Paul McCartney once uncovered the secret message in an emotional John Lennon song
Before The Beatles came The Quarrymen; this early incarnation was formed by 16-year-old John Lennon in 1956 with some friends from Quarry Bank High School in Liverpool. They were initially, very briefly, called the Blackjacks, but this was changed early on in favour of the school branding. Though nobody knew it at the time, the seed of what would become perhaps the plant with the deepest roots in pop culture history was pushed into the ground without too much thought for the behemoth it would become.
But every plant needs sunlight and water, and this organism received both at a village fete. In 1957, Lennon met a 15-year-old Paul McCartney at St Peter’s Church Hall fete in Woolton. The pair got on like a house on fire, and it wasn’t long before McCartney joined The Quarrymen, initially as a rhythm guitarist. The pair found chemistry both as friends and songwriters, as Lennon began to invite McCartney to jam at his house, where he lived with his aunt, Mimi Smith.
In Barry Miles’ 1997 biography Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now, McCartney was quoted explaining how he used to spend hours on end in Lennon’s bedroom listening to old-school rock ‘n’ roll records from the likes of Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, and Jerry Lee Lewis. Those artists would become formative in the group, the two boys would eventually form as men.
The nights and days would unfurl like so many others for so many friends across the world. Wihtout much idea about what they were doing or even trying to do, they simply let the music do the talking. They jammed by playing along to the tracks and eventually cut their teeth, writing a handful of songs themselves.
“It’s a lovely thought to think of a friend’s bedroom then,” McCartney pondered with the kind of wistful nostalgia a middle-aged man can conjure at a moment’s notice. “A young boy’s bedroom is such a comfortable place, like my son’s bedroom is now; he’s got all his stuff that he needs: a candle, guitar, a book.”
He added that playing in Lennon’s small bedroom had a setback, though. “Physically, it was always a bad idea for us to sit side by side on the bed in his bedroom,” he recalled. In one of the more visceral images, he shared: “The necks of our guitars were always banging.”
Despite being recorded and released in 1964 after The Beatles’ seismic rise to fame, ‘I Call Your Name’ was one of the earliest original Lennon-McCartney compositions. The song was written primarily by Lennon with some musical supervision from his partner-in-crime. The track is, on the face of it, a very simple ditty. Swinging with verve and punctuated by a delicious cowbell, Lennon’s vocals feel like a fairly innocuous take on the classic lovelorn lad missing his girl trope. But McCartney found something a little deeper in the lyrics.
Reflecting on the classic single, McCartney explained that he didn’t often think about the deeper meaning behind Lennon’s lyrics until many years later. “We worked on it together, but it was John’s idea,” McCartney said of the song. “When I look back at some of these lyrics, I think, ‘Wait a minute. What did he mean?’ ‘I call your name, but you’re not there.’”
In hindsight, McCartney thought Lennon must’ve been referring to his absent parents in the lyrics. “Is it his mother?” McCartney pondered. “His father? I must admit I didn’t really see that as we wrote it because we were just a couple of young guys writing. You didn’t look behind it at the time, it was only later you started analysing things.”
Sadly, Lennon was forced to deal with maternal abandonment issues throughout his life. Aged just five, his mother, Julia Lennon, was put under pressure by her eldest sister, Mimi, to give up care of John. Mimi repeatedly expressed to Liverpool Social Services her lack of confidence in Julia as a mother due to her “sinful” ways. It is still unclear just how fair Mimi’s accusations were regarding Julia, but likely, Mimi wasn’t happy with Julia’s fun-loving personality; she was known to be cheeky, good-humoured and impulsive – many traits that would later be attributed to her son.
In 1945, John was finally forced into the care of his strict and prudent auntie Mimi, who would take over parenthood with her husband, George Smith. While allowed to visit his mother regularly, John became increasingly upset with the separation. Some 12 years later, Julia was killed by a drunk driving policeman when John was only 17; this was a source of severe trauma in Lennon’s life that would crop up increasingly into the late ’60s and early ’70s in songs like ‘Julia’ and ‘Mother’.
Perhaps one of the few positive connections it would provide, however, is a close affection to his bandmate, McCartney, who also lost his mother at an early age. Tragedy would become a bonding agent that would make the pair inseparable during perhaps their most necessary moment. As they moved out of their teens and into becoming not only men but global stars, the two friends would rely heavily on each other to find their foundations.
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