The Nerk Twins: John Lennon and Paul McCartney’s one-night only acoustic duo in 1960
Way back before The Beatles changed the world, Paul McCartney and John Lennon treated a small pub audience in Berkshire to their brief acoustic duo venture, The Nerk Twins.
In little over two years, The Beatles would sign to Parlophone in May 1962 and, before long, usher in the decade’s British Invasion. It was a dizzying 24 months, but a road well travelled. Before that very first recording session in EMI’s Studio Two, McCartney, Lennon, George Harrison, and the revolving line-up that orbited their Silver Beetles early days had been cutting records with Tony Sheridan, perennially hopping between their Liverpool hometown and the Hamburg club circuit, and touring Scotland as part of Johnny Gentle’s backing band.
The Beatles were a well-oiled, professional machine by the time of ‘Love Me Do’. Yet, they had it all to come back in April 1960, the little skiffle-turned-Merseybeat outfit The Quarrymen were just another Liverpool band playing local shows at the city’s Cavern Club and Casbah Coffee Club regular haunts. It was during this pop nascency that The Nerk Twins trekked down south and played their two only shows during an Easter break holiday down to England’s Reading area.
It turned out that McCartney’s cousin, Bett Robbins, owned the popular The Fox and Hound pub in the Caversham village along with her husband Mike, and invited the two Quarrymen to stay with them for the week. Earning their keep, Lennon and McCartney routinely worked behind the bar, but knowing the two were relatively seasoned musicians back in Liverpool, Mike offered them a live slot for the upcoming weekend of the 23rd and 24th.
As best as understood, it’s the only time the pair ever indulged in an acoustic set at this stage of The Beatles’ genesis. Still, adopting their Nerk Twins moniker, a Scouse diss for someone who’s square or uncool, Lennon and McCartney crafted their own promotional posters for the two-date exclusive and initially sought to open their set with Gene Vincent’s ‘Be-Bop-a-Lula’, before Mike suggested otherwise.
“No good. You need to open with something fast and instrumental. This is a pub, a Saturday night, what else have you got?”
Paul McCartney recalled Mike’s response on the Anthology series
It just so happened that the pair counted ‘The World Is Waiting for the Sunrise’ in their repertoire, the old big band standard that had not long enjoyed a second lease of life by the Les Paul and Mary Ford duo. “Perfect,” Mike reportedly quipped back. “Start with that, then do ‘Be Bop A Lula’.” Mike knew his audience, being the landlord, as well as having more experience in the business than the Nerk Twins, as a credentialed former entertainment manager hosting talent contests at Butlins. Who were Lennon and McCartney to argue?
Playing as agreed, the Nerk Twins strummed the first two numbers before playing out a set of rock and roll and country western, reportedly to a half-interested crowd with as few as three drinkers actually toe-tapping along.
“They were a load of bloody rubbish, but I suppose they brought a bit of life into the pub,” one regular allegedly spouted off to Mike after the show.
Tough crowd, but the kinds of grounding experiences that every respectable artist needs to soldier through in their clamour for fame. Such a unique slice of Fab Four lore has rightly been celebrated by an official Blue Plaque on the Fox and the Hounds courtesy of BBC Radio Berkshire, marking the one spot where The Nerk Twins were ever a unit for that one, semi-impromptu weekend before Beatlemania’s world conquest.
Never Miss A Beat
The Far Out Beatles Newsletter
All the latest stories about The Beatles from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.