John Lennon, the boy we knew

John Lennon, the boy we knew

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009...iend-liverpool

Before the Beatles, John Lennon was a school friend, a bandmate, a boyfriend - and a big personality. We talk to the people who knew him best during his Liverpool youth

Comedian JIMMY TARBUCK went to Dovedale primary school with John Lennon and knew him all his life. In Nowhere Boy Tarbuck (played by Christian Bird) features briefly: Lennon (Aaron Johnson) cycles past him and shouts "Tarbuck! Keep out of the chippy ye fat bastard!"

I always got on very well with John. He took the piss out of me, which made me laugh. He was a character, sarcastic, full of quips. When the Beatles had their first record out, "Love Me Do", John played it to me and I came out with a classic: "You should sell this to the Everly Brothers." Shows you what I knew! He never let me forget that. Whenever I saw him he'd say "We're still writing songs for the Everly Brothers" and piss himself laughing.

I was at Dovedale with John and we lived quite near so we'd bump into each other all the time. He lived in a very nice semi-detached house on Menlove Avenue. He wasn't a working-class lad as many people make out, that's a load of crap. He had a very nice childhood – I know he didn't in terms of the mum and Aunt Mimi situation – but he was never wanting for food and things. I remember kicking a ball around with him in the playground, shouting and being daft. He was like any other kid. He wasn't a sit-in-the-corner, a quiet Harry; if there was a bit of uproar he'd be amongst it like myself. Later with Yoko Ono he became a pacifist but he was far from that before. He wasn't a hard case but he wouldn't back off anything. Mind you, we went to the Isle of Man on a school holiday and I got into more scrapes than he did.

When we were older John had a great party piece – he'd put speed in your drink. When I was about 24 I nodded off one night at someone's house and he stuck some in my drink. I was like a rabbit in the headlights for four days!

He was a good lad, one of the troops, that's how I remember him. The Beatles opened the door for Liverpool talent, and Gerry Marsden, Cilla and myself came in on the carousel and all moved down to London. People suddenly got interested in the northwest of England, and for the first time your accent didn't matter. It was wonderful.

FIRST BANDROD DAVIES began playing with Lennon's schoolboy skiffle band the Quarrymen in 1956 and drifted away when Paul McCartney joined. Since 1997 he has been playing guitar for the revived Quarrymen.

Part of the point of us playing in the Quarrymen was to charm the ladies. One time we were playing on the back of a stationary lorry for a street party and there were various lads who weren't impressed by the attention their girlfriends were giving John. At the end of the set we all had to leg it off the lorry and cower in somebody's house until a policeman escorted us to the bus stop and we headed home. As far as I remember, that was the first time John generated any serious crowd problems.

I met John at St Peter's Sunday school when I was about five. He quickly ended up there when he came to live with Mimi. John was a bit of a villain even in those days – he would spend his two pennies for collection on bubblegum. Him and [his friend] Pete Shotton often had to give up their gum at the start of the hour-long class. But I was too frightened of hellfire and damnation.

In 1956 at Quarry Bank school I bought a banjo, and a friend of mine, Eric Griffiths, got me into John's skiffle band. They knew I couldn't play it but Eric used to shout the chord changes to me. Later I bought a banjo tutor and started playing chords further up the neck, and John said "No, you're not doing that". He didn't want me to look too flash. John was the best singer in the group by far but I don't think any of us recognised him as a major talent. The talent obvious at the time was his cartooning. His cartoon book, the Daily Howl, used to pass around the school. Even some of the teachers would have a good laugh at that in the staffroom. But he was a disruptive pupil; he didn't always know where the boundaries were. Eric said that he basically ruined his education by fooling around too much.

I was blissfully unaware of the John-Mimi-Julia triangle. I knew his mother. We'd go to hers to practise, she'd let us stand in the bath and play to get the echoes. She was very encouraging. Whenever we turned up she'd say, "Put those horrible guitars away, give me that banjo", and she'd play my banjo with her back to the fireplace. She wasn't like everybody else's mum, she didn't stand on ceremony, she was more like a big sister to John really.

ART COLLEGEA close friend of John Lennon's from Liverpool art college, BILL HARRY launched Mersey Beat at college, a publication about the Liverpool music scene which was instrumental in the Beatles' success. He has written several books about the band.

When I first saw John he was strolling amidst the students at Liverpool College of Art, dressed like a teddy boy. All the other students were in duffle coats and turtle necks, and I thought, "Art students are supposed to be bohemians and rebels and they're all dressed the same, they're all conventional. He's the rebel, I must get to know him."

He was a bit aggressive at first. If he found he could browbeat you then you were under his thumb. He used to treat Stuart [Sutcliffe] really badly at times, humiliate him in front of people. At college girls would be chatting in the corridor, and when John walked by they'd shut up and shiver. He had a bit of an acid tongue. But if you stood up to him he liked that.

I introduced my mates Stuart and Rod Murray to John, and we used to go to Ye Cracke, the art school pub in Rice Street. The four of us decided to call ourselves the Dissenters and made a vow to make Liverpool famous: John with his music, Stuart and Rod with their painting, and me with my writing. I coined the phrase "Mersey Beat", launched a newspaper of that name and got John to write the story of the Beatles for the first issue. "On the Dubious Origins of Beatles, Translated from the John Lennon" was a wacky thing about how a man came down on a flaming pie and gave them the name. John was so delighted I'd published it that he brought me a bundle of 250 stories, poems and drawings he'd done, so I began publishing them. One of his favourite writers was Richmal Crompton who did the Just William books, and he was into the radio show The Goons. But his favourite book was Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, he loved Lewis Carroll. One time Margaret Duxbury, who shared the flat with Stuart and John at Gambier Terrace, fell asleep so John made us get potatoes, put matchsticks in them and dangle them above her so when she woke up she'd think there were spiders on her. He'd do things like that all the time.

I loved John's art because it reminded me of Steinberg, the American artist. He had a great fluidity of line with his cartoons and things. But he was such a rebel. We'd get commissions at college, the teacher would say "I want you to paint the docks", and when he collected the work and ordered it by merit, John's would be last because while everyone would depict cranes and dockers and things he'd just draw a foot.

Or instead of drawing the life model, he'd draw her watch. Aunt Mimi said she always remembered me because I was the first person to call John a genius. His mind was different. He always tried to stretch himself, often in mischievous ways.