Long before they would conquer the rock world together, Paul McCartney and George Harrison were burgeoning school friends bonding over their mutual love of music. In fact, there was one concert in particular that brought the pair together. Find out which show sparked a conversation between the young Beatles, below.
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[RELATED: 12 Photos That Capture Paul McCartney’s Legendary Journey]
The Concert That Brought Paul McCartney and George Harrison Together
McCartney and Harrison attended the same school. Before they became aware of one another, they individually attended a Lonnie Donegan concert, a British skiffle singer. The impromptu and improvised style of skiffle would later influence the Beatles’ early music. That affinity was sparked at this Donegan show.
After the concert, McCartney and Harrison found out about their similar music taste and opted to spark up a conversation on the school bus. Both of them found the concert to be life-altering. For McCartney, it was an assuage in the wake of his mother’s death.
“It was just after my mother’s death that it started,” McCartney’s brother, Mike, once said. “It became an obsession. It took over his whole life. It just came along at that time and became an escape.”
For Harrison, the show was a push to find his own way in music. He invited McCartney over to his house to see if he could make sense of his guitar manual.
“Paul came round to my house one evening to look at the guitar manual I had, which I could never work out,” Harrison once recalled. “It was still in the cupboard. We learned a couple of chords from it and managed to play ‘Don’t You Rock Me Daddy O,’ with two chords. We just used to play on our own, not in any group, just listening to each other and pinching anything from any other lad who could do better.”
Clearly, the pair found playing together satisfying enough to eventually team up in The Quarrymen–eventually to become the Beatles. Though McCartney and Harrison’s relationship would fracture towards the end of the Fab Four’s reign, it was their meeting that jump started their love of instrumentation. For that, no Beatles fan can be ungrateful.
Check out some of Donegan’s music, below. Do you hear a resemblance between this sound and early Beatles music?
(Photo by Edward Wing/Daily Express/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
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