Shout! by Philip Norman Page A

what John and Eric Griffiths were singing. Pete Shotton, cradling his washboard, wore a long jacket, draped against his bony frame. Rod Davis, on banjo, looked serious, as always.
    “I suddenly heard these two blokes talking, next to the trailer,” Colin Hanton says. “‘Let’s get that Lennon,’ they said. I told John, and we all jumped off the back of the wagon and ran into my mate’s house: the printer. His mum sat us down and gave us all salad. These blokes that were after us stayed outside, shouting and thumping on the windows. I’d met a girl at the party, so I took my drums and stayed the night ather house. The other lads had to have a policeman to see them to the bus stop.”
    In Paul McCartney’s home, there had always been music. His father, Jim, never tired of recalling those happy prewar days when he had led his own little group, the Jim Mac Jazz Band. The McCartneys still had what all families once used to—a piano in the living room. Jim had bought it long ago, when money was easier, from the North End Music Stores on Walton Road. Whenever he had a spare moment—which was not very often—he would move the piled-up newspapers off a chair, sit down at the piano, open its lid, and play. He liked the old tunes, like “Charmaine” and “Ramona” and, his favorite of all, “Stairway to Paradise.”
    Jim’s recovery had been marvelous to see. It was as if Mary’s quiet competence had somehow been handed on to him. From the engulfing anguish following her death he had suddenly clicked into a calm resolution that for Paul’s sake and for young Michael’s home life must go on.
    Though housekeeping was mysterious to him he applied himself doggedly to mastering its every department. He taught himself to cook and sew, to wash and to iron. Each day, after finishing work at the Cotton Exchange, he would hasten to the grocer’s and the butcher’s, then home to Allerton to tidy the house and cook Paul and Michael their evening meal. His sisters, Jin and Millie, each came in one full day a week to give the house a thorough cleaning. Bella Johnson and her daughter Olive also remained close at hand. When Paul and Michael came in from school, even if the house chanced to be empty, there would be notes left for them about where to find things, and sticks and paper laid for a fire in the grate.
    Like Mimi Smith, Jim McCartney did his utmost to prevent there being a Teddy Boy in the family. The trouble was that, being at work all day, he had no alternative but to trust Paul and Michael to go to the barber’s on their own and choose clothes for themselves with the money he gave them. In genuine perplexity he wondered how Paul, in particular, was able to return from the barber’s seemingly with more hair than when he went, piled up in a cascading sheaf. There were battles, too, over trousers, which, Jim insisted, must not be “drainies” but of conventional and respectable cut. Paul would bring home a satisfactory pairand show them to his father; then he would smuggle them out again to one of the tailors who specialized in tapering. If Jim noticed anything Paul was ready to swear that the fourteen-inch drainies clinging to his ankles were the same pair that his father had sanctioned.
    In 1956, Lonnie Donegan and his Skiffle Group arrived in Liverpool to appear at the Empire theater. Paul and some friends from the Institute waited outside during their lunch hour, hoping to catch a glimpse of the star when he arrived for rehearsal. He was slightly delayed and, with great consideration, wrote out notes for the factory workers who had waited to see him, explaining to their foremen why they were late back on shift. This testament of how nice a star could be always stayed in Paul McCartney’s mind.
    It was after seeing Lonnie Donegan that Paul began clamoring for a guitar. He was lucky in having a father only too glad to encourage him to take up any musical instrument. Already in the house, along with Jim’s piano,