Mersey Beat July 6 1961

Editor's note: When John Lennon and I were sitting together in Ye Cracke, our art college 'local' (a public house frequented by students of Liverpool College of Art), I mentioned that I'd heard he wrote poetry. At first he demurred. It wasn't the sort of hobby a 'macho' type would admit to. After I'd pressed him he then took some pages of notepaper out of his pocket and showed them to me. I was pleasantly surprised. I'd expected a pastiche of 'Beat generation' poetry, which was all the rage at the time. Yet this was a rustic poem, lusty and down to earth, completely English in its essence:

Owl George ee be a farmer's lad
With mucklekak and cow
Ee be the son of 'is owl Dad
But why I don't know how

Ee tak a fork and bale the hay
And stacking-stook he stock
And lived his loif from day to day
Dressed in a sweaty sock

One day maybe he marry be
To Nellie Nack the Lass
And we shall see what we shall see
A-fucking in the grass

Our Nellie be a gal so fine
All dimpled wart and blue
She herds the pigs, the rotten swine
It mak me wanna spew!

Somehaps perchance ee'll be a man
But now I will unfurl
Owl George is out of the frying pan
'Cos ee's a little girl.

In 1960 when I decided to found Mersey Beat and report on the local scene, I commissioned John to pen a short biography of the band. Some months later we were sitting in the Jacaranda when he handed it to me, shortly before the group set off on their second trip to Hamburg. It was something totally unexpected. its sheer wackiness delighted me. I immediately ordered him coffee and jam toast!

The piece appeared on page 2 of issue No. 1 published on July 6 1961. The humour of it appealed to me. it was the time of the Goons (who regularly said 'you rotten swine') and at Junior Art School I'd been involved with some friends in what we called the Natty Nut Society. I was also interested in the Nonsense Novels of Stephen Leacock.

As a result, I decided to print the biography as John had written it, without altering a single word. It had no title, so I made up the heading 'Being A Short Diversion On The Dubious Origins Of Beatles (Translated From The John Lennon)'.
And here it is:

Once upon a time there were three little boys called John, George and Paul, by name christened. They decided to get together because they were the getting together type. When they were together they wondered what for after all, what for? So all of a sudden they grew guitars and fashioned a noise. Funnily enough, no one was interested, least of all the three little men. So-o-o-o on discovering a fourth little even littler man called Stuart Sutcliffe running about them they said, quite 'Sonny get a bass guitar and you will be alright' and he did - but he wasn't alright because he couldn't play it. So they sat on him with comfort 'til he could play. Still there was no beat, and a kindly old man said, quote 'Thou hast not drums!' We had no drums! they coffed. So a series of drums came and went and came.

Suddenly, in Scotland, touring with Johnny Gentle, the group (called the Beatles called) discovered they had not a very nice sound - because they had no amplifiers. They got some. 

Many people ask what are Beatles? Why Beatles? Ugh, Beatles, how did the name arrive? So we will tell you. It came in a vision - a man appeared on a flaming pie and said unto them 'From this day on you are Beatles with an 'A'. Thank you, mister man, they said, thanking him.

And then a man with a beard cut off said - will you go to Germany (Hamburg) and play mighty rock for the peasants for money? And we said we would play mighty anything for money.

But before we could go we had to grow a drummer, so we grew one in West Derby in a club called Some Casbah and his trouble was Pete Best. we called 'Hello Pete, come off to Germany!' 'Yes!' Zooooom. After a few months, Peter and Paul (who is called McArtrey, son of Jim McArtrey, his father) lit a Kino (cinema) and the German police said 'Bad Beatles, you must go home and light your English cinemas'. Zooooom, half a group. But before even this, the Gestapo had taken my friend little George Harrison (of speke) away because he was only twelve and too young to vote in Germany; but after two months in England he grew eighteen and the Gestapoes said 'you can come'. So suddenly all back in Liverpool Village were many groups playing in grey suits and Jim said 'Why have you no grey suits?' 'We don't like them, Jim' we said, speaking to Jim.

After playing in the clubs a bit, everyone said 'Go to Germany!' So we are. Zooooom Stuart gone. Zoom zoom John (of Woolton) George (of Speke) Peter and Paul zoom zoom. All of them gone. Thank you club members, from John anf George (what are friends).

Editor's note: As the biography may be esoteric to some visitors, I will translate even further from the John Lennon. The man with the beard cut off is Allan Williams, the owner of the Jacaranda club, a coffee bar in Slater Street where we used to hang around during our art college days. Allan had recently shaved his large black beard off. He was also the man who first booked them into Hamburg.

The Casbah was a club in West Derby run by Mona Best, mother of Pete Best - and the club where the Beatles, in their quarry Men incarnation, had enjoyed their first residency.

John's peculiar spelling of Paul's surname caused some problems later on as I presumed it was the correct spelling and used it in a few issues, including the front cover of Issue No. 13.

The 'grey suits' bit referred to the fact that they'd adopted their black leather outfits in Hamburg and were the only Liverpool group to dress in that fashion. I assume that the Jim he refers to is Jim McCartney and it sounds as if Jim would have preferred his son to dress in a more conventional manner.

The Gestapo referred to as the Aliens Police, who caused George to return to Liverpool because there was a 10 o' clock curfew for youngsters under the age of 18 in Hamburg and he was told he couldn't join the others on stage after that time.

It was a thrill for me, in 1997, to see that this piece I'd commissioned John to write for me had been given a new lease of life because it inspired Paul when he conceived his 'Flaming Pie' album.

As for the true origin of the name. Stuart Sutcliffe proposed Beetles, his inspiration being Buddy Holly's backing band, the Crickets. John added the 'a'. There is no truth in the rumour that it was inspired by the motorcycle gang in the 1954 film 'The Wild One' as this movie was banned in Britain until the mid-1960s and the Beatles never saw it in those early days.

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