Was a chocolate bar the reason the world got Lennon-McCartney?
One small change and the whole world could be different. One misstep, one different choice, one missed connection, and so much could be lost. Take this for example – Had Paul McCartney not have bumped into John Lennon buying a chocolate bar, there might be no The Beatles.
The story of the day Paul McCartney saw John Lennon play for the first time, and asked to audition, is a well known one by now. A young, 15 year old McCartney was at a church fete on July 6th, 1957. 16 year old Lennon was on stage with his skiffle band, and McCartney wanted to join them. Later that day, he struck up the courage and that was the first time the two officially met.
In the church hall, McCartney tried to impress them. He played Eddie Cochran‘s ‘Twenty Flight Rock’ and Gene Vincent‘s ‘Be-Bop-A-Lula’, trying to show off his guitar technique but mostly just being mocked for playing it left-handed. Most of the stories tell you that they were instantly sold, but McCartney wasn’t offered a spot there and then.
Instead, in McCartney’s view, his entry was granted later on when he just happened to bump into Lennon.
That in itself isn’t wild. Liverpool is a relatively small city, and the area the two boys lived in was even smaller, so they’d see each other around plenty. Even before the meeting at the church, McCartney had seen Lennon around many times. “The first time I ever saw John Lennon, he got on the bus … he was like this slightly older guy with this sort of rocker hairdo — lots of grease — black jacket, sideburns, sideboards as we call them,” McCartney wrote in his biography, “And I just remember thinking, ‘Well, he’s a cool guy. No idea who he is.’”
But after they’d met, McCartney had the courage to approach and say hi whenever he saw Lennon around, like on this one day that he recalled to Bono of all people as the Beatle was giving the U2 singer a tour of Liverpool.
Along the way, he simply pointed to a road crossing. “He stopped at the traffic lights and he said, ‘that’s where we had our first conversation’”, Bono recalled as McCartney pointed out the spot where the two musicians had their first normal chat. He remembered the bassist saying, “He bought a bar of chocolate and after the war, chocolate was hard to come by you know. He didn’t give me a square, he broke it in half.”
Clearly a tender member, it’s one that seemed to signal the real start of something, more so even than McCartney’s audition. Instead, this first friendly conversation, and Lennon’s sharing, marks the start of the friendship that powered the band for a long time.
And it began with a chocolate bar and the simple act of two lads sharing it as they bumped into each other by a street crossing. Sometimes moments that change everything are as unassuming as that.
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