The Beatles wouldn’t have been so promising if John Lennon and Paul McCartney never came together. Although they had some disputes in the early 70s, they were still good friends. Together they dominate the world of rock and roll.
With the skills of Paul McCartney, John Lennon, and other members of the band, The Beatles became one of the biggest groups in the world. This wouldn’t have been quite possible without the man who introduced Paul McCartney to John Lennon, Ivan Vaughan.
The person who introduced Paul McCartney to John Lennon
Ivan Vaughan was the person who first introduced McCartney to John Lennon. Ivan was already a friend of Paul and he met Lennon when they went to watch The Quarry Men.
The group used to play in the field behind the church. Lennon was the frontman and guitarist, Colin Hantobn was on the drums, Eric Griffiths was also on guitar, Rod Davies on banjo, Pete Shotton on washboard, and Len Garry was on tea-chest bass.
Ivan Vaughan used to play tea-chest bass occasionally for The Quarry Men and he was the one who introduced Paul McCartney to John Lennon.
Although Ivan had musician friends, he didn’t become one and proceeded to become a teacher at University College London.
Paul and John became one of the greatest artists in the world. Even after gaining such popularity, they didn’t forget him and helped his family when they were in need. Unfortunately, in 1977, Vaughan was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, at the age of 35.
After getting diagnosed he wrote a book about it “Ivan: Living with Parkinson’s Disease” in 1986. He battled with the disease for a long time but suffered from pneumonia which became his cause of death in 1993 at the age of 51.
McCartney felt the loss of his dear friend and he even wrote poetry for him which was entitled “Ivan.” Paul wrote poetry for the first time since he was a kid and he published it in his book “Blackbird Singing.”
Paul McCartney on Ivan Vaughan “he was a really lovely man”
In the early 2000s, McCartney was interviewed by Poetry Corner where he recalled his dear childhood friend Ivan. “
Ivan Vaughan was one of my best friends at school who was born on exactly the same day as I was in Liverpool. So when we discovered this fact in the playground chatting, we became instant good mates. He was a really lovely man. And he turned out to a classic scholar, he went to Cambridge to study Greek and Latin,” Paul said.
“He was a lovely friend of mine and he actually contracted Parkinson’s disease at a very early age in his 30s, which is quite unusual,” he added.
“Because he was so bright, a very intelligent guy, he understood exactly what was going on and he could keep up with all the research on it. So it was particularly sad that he died at an early age. So I then I was moved to write a poem and that really then started me on a path of writing the other poems on the poetry book.”
McCartney then continued to read the poem and explained about their childhood and the day they were born. “Two doors opened on the 18th of June, two babies born on the same day in Liverpool. One was Ivan the other me.”
“We met in adolescence and did the deeds they dared us to. Jive with Ive, the ace on the base he introduced to me at Wilton fête a pal or two. And so we did, a classic scholar he, a rockin roller me. As firm as friends could be. Cram lock naval, cram rock pie a tear is rolling down my eye. On the 16th of August 1993, one door closed. Bye, bye Ivy”, Paul said.
When McCartney met Lennon for the first time
In 1991 during a conversation with Charlie Rose Paul recalled the moment when he first met with John Lenon. “I’ve met John, I think when I was about 15 or so, I had a friend, a very good friend of mine called Ivan Vaughan, who I went to school with.”
“He was born on exactly the same day as I was, so we became friends because of that. He lived in a place called Walton and he said ‘I’ve got his great mate, you should meet him, you know. This mate got a bit of a group”. (It was) what they used to call Skiffle groups. It’s an early kind of acoustic Blues kind of things, lots of guitars, they used to have washboards.”
“So John had this Skiffle group and he (Ivan) said ‘they’re playing on saturday at Wilton Village fête. He said ‘you should come along’ and I said ‘great, I will come along’. I remember coming into the fête and seeing these people on the stage and seeing John in a checked shirt with a sort of a quaff (hair) and singing this song, doing great, looking great.”
Paul added “But he was singing all the wrong words. It was a song ‘Come Go With Me’ by the Del-Vikings. But because they were supposed to be a Skiffle group plus he didn’t have the record, so he just made it up. He was kind of (singing) ‘Come go with me to the penitentiary, hey…’ and he was making all this stuff and I was ‘who is this person?’.”
“But then I met him a little later that day. I was surprised at how drunk and horrible he was. Because I was younger that him and he was just (acting like a grown up because he was 16) getting a six-pack down, it was Saturday and he was getting going. I was later to learn those tricks, but I was a little bit innocent. I remember this guy sort of just smelly breath over my shoulder,” McCartney said it laughing.
“We played around backstage that day, my friend took me the backstage. It was little church hall, anyone could have got in, but we just went along there. A few of the guys were just sitting around waiting for the evening performance, they played in the afternoon at the fête and then did the evening. We were jamming around and I knew this song called ‘Twenty Flight Rock’ by Eddie Cochran.
“I knew all the words and this was great currency in those days. If you knew all the words they would wanted you in a group. It was like ‘we can chuck him out next week, but he knows all the words’ (laughs). We often traveled miles to get the words or a chord, B7! We clear across Liverpool to get B7. I still know it.
“So what happened was after that jamming thing I just went back home and forgot about it all. I was cycling around that area about a week afterwards. One of the fellas at the group came up and he was on his bike too and he said ‘hey, they want you to join the group. They thought that was great, you knew all the words’ (laughs).”
“Basically I knew only that one and I got George Harrison in the group later because he knew a song called ‘Raunchy’ (By Bill Justis). So yeah, we had two songs then and John didn’t know ‘Come Go With Me’ so we were safe, it was very innocent. We just got together a band a we were terrible, very, very bad and we were very bad for a few years. We sort of got off to Hamburg and improved a bit because we were just working so long.”
