ROSS SIMPSON

From left: John  Lennon and Paul McCartney.

The front-page headline of the Liverpool Evening Express on July 6, 1957,
read “MERSEYSIDE SIZZLES,” in reference to the heat wave then gripping
not just northern England, but all of Europe. The same headline could well
have been used over a story that received no coverage at all that day: The
story of the first encounter between two Liverpool teenagers named John
Lennon and Paul McCartney. Like the personal and professional relationship
it would lead to, their historic first meeting was a highly charged combination
of excitement, rivalry and mutual respect.

It’s easy to assume that John and Paul would eventually have met on some
other day had a mutual friend not chosen that hot and humid Saturday to
make the introduction. But as much as they had in common, the two boys
lived in different neighborhoods, went to different schools and were nearly
two years apart in age.

Only John was scheduled to perform publicly on July 6, 1957. The occasion
was the annual Woolton Parish Church Garden Fete, a parade and outdoor
fair at which John and his Quarrymen Skiffle Group had been invited to play.