Life goes on for the Quarrymen

You'll find them easily enough. Just hit rewind.

"Let it Be."

Paul is dead?

"Abbey Road."

White album.

India and the Maharishi.

"Magical Mystery Tour."

"All You Need is Love."

"Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band."

"Penny Lane-Strawberry Fields."

No more touring!

"Revolver."

"We're more popular than Jesus Christ."

"Rubber Soul."

"Help!"

Shea Stadium.

Members of the British Empire.

"Beatles For Sale."

"A Hard Day's Night."

"The Ed Sullivan Show."

"I Want to Hold Your Hand."

Royal Command Performance.

Hamburg.

Ringo for Pete.

Beatles -- with an "A."

"Please Please Me-Love me Do."

Silver Beetles.

Johnny and the Moondogs.

And, in the beginning: the Quarrymen.

"We're just people who were influenced by a certain type of music 40 years ago," said Rod Davis, an original member of the Quarrymen, who hooked up with five other nondescript amateur musicians (one named John Lennon) to begin the legacy of the Beatles. "We were lucky that we knew someone who became famous."

These days, Davis and the remaining original Quarrymen are still playing before enthusiastic live audiences. Calling itself John Lennon's Original Quarrymen, the seasoned skiffle fivesome dusts off the washboard, tea trunk and one-string bass for two performances Friday evening at the Palace Station's new Trax nightclub.

The names are readily familiar to Beatles buffs: Davis, Colin Hanton, Len Garry, Eric Griffiths and Pete Shotton. The instruments are the same as the old days, with the boys carrying on with acoustic guitars, a small drum kit, washboard and a one-string base affixed to a tea chest.

The reunion began as a one-time lark.

After nearly four decades apart, the band was summoned for a 1997 performance at the Cavern Club in Liverpool, England, made famous as the club that helped launch the Beatles. The event marked the anniversary of the first meeting between Lennon and Paul McCartney.

"We'd all been invited to this thing without the knowledge of the others," Shotten said during a phone interview from his home in London. "I walked in and saw all of these old guys. It frightened the hell out of me."

But not the crowd, which goaded the group into playing a few songs onstage. The resulting publicity from the 50 or so Beatles fan clubs prompted a short tour of East Coast clubs over the summer, where the revamped Quarrymen resuscitated their pre-Beatles repertoire.

The group has also recorded a 15-song CD titled "Getting Back Again."

The CD, like their live act, is sprinkled with skiffle, a fusion of early rock 'n' roll and hillbilly blues.

"We're still what we were in the old days and still play skiffle music, the kind of music John was first fond of," Davis, one of the band's guitarists who lives in London, said. "We still play the numbers we played back then."

The Quarrymen, like scores of young English musicians, embraced skiffle as a shortcut to the more cutting edge rock 'n' roll. The early skiffle artists in England were led by Lonnie Donegan, whose big hits were "Rock Island Line" and "Jack of Diamonds."

Other early rock covers in the Quarrymen's set include "Blue Suede Shoes," "Be-Bop-A-Lula" and "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On."

"We want to re-create the music, the atmosphere, everything," Shotton said. "We tell stories and share anecdotes. We want to appeal to the true Beatles fans, and I think they'll appreciate that we're not something fake. It's incredible that all the musicians are original players."

Lennon formed the Quarrymen while attending the Quarry Bank School in Liverpool in 1956, eight years before the Beatles' first triumphant tour of the United States and six years before Ringo Starr was invited to join the band.

"At that time, most of the groups were pretty amateurish," Hanton, the band's drummer, said from his home in Liverpool. "The only reason I was in the band was because I had drums. I was interested in jazz, too, and bought a set for 35 pounds, a pound down and a pound a month."

In the summer of 1957, the Quarrymen were fairly floundering, playing at occasional outdoor fairs, school dances and church parties. In July of that year, a friend of the band named Ivan Vaughn brought McCartney to a church fete -- a short parade and crafts fair -- in the Liverpool suburb of Woolton.

"Ivan was a guy who always showed up to support the band," Hanton said. "We always liked seeing him, because he'd bring people and it looked like we had a bit of a following. Also, he had the same birthday (June 18, 1942) as Paul, so they were good mates."

By then, McCartney was a relatively accomplished guitarist, having learned to tune his instrument and play rock 'n' roll standards such as Eddie Cochran's "Twenty-Flight Rock."

"The thing I remember about that day is we were playing on a big flat-bed truck, and Paul came back to play guitar afterward," Hanton said. "But other than that, not too much happened. John was impressed, I know that."

The current Quarrymen don't dispute history's account of the meeting: After McCartney met Lennon, he played and sang a version of "Twenty Flight Rock," and Lennon invited him to join the band.

McCartney agreed to join the next day and, less than a month later, began playing regularly with the Quarrymen onstage.

"Paul was good, there was no question about that," Davis said. "But it was not a terribly significant moment at first. It didn't become a big deal until a little later."

"I do have a problem with one version (of the meeting), and that's that John had been drinking beer that day," Hanton said. "Even Paul has said that, but it's not true. There was nowhere for a 17-year-old guy to acquire beer. Besides, we couldn't have afforded it."

McCartney's presence altered the Quarrymen musically, offering a second lead vocalist and talented guitarist. Shotton and Davis departed soon after McCartney became established as a permanent member, with Shotton maintaining a close friendship with Lennon.

"We still visited quite a bit," he said. "Right up until 1968 or so, when he became really close with Yoko."

Shotton remained friendly with the band, working for a time as a financial manager for the band's ill-fated Apple Corp., and writing the book, "John Lennon: In My Life."

Shotton said the manner in which he left the band spoke volumes about Lennon.

"I really hated being in the band, at first, because I was so shy," Shotton said. "I have no musical gene in my body and I wasn't having fun. By then, John was starting to take things rather seriously, and I really wanted out. I just didn't know how to tell him."

So at a party, Shotton pulled Lennon aside and relayed his angst. Lennon, sitting on the floor holding Shotton's washboard instrument, responded by smashing it over his head.

"It was his way of fixing the problem," Shotton said, laughing. "The thing was very light with a wooden frame and it didn't hurt at all. It was so funny, because he didn't need to say another word."

However, early on, Lennon was not shooting for stardom, Hanton said.

"I never thought John was any more driven than the rest of us," Hanton said. "He was better, but not setting really high goals for himself. I do remember him saying later, 'I'm a genius, why didn't anyone discover me earlier?' but I don't remember that kind of talk at the time.

"No one could have predicted he would have been a star. To have stayed with him would've been like hitting the lottery."

McCartney helped push the band to a loftier status in Liverpool, Hanton said.

"Paul was bossy. He was planning, even then, for a career in entertainment," Hanton said. "He had his heart set on being a performer. I think it was destiny for him, and when (Lennon and McCartney) got together, there was some magic in Liverpool, for sure."

Griffiths was the next of the original lineup to leave the group, to pursue a career as a dry cleaner in 1958. George Harrison, a friend of McCartney's, was summoned to play lead guitar.

The Quarrymen were credited with two recordings in 1958 -- "In Spite of All the Danger," a McCartney-written ditty, and Buddy Holly's "That'll Be the Day."

The songs were recorded in the living room of a friend of the band who owned a portable studio -- a reel-to-reel tape recorder, actually -- and the scratchy, static-marred tunes kicked off the first of the three "Anthology," CDs.

"We have a place in history, because of 'Anthology,' and I was glad we were included," Hanton said. "You can't tell the full story of the Beatles without us."

Garry left the group soon after and Hanton followed in 1959, effectively killing the Quarrymen.

"It was two years of not doing too much, not getting very far," Hanton said. "I wasn't a very good drummer, and I would've had to dedicate my life to becoming good, which I wasn't ready to do.

"It was too much getting on and off busses, too much of a grind."

The Beatles played with a series of drummers as Johnny and the Moondogs and the Silver Beetles for a couple of years, then settled on -- for a time -- Pete Best.

Fans of the band consider Best, dumped from the band shortly before it recorded "Love Me Do," as the most luckless musician ever.

Hanton might be a close second.

"They were always looking for a drummer," Hanton said. "John asked me over Easter in 1962 if I wanted to go back to Hamburg, and I said no. I missed out on that chance twice."

But if the Quarrymen harbor any regrets, they are masked well. They still live on, at least, as a curiosity, still lugging their own equipment to infrequent gigs and playing rock-influenced skiffle music.

"We have no misconceptions about what we are," Hanton said. "We've had very normal lives and enjoy putting on a show once in a while."

Hanton also said that using Lennon's name in the band title has not created legal problems between the group and Lennon's estate (controled by Ono).

"That's the name of the group and I have not heard about any problems with calling ourselves by our name," he said. "That's what we were, that's what we are."

Don't count on any Beatles music Friday, however.

"We play what we used to play," Hanton said. "When we played, there was no Beatles music. It didn't exist."

Just like the old days.

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