanded. "You'll get thrown out of college."

"Look," said John, referring to one of the teachers, "he hates me, and I'm not very fond of him!"

Mimi couldn't believe this act of willful provocation, and when he was about to leave for class, she and John engaged in a tug-of-war over the painting in the driveway. No need to say who won, except that the nephew returned later that day, smiling triumphantly. "He never said a thing," commented John about the lecturer. "He just looked at it and walked away, but he knew why I had done it, all right. He knew!"

Meanwhile, with matters running less than smoothly at college, John's musical ambitions weren't exactly going to plan, either. After recruiting the services of Paul McCartney, the Quarry Men -- Lennon's first band -- had managed to play at various small clubs around Liverpool during the last few months of 1957 and the first part of 1958. Then the bookings dried up, and for several months the group was reduced to playing at private parties. Some of the band members lost interest and quit, but by this time 15-year-old George Harrison had joined the line-up.

Richard Buskin Ye Cracke, a pub located around the corner from the Art College; John and his cronies frequently held court here.

In John's eyes George was just a kid, but the way that he played tunes like "Raunchy" and "Guitar Boogie" was certainly impressive, and besides, his mother was an easygoing woman who allowed the group to practice in the Harrison home. With benefits such as these to offer, George was in. John had, unwittingly, put together the nucleus of the Beatles.

George was, in fact, a schoolmate of Paul's, attending the Liverpool Institute with him. By happy coincidence, this school was situated immediately next door to the Liverpool College of Art, and so most lunchtimes Lennon, McCartney, and Harrison would get together for a practice session in either the canteen or Room 21 of the college, entertaining the students with renditions of songs by the likes of Little Richard, Buddy Holly and the Everly Brothers.

The Death of John Lennon's Mother, Julia Lennon

Just about the only family members giving their full support to John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison's musical activities in their teenage years were George's parents and the ever-helpful Julia Lennon, John's biological mother. John was still spending a lot of his free time with his mother, getting the kind of encouragement from her that his Aunt Mimi Smith, who raised him, would refuse to give.

Then, on the evening of July 15, 1958, disaster struck. Having spent the day at her sister's house, Julia waved goodbye and began to cross the road in order to catch the bus home. She never made it. She was hit by a car being driven by an off-duty policeman and died instantly, aged 44.

Richard Buskin 1 Blomfield Road, the Liverpool house that Julia Lennon shared with her boyfriend. It was here that John was informed by a policeman that his mother had been killed.

John was sitting with Julia's boyfriend, waiting for her to return, when a policeman knocked on the door. "It was just like it's supposed to be, the way it is in the films," he told biographer Hunter Davies a decade later. "Asking if I was her son, and all that. Then he told us, and we both went white.

"It was the worst thing that ever happened to me. We'd caught up so much, me and Julia, in just a few years. We could communicate. We got on. She was great. I thought ... I've no responsibilities to anyone now."

Indeed, it was with this kind of attitude that John became more rebellious than ever, and turned to drink in order to blank out the pain of living in the real world. At the same time, his friends began to notice his humor sometimes taking on an even stranger edge.

According to Hunter Davies's The Beatles, college girlfriend Thelma Pickles remembered that, "[John] used to do a lot of cruel drawings. The day the Pope died, he did lots of drawings of him looking really awful. He did one of the Pope standing outside some big pillars outside Heaven, shaking the gates and trying to get in. Underneath it said, 'But I'm the Pope, I tell you!' "

A friend of John, Nigel Whalley, was the last person to see Julia Lennon alive, saying a few words to her on his way to Mimi's house, before walking on, hearing the screech of brakes, and turning to see a body flying through the air. In an interview, which he gave several years later, Whalley recalled an evening not long after the accident when John invited him and a few other friends to Julia's old house.

"A number of us went, and we all sat down round a circular table. John said we were going to hold a séance, switched the lights down low and spread the letter cards round the table. Then he began to rotate his hand round the top of a tumbler, and it started to move and spell out words. We sat there terrified, but he seemed quite calm, almost unmoved, and to this day I don't know whether there was a spirit there that night or if he was just having us on."

Either way, John would never quite get over the emotional stress caused by losing his mother. "I lost her twice," he asserted just before his own death. "Once as a five-year-old when I was moved in with my auntie. And once again ... when she actually, physically died. ... And that was really a hard time for me. It just absolutely made me very, very bitter. The underlying chip on my shoulder that I had as a youth got really big then. Being a teenager and a rock 'n' roller and an art student and my mother being killed, just when I was re-establishing a relationship with her ... it was very traumatic for me."

"Devastating" would be another way of putting it. Having been deserted by his father and then forced to suffer the loss of his uncle, John had now been deprived of his mother, the one person who really seemed to understand him. Hurt and full of rage, he desperately needed someone to turn to, someone who could understand his inner torment, tolerate his moods, and always be there for him. That person turned out to be Cynthia Powell.

John Lennon and Cynthia Powell

For most of the first year at the Liverpool College of Art, Cynthia Powell had been keeping an eye on John Lennon from across the room that they both sat in, during the weekly lettering classes. Having watched his crazy antics and laughed at his outrageous jokes, she soon found herself hopelessly drawn to this unruly Teddy boy. He, on the other hand, hardly seemed to notice her, but in time this would change, for if there was ever a case of opposites attracting, then this was it.

When the “posh Miss Powell” embarked on a relationship with Lennon the Teddy boy in 1958, little could she have realized how her decision would forever change the course of her life.

As signified by her gentler, more refined accent, Cynthia did not live in Liverpool itself, but in Hoylake, a very respectable middle-class area situated on the Wirral, on the other side of the River Mersey. She was a shy, well-mannered girl, conscientious and hard-working.

Her appearance ensured that she merged quietly into the background: modest tweed skirt and short, permed hair: As she herself observed in her 1978 book, A Twist of Lennon, "The only thing that John and I had in common was that we were both as blind as bats without our glasses. ... He lived in a different world to me."

At first, John's only recognition of her came in the form of mocking the "posh" way in which "Miss Powell" spoke. He began to take more notice, however, when she allowed her hair to grow long and straight, and then dyed it blonde, making her more closely resemble the woman of his dreams, French film star Brigitte Bardot. Cynthia, for her part, was initially just amused by John's wild and often hilarious behavior, but within no time her interest turned into infatuation.

Needless to say, this was totally against the best advice of her friends, who saw her as less than well suited to that loudmouthed layabout, Lennon. His friends weren't too enthusiastic either; what did he see in that cool, snooty career girl from over the water?

Yet in spite of everyone's better judgment, the two finally broke the ice at a college party in the summer of 1958, just before the end of the academic year. They danced together and Cynthia was in seventh heaven, but when John asked her out her panicky response was to blurt out, "I'm awfully sorry, I'm engaged to this fellow in Hoylake." John snapped back, "I didn't ask you to marry me, did I?"

Having got these pleasantries out of the way, Cynthia allowed fate to take over, and she and her girlfriend joined John and his cronies at the local pub. Several drinks later, the two girls found themselves sitting alone at a table while the guys stood and talked at the bar.

Cynthia, sensing that the whole episode had just been a cheap joke at her expense, decided to make a swift and silent exit. Just as she reached for the door, however, she could hear John's gravelly voice boom out above the noise of the crowd, "Didn't you know Miss Powell was a nun, then?"

"I was dragged back into focus and persuaded to stay," she recalled in her book. "How could I resist?" Well, she didn't, and for all of the highs and lows that she was to experience as a result of this momentous decision, it was one that she has never regretted.

John Lennon and Paul McCartney's First Band

As his emotional life was in turmoil following his mother's death, one of the few things that teenage John Lennon had left to cling to was his music.

It was becoming increasingly apparent that he was simply wasting his own and everyone else's time at art college, and that he had neither the qualifications nor the application to hold down a job that would provide him with financial security. Making music was what he enjoyed most, and it was now beginning to dawn on him that this would probably be his only route to some sort of success.

Young Paul McCartney rocking out on stage at The Cavern Club in 1961.

Paul McCartney, for his part, also appeared to be taken in by this idea. An academically bright boy who had, until now, always excelled at school, he too began "sagging off" (cutting class). This was not only in order to make lunchtime rehearsal sessions at the art college, but also so that he and John could go back to the McCartney home in Allerton. There, during the afternoons while Paul's father was out, the pair indulged in their favorite pastimes: songwriting and discussing girls.

Musically, Paul was easily the more accomplished of the two, capable of playing more instruments and writing songs of his own. John, on the other hand, was the original. Whereas other British performers at the time -- including Paul -- tended to imitate many of the characteristics of their favorite American artists, often singing with a pseudo-American accent, John's approach was all his.

His strong, raw voice was made for rock 'n' roll, and while he utilized some of the vocal mannerisms of Buddy Holly, his pronunciation was clearly English. He wasn't interested in sounding like other people, but just in being himself. The way in which he ripped his way through songs was true to his character: no frills, no nonsense.

Although John had the greater talent for lyrics and Paul had a broader musical range, there were no strict ground rules in their collaboration. During the first years of their partnership, they would often work together when writing words and tunes, and although in some cases one or the other person had contributed far more to a particular song, they agreed early on to always share the credit.

Although by 1964 they were rarely composing side by side, "Lennon-McCartney" continued to appear under each title until the Beatles split in 1969. Regardless, the identity of the person singing the lead vocal provided an easy clue as to who originated each song.

Among John's first compositions were "Winston's Walk," which was never recorded; "Hello Little Girl," which was later recorded by the Fourmost; and "The One After 909," which was recorded by the Beatles in 1963 (unreleased) and 1969 (released on the Let It Be album). His lyrics at first tended to be of the "blue moon in June" variety -- simple love poems that rhymed neatly. But as his confidence grew and he began to experiment more, the word structures became more intricate and the subject matter less familiar.

Soon a noticeable difference of style emerged between the two young composers: Whereas Paul tended to construct little stories, John concentrated on writing in the first person and expressing his own emotions. It was John who was experiencing the joys or pains of love, and who would use his songwriting to relate, much later on, his political views, his experiments with drugs, and numerous other incidents that took place in his life. And while Paul's songs were usually upbeat and optimistic, John's could often be probing and cynical.

"I was always like that, you know," he asserted during his 1980 interview with Playboy's David Sheff. "I was like that before the Beatles and after the Beatles. I always asked why people did things and why society was like it was. I didn't just accept it for what it was apparently doing. I always looked below the surface."

Whereas in America during the 1950s artists such as Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Sam Cooke, and Buddy Holly wrote a lot of the material that they performed, the situation was not the same in Britain. There, the stars of the day usually recorded either songs that had been penned by specialist composers, or "cover" versions of American hits.

It was, therefore, highly unusual for two English schoolboys to be compiling their own catalogue of songs which they, themselves, could perform. Furthermore, they didn't produce simple carbon copies of the sounds that they heard from across the Atlantic. Instead, they assimilated various American melodic styles and rhythms and put their own beat-oriented slant on them.

To the by-now 16-year-old Paul McCartney, John was someone to secretly admire; a hard-rocking Teddy boy, two years his elder, and a potentially dangerous influence who (as Paul's father had warned him) could get him "into trouble." Naturally, Paul was eager to hang out with a guy like this!

To John, on the other hand, Paul was a baby-faced, wide-eyed smoothie, who was gracious and hard working. On the surface, not his type at all, but John was nothing if not sharp. He immediately recognized that Paul's qualities could be extremely beneficial, both to him and to his group. Paul's musical talent would be of great value, his will to succeed would inspire John to write and the band to improve, and his pretty looks would charm the girls.

So, as he had done before, John had teamed up with someone who was not much like him, but who complemented him perfectly. Well aware of what he needed and what he himself had to offer, he formed his closest relationships with people who could both play on his strengths and make up for his weaknesses. This was the case with Paul; his girlfriend Cynthia Powell; and, just as remarkably, Stuart Sutcliffe, a small, shy, Scottish-born artist whose incredible talent had taken the college by storm.

Sutcliffe's introvert personality, vulnerable on the surface but extremely strong underneath, contrasted greatly with the extrovert John, who was always able to attract a crowd around him, and whose hard outer appearance concealed a soft center. Both had very sharp minds, however, and they saw qualities in each other that they respected and desired.

John's mean and moody appearance was largely a pose, used for specific effect, but with Stuart it was natural. He didn't need to do much to attract the girls; his looks saw to that, as did an artistic ability which had the college instructors predicting future greatness. The fact that he led a bohemian lifestyle -- living in a run-down room with a shared toilet in a large Georgian house -- only added to the air of mystique around him, and to John's fascination.

This was the heyday of the "beat generation," of unorthodox young poets such as Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, and of the beatniks who read their works and spent long hours analyzing them. Unlike the traditional rhymes, these writings dealt with stream-of-consciousness, whereby the poets put the various unrelated thoughts that came tumbling out of their heads straight onto paper in verse form.

John, whose own love for wordplay was as strong as ever, was absorbed by all this. He and Stuart, together with college friends Bill Harry and Rod Murray, would stay up late into the night, drinking and talking about the new poetry.

Inspired by these sessions, as well as the thought of spending more time with Cynthia and less with his strict Aunt Mimi Smith, John duly informed his aunt that he was moving out of her house and into Stuart's place in Gambier Terrace, situated conveniently around the corner from the college.

In a later interview with author George Tremlett, Mimi recalled John telling her, "I feel like a baby living at home." before tactfully adding. "Anyhow, I can't stand your food!" This was all that Mimi needed to hear. She let John pack his bags and gave him his full college grant money. For now, the Teddy boy would become a beatnik.

Within four weeks, however, all the money that was supposed to last him three months had been spent, and the flat that he was sharing with Stu and Rod Murray was in complete chaos, with clothes, paints, and garbage spread all over the floor around the mattresses that were being used in lieu of beds. By the middle of winter it was so cold, and they were all so broke, that, so the legend goes, they were reduced to burning in the middle of the room what furniture they had in order to keep warm.

Having left Mimi's in a mood of supreme confidence, boasting that he would be surviving quite happily on a diet of Chinese takeout food -- "bamboo shoots and things" -- John suddenly reappeared at her house with his tail firmly between his legs. Too proud to admit, however, that things hadn't gone exactly to plan, he tried to give the impression that this was just a friendly visit, and asked casually "Don't I get a cup of tea, then?"

Mimi went along with his little act, and quietly continued cooking the dinner that she was preparing for herself. This was just too much! Not having eaten for days, John couldn't resist the smell of steak and mushrooms that was wafting above his head, and so he suddenly burst into the kitchen and shouted at her: "I'll have you know, woman, I'm starving!"

Mimi gave him dinner and allowed him to stay the night. The next morning, with extra money from her in his pocket, John set off once again for the mayhem of Gambier Terrace and further adventure.

John Lennon and the Birth of The ''Beatals''

As a young John Lennon's art studies went from bad to worse, so he became more ambitious for his band, and through the first half of 1960, thanks largely to the efforts of local businessman Allan Williams, more and more engagements -- including a tour of Scotland, backing singer Johnny Gentle -- were being secured.

By this time, schoolmate Stu Sutcliffe had joined the group, persuaded by John to spend the then-enormous sum of £65 that he had earned from one of his paintings on a brand new bass guitar. The fact that he had no idea how to play the instrument was irrelevant; he was John's friend, John wanted him in the group, and that was that. Stu duly reciprocated by coming up with the name of the "Beatals" as a replacement for the outdated Quarry Men. Over the next few months the name would change to the Silver Beats, the Silver Beetles, the Silver Beatles and, by the middle of August 1960, the Beatles.

Giving it all they’ve got, on stage at The Cavern Club, 1961. The band's trip to Germany helped them learn how to perform on stage.

This same month, Pete Best was recruited as drummer, the first to fill the post on a permanent basis since Colin Hanton had quit the group the previous year. So it was that the first proper Beatles lineup featured John, Paul McCartney, and George Harrison on guitars, Stu on bass, and Pete on drums when the band turned up for a two-month stint at the newly opened Indra Club in Hamburg, West Germany, on August 17, 1960.

John by now had come to the end of his course at the Art College, after failing his lettering exams. For months, his Aunt Mimi Smith had pleaded with him to give up the guitar and concentrate on the drawing that he was good at, but the reply, according to Ray Coleman's book, John Winston Lennon, was always the same: "I'll be OK, I don't need the bits of paper to tell me where I'm going." Sure enough, he was heading for Hamburg and, he hoped, the big time.

Allan Williams was again responsible for setting up the booking, having already enjoyed considerable success with his placement of the far more accomplished Liverpool group, Derry and the Seniors, at The Indra's sister club, The Kaiserkeller. The Beatles would, in fact, play both venues between their late-summer arrival and November 30, and although they would have to put up with poor money, terrible accommodations, and very demanding hours, Hamburg would prove to be a major turning point.

The Indra and Kaiserkeller were situated on the Grosse Freiheit, in the heart of the dock city's red-light district, an area populated by pimps, prostitutes, sailors, and an assortment of others visitors in search of "a good time." Everywhere the Beatles turned they saw neon signs that pointed them in the direction of bars and strip joints, while half-naked women paraded up and down, displaying the ample goods that they had to offer. What's more, it was these kinds of people -- a combination of thugs, villains, and down-and-outs -- who made up a large proportion of the audiences that the Liverpool boys would have to perform to every night.

The group's stint at The Indra lasted only a few weeks before the seedy strip-palace-turned-rock-club was closed down by its owner, Bruno Koschmider, owing to lack of business and complaints about noise. The Beatles then moved to The Kaiserkeller, an altogether different proposition. Far more people packed themselves into this much larger venue, and apart from being slightly overwhelmed by all this, the band also felt lost in the middle of what seemed to be a huge stage; huge, that is, compared to anything that they had played on before.

After observing the stiffness of their stage movements -- what there was of them -- Allan Williams repeatedly told the inexperienced entertainers to "make a show," and he was promptly imitated by both Koschmider and the customers, who would also urge them to "mak show." For John, this was a license to go completely wild; if it was a show they wanted, then it was a show they were going to get!

John Lennon and The Beatles' First Gigs

Not content with simply jumping around the stage like a cross between Elvis, Little Richard, and Jerry Lee Lewis, John Lennon in his early performing days decided that it would also be fun to really intimidate his postwar German audiences, and force them to swallow their already-bruised national pride.

It may have been 15 years since the Second World War, but the ever-sensitive John wasn't prepared to forgive his audience for the crimes that their nation had committed, nor was he about to let them forget. Comments such as "What did you do during the war?" and "Get back to your tank" soon became part of his on-stage patter, and in case anyone couldn't understand or hear him above the general noise, he would press the point home by goose-stepping up and down, calling them "Bloody Krauts" and shouting "Heil Hitler!"

George, John, Paul, and Pete play for just 18 people who turned out to see them at the Palais Ballroom in Aldershot, southern England, on December 9, 1961.

Needless to say, the customers were not charmed by this sort of behavior, but still they loved the raw brand of rock 'n' roll that they were hearing, and they would try to encourage more of the same by sending crates of beer up onto the stage.

Mixed with pep pills supplied by the club's waiters, this helped the Beatles endure the exhausting six-hour sessions that they would sometimes have to play. Additionally, it gave John added confidence with which to face his "fans"; on at least one occasion he walked on stage wearing just a swimming costume and a toilet seat around his neck!

Aside from all the frivolity, however, there were also many benefits that the early Beatles were gaining from their time in Hamburg. As human beings, the incredible things that they were seeing, hearing, and experiencing were causing them to grow up overnight; as performers, the long hours and demanding audiences were teaching them to play more tightly as a band, improving their musicianship and hardening their voices.

During this period, John's friendship with Beatles bassist Stuart Sutcliffe became stronger than ever. Stu met and fell in love with Astrid Kirchherr, a 22-year-old designer and photographer whose stunning wardrobe sense -- all-black suede jacket and leather skirt -- and strong opinions on fashion, art, and music were to have a profound effect on all of the Beatles over the course of the next two years.

Astrid's beautiful blonde looks naturally caught John's eye as a Brigitte Bardot look-alike, but it was her intellect and her friendly willingness to listen to whatever he had to say that most attracted him to her. The fact that she was Stuart's girlfriend ruled out any possibility of a romantic relationship between them, but John still spent a great deal of his spare time with the couple, talking, drinking, and investigating Astrid's large collection of classical books.

"John had this knowledge of everything that surrounded him, because he had particularly high intelligence," Astrid told Ray Coleman. "But he didn't have much experience, and he was so nosey ... I thought of him as a gentle, sentimental boy who was in such a hurry to find out about everything. Stuart was the same, but really he had a deeper natural intelligence than John. When they were together, it was very powerful for them both."

Soon, however, the first Hamburg trip ended in disarray after the Beatles broke their contract with The Kaiserkeller by playing at the rival Top Ten Club. George Harrison, reported to the authorities for being under-age, was deported, as were Paul McCartney and Pete Best for supposedly setting fire to the wallpaper in their grubby living quarters. Stu decided to stay on with Astrid, and so it was a very depressed John who set out alone for the return trip to England on December 10, 1960.

Yet more than 500 hours of playing, crammed into little over three months, had left their mark, and when the Beatles appeared at the Town Hall Ballroom in Litherland, Liverpool, on December 27, they experienced the first stirrings of what would later come to be known as Beatlemania. The audience, swept away by the band's new-found magnetism, rushed forward to the front of the stage, and all at once the no-hopers had been transformed into local heroes.

The next 18 months would not be without their fair share of letdowns, but for John, who was hanging all of his hopes on the group's fortunes, there was now at least some light at the end of the tunnel.

John Lennon 1962: Teddy Boy to Moptop

Although he would join his friends on stage on a few more occasions, bassist Stuart Sutcliffe's decision to remain with girlfriend Astrid Kirchherr in Hamburg after the group's 1960 German tour meant that he had effectively left the Beatles.

©Richard Buskin Today, Cavern Walks, a popular shopping mall, stands on the former site of The Cavern Club, where the Beatles appeared 274 times.

His reasons for this were two-fold. First, he obviously wanted to spend more time with the new love of his life; and second, while it had been John Lennon who had asked him to join the band in the first place, it was also John -- together with Paul McCartney -- who mercilessly criticized his poor bass playing and made fun of him in public.

This kind of behavior was not unusual, for while John's rapier-like wit could make even the most mundane situations appear funny, he would also use it to devastating effect to embarrass many of those who were closest to him.

"He could destroy people with his verbal wit," asserts his former college friend, Bill Harry. "He'd do this all the time, and it surprised me the way he used to be cruel with Stuart, because I knew how close they were. He'd really put him down, and he'd put down anyone -- including Cynthia -- if he had the opportunity. If you were the sort of person who'd let him get away with it, he'd be quite cutting -- especially after a few drinks -- and that made some people frightened of him, but most of it was show.

"There again, many people also didn't catch onto his bizarre sense of humor, but in my case I loved it, I understood it. That's why I asked him to show me some of his poetry, which I'd heard about. At first, I got the impression that he was reluctant to do so, because poetry wasn't the sort of thing that a macho guy from the North [of England] would write! So when he did show me one of his poems, he was really surprised at how much I liked it."

At around this time, Bill was planning to start Mersey Beat, a biweekly newspaper dealing with the then-thriving rock (or "pop") music scene in the area. Each issue would contain news items, record reviews, concert listings, and feature stories about -- or interviews with -- the various artists in and around Liverpool. Taken by the offbeat humor of John's poetry, Bill asked him to contribute a piece to the first issue, and John responded by coming up with "Being a Short Diversion on the Dubious Origins of Beatles," a brief tale describing, in John's own irresistible style, how his group had been formed.

Bill was delighted with the article, and John was delighted with his reaction, so much so that soon afterwards he walked into the Mersey Beat offices and handed the editor a bundle of more than 250 cartoons, drawings, poems, and short stories -- enough Lennon material to satisfy even the most impatient reader.

In the meantime, two very important events had taken place: During February and March 1961, The Beatles had started playing regularly at The Cavern Club, the venue which would become synonymous with their name in the years to come, and in May, during their second trip to Hamburg, they had made their first professional recordings.

Richard Buskin A Cavern Club membership card from 1964. If the bearer hoped to use it to catch the Beatles, he or she was out of luck; the group did not perform there after 1963.

With Bert Kaempfert producing, they backed singer Tony Sheridan on three songs, taped a Lennon-Harrison instrumental entitled "Cry For A Shadow," and performed their own rock arrangement of the old Eddie Cantor favorite, "Ain't She Sweet." John sang the lead vocal on this and, even at the age of 20, the unmistakable, raw-throated Lennon delivery was clearly shaping up.

Later in the year, two weeks before his 21st birthday, John was given a £100 cash gift by his Aunt Elizabeth in Scotland, prompting him and Paul to immediately spend the lot on a two-week vacation in Paris. While there, they hung around the various cafes, clubs, and bars, and also met with a friend of Astrid's, Jurgen Vollmer.

Jurgen was sporting a strange hairstyle, with his hair combed forward over his forehead, similar to that adopted by Stuart Sutcliffe when the Beatles had last seen him in Germany some months before. At that time, John had viewed this -- in addition to the Astrid-inspired all-black look, complete with leather pants -- as yet another opportunity to publicly put Stu down. Now however, with persuasion from Jurgen, John and Paul decided to follow the fashion. John's days of Teddy boy style, with its slicked-back hair and long coats, were finally over; he was now a "moptop."

John Lennon Meets Brian Epstein

In Liverpool in 1961, Beatles gigs at The Cavern were enabling John Lennon to perfect his all-around appearance as well as his banter with the audience. Here was born the famous Lennon stance: legs apart, head arched back, and guitar held up to the chest, largely a result of his extreme short-sightedness when not wearing his glasses on stage. Unable to gauge the reactions of those sitting facing him, John felt safest when projecting his well-practiced tough guy image.

The customers, of course, were mainly Liverpool locals, but they, like many of those in Hamburg during the Beatles' 1960 tour, were still subjected to John's hard-bitten humor, as well as his priceless ability to turn any situation upside down on its head.

©Richard Buskin A faithful reproduction of The Beatles performing at The Cavern Club in 1962, as displayed at the Liverpool-based exhibition, The Beatles Story.

The Lennon wit persevered -- no matter that The Cavern was a dark, damp, musty cellar, with limited space and even more limited facilities. The wiring was hardly up to present-day safety standards (not to mention early-'60s safety standards), and with sweat quite literally dripping down the walls, it was not unusual for the musical equipment to short-circuit.

Keef Hartley, who would later be a drummer with Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, and his own Keef Hartley Band, was occasionally among the kids who were crammed together, watching the Beatles perform at the club. In an interview in 1981, he recalled John's method of coping with the poor conditions.

"The electrics weren't the best thing that happened at The Cavern, and either the amps would pack up or there would be a complete power cut. If this happened, John would immediately jump up onto the piano and go into this routine: 'And here we have so-and-so, who's in a string bag ... no arms, no legs,' and he would introduce McCartney. It was completely unrehearsed, but at the same time it was 'instant Lennon,' with that sick, sick humor of his! That gave the Beatles a tremendous advantage over all of the other bands, and I'm sure that people who went regularly to The Cavern were almost more entertained by that than by the live music."

While the girls were at the same time in awe of John and somewhat scared of his sharp tongue, the guys admired his manliness; he became for them something of a role model. Either way he had a magnetic presence, and one person who was immediately drawn toward this was Brian Epstein, who first saw the Beatles perform during a lunchtime session at The Cavern on November 9, 1961.

Epstein, the manager of a large record store in the center of Liverpool, was, as has been well documented, a homosexual who was helplessly attracted to John, the macho rocker who swore on stage, smoked while playing, turned his back on the audience, and stopped in the middle of a song whenever he felt like it. This was, however, by no means the only reason for Brian's interest in the group.

"I was immediately struck by their music, their beat, and their sense of humor, actually, on stage," he asserted in a 1963 BBC Television interview. "And even afterwards, when I met them, I was struck again by their personal charm, and it was there that really it all started."

Certainly it did. Epstein, a suave, sophisticated businessman who harbored frustrated showbiz ambitions, moved quickly to take the Beatles under his wing, resolving to smooth out their image, curb their lack of professionalism, and gain them a recording contract through his contacts in the record industry.

A bootleg pressing of "I'm Sure to Fail," one of the numbers recorded by the Beatles for their unsuccessful Decca Records audition on New Year’s Day, 1962.

During their second business meeting, while the other band members were hesitating over whether or not to take up Epstein on his offer, it was John, the leader, as decisive and straightforward as ever, who stepped forward and said, "Right then, Brian, manage us now. Where's the contract? I'll sign it."

Sure enough, after the leather gear had been discarded and the Beatles outfitted in suits, shirts, and ties, Epstein began to gain more prestigious local bookings for them. John, never one to conform to the rules, felt duty-bound to rebel against this restyling, and so like a naughty schoolboy he would walk around with his tie crooked and top shirt button undone. Underneath this show of defiance, however, he obviously recognized the good sense in Brian's actions, otherwise he wouldn't have put up with them.

A series of record company refusals during the first months of 1962 sorely tested the band members' faith, but Epstein delivered on his promise when, on May 9, he informed them that he had secured a recording contract with EMI's Parlophone label. The Beatles were in the middle of a seven-week season at The Star-Club in Hamburg when they received the good news, but for John this was sandwiched between some very traumatic events.

The Death of Stuart Sutcliffe

On arriving at Hamburg Airport on April 11 for a tour, the Beatles were greeted by Astrid Kirchherr and the news that Stuart Sutcliffe, the bassist who had left the group to stay with her in Germany, had died the previous day of a suspected blood clot on the brain. He was only 21.

Although they hadn't been seeing as much of each other lately as during the previous year, John and Stu had regularly kept in touch by letter. For both of them this was a form of release, a way of expressing some of their innermost thoughts, without fear of ridicule by those around them. Pages and pages would travel back and forth between England and West Germany, detailing many of the things, both good and bad, that had taken place recently, accompanied by cartoons, jokes, and poems.

Hunter Davies, in his book, The Beatles,cites one of the most revealing pieces, in which John described to Stu his feelings of guilt over the way that he knew he sometimes hurt people:

"I can't remember anything without a sadness,
So deep that it hardly becomes known to me.
So deep that its tears leave me a spectator
of my own stupidity."

George Harrison with a pre-Beatle Ringo Starr at The Cavern Club, 1961. As a member of Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, Ringo conformed to that band’s dapper image.

In return, many of Stu's letters in recent months had described the blinding, unbearable headaches that he had been suffering from, and which doctors had failed to diagnose. The last thing that John had expected, however, was for him to die so suddenly, and his reaction was two-fold: First, echoing the situation when Uncle George Smith had died almost five years earlier, John burst into a fit of hysterical laughter (hardly what Astrid -- having arrived at the airport straight from the hospital -- could have needed).

Then, without shedding any public tears, he withdrew into himself and spoke very little about the subject. One of the few things he did say came in the form of this typical down-to-earth advice to Stuart's distraught girlfriend, revealed by biographer Ray Coleman in John Winston Lennon: "Make your decision. You either die with him or you go on living."

There it was. Cut and dried. With John there was no in-between.

"I knew that he and Stuart genuinely loved each other," Astrid recalled for Coleman. "They told me so, when they got loose ... How John got over that period I'll never know."

What he did, in fact, was to absorb himself in his music. He was getting pretty used to suffering tragedy by now, and his way of dealing with it was to confine it to the past and get on with the present.

More unpleasantness lay ahead, for next on the agenda was the ousting of Pete Best from his position as the Beatles' drummer. The quietest member of the group, Pete was also arguably the handsomest, and certainly the one that the girls at The Cavern most swooned over.

Pete's recollection of his dismissal, reported by him in his 1985 autobiography, Beatle! The Pete Best Story, co-written by Patrick Doncaster, is blunt and unsentimental. In the pre-Brian Epstein days,