#Pete Shotton

[thewalrusispaul]

Brian being told that Ed Sullivan wants to speak with him and his childlike glee is maybe my favourite thing I‘ve read in Pete‘s book so far

(Extract from Pete Shotton‘s, John Lennon - In my Life)

[muzaktomyears]

(...) John continued to believe that Brian was dead only in the physical sense, and that it might still be possible to commune with his spirit. To this end, he actually hired a professional medium to preside over a session at Kenwood. I happened to be visiting with John a few hours prior to the event, and was so fascinated when he told me about it that I begged him to let me attend. "No, Pete, sorry," John replied. "This has got to be just the four of us." To the best of my recollection, this was the only occasion on which I'd ever been excluded from any of the group's activities, though of course I realized at once that it would have indeed been inappropriate for anyone but the four Beatles to take part. Even so, I could hardly wait to ring John the following day. "How did it go?" I demanded breathlessly. "Oh, it was just a load of bullshit," he said. "The medium started putting on a weird voice, pretending it was Brian speaking to us through him. But none of it made any sense, and when we tried to ask Brian questions, he didn't know anything about anything. It was all just a complete waste of time."

John Lennon: In My Life, Pete Shotton and Nicholas Schaffner (1983)

[got-ticket-to-ride]

Around August 1961

"John and I did develop a special liking for two strippers who shared a flat conveniently located a few doors down from the Old Dutch Cafe. Pat and Jean were onetime models who had graduated to the stage of Merseyside's very first topless nightclub. They were tough and smart and didn't care what anybody thought of them and in those days their profession was deemed highly suspect by the more upstanding citizens of Liverpool. For that very reason, John treated Pat and Jean with as much respect as he was capable of bestowing on a mere female; he regarded them almost as kindred spirits fellow rebels.

Pat and Jean used to perform intimate strips for us in the privacy of their own home, getting John and me in a highly receptive mood for the wild scenes that invariably followed.

Despite these allurements my liaison with Jean got off to an unpromising start when my member stubbornly refused to rise to the occasion. Jean attempted to bolster my self-esteem by confiding that one of the Beatles (who shall remain nameless here!) had experienced similar difficulties on his first fling with her."

~Pete Shotton

George: "They were horrible girls, weren't they?"

Were John and Pete Best close enough for John to invite Pete Best on an orgy with Pat and Jean? (No.)

Pulling out the statistics on which Beatle could've had the difficulty.

John: X / George: X / Paul: O / Pete Best: X

[harrisonarchive]

A style selection, 1956-1969.

A continuation of sorts from this post.

“[George’s] idea, which he ordered [in Liverpool in the 1950s], was a four-button jacket with cloth-covered buttons. Two breast pockets which were slitted (jetted) and in the shape of a bird in flight, the two side pockets corresponded. The cuffs had to be folded back with a cloth-covered button. His trousers had no pleats in the front, not normal in those days, and he was by far the very first person to have two slits at the bottom side seam of the trouser and he wanted them folded back with cloth covered buttons to match the cuffs on his jacket. The workshop queried the order when they received thinking we had gone bonkers. George got his suit and was pleased with the outcome. Later lots of guys were walking about town with cut back cuffs and side seams on their trousers, but George was the first.” - Rollo Torpey, The Beatles and Me (2015)

“At Iris’s 14th birthday party, I remember George turned up in a brand-new, Italian-style stuff with covered buttons. He looked very grown-up.” - Violet Caldwell (mother of Iris, and Alan, a.k.a. Rory Storm), The Beatles Monthly September 1965

“[George’s mother Louise] took an unusually benign view of George’s luminous pink shirts, yellow waistcoat, and drainpipe trousers.” - Pete Shotton, The Beatles, Lennon, And Me (1984)

“Going in for flash clothes, or at least trying to be a bit different, as I hadn’t any money, was part of the rebelling. I never cared for authority. They can’t teach you experience; you’ve got to go through it, by trial and error.” - George Harrison, The Beatles: The Authorized Biography (1968)

“At the Institute, George was known from the beginning as a way-out dresser. Michael McCartney, Paul’s brother, was a year below him. He remembers George always having long hair — years before anybody else did. […] ‘George used to go to school with his school cap sitting high on top of his hair,‘ says Mrs. Harrison. ‘And very tight trousers. Unknown to me, he’d run them up on my machine to make them even tighter. I bought him a brand-new pair once and the first thing he did was tighten them. When his dad found out, he told him to unpick them at once. “I can’t, Dad,” he said. “I’ve cut the pieces off.”’” - The Beatles: The Authorized Biography (1968)

“I’d started to develop my own version of the school uniform. I had some cast-offs from my brother. One was a dog-toothed check-patterned sports coat, which I’d dyed black to use as my school blazer. The color hadn’t quite taken, so it still had a slight check design to it. I had a shirt I’d bought in Lime Street, that I thought was so cool. It was white with pleats down the front. and it had embroidery along the corners of the pleats. I had a waistcoat that John had given me, which he’d got from his ‘uncle’ Dykins (his mother’s boyfriend), Mr. Twitchy Dykins. It was like an evening-suit waistcoat — black, double-breasted, with lapels. The trousers John also gave me, soon after we first met — powder-blue drainpipes with turn-ups. I dyed them black as well. And I had black suede shoes from my brother. […] That outfit of mine was very risky, and it felt like all day, every day, for the last couple of years I was going to get busted. In those days we used Vaseline on our hair to get the rock n’ roll greased-back hairstyle. Also, you were supposed to wear a cap and a tie, and a badge on your blazer. I didn’t have my badge stitched on, I had it loose. It was held in place by a pen clipped over it in my top pocket, so I could remove it easily, and the tie.” - George Harrison, The Beatles Anthology (2000)

“He was always a pretty snappy dresser, and he did always like that waistcoat look. And he used to wear a V-neck Fair Isle jumper. Sometimes he’d be a little too outrageous, like purple trousers with bright green, but it was fine. Everything seemed to be fine then.” - Pattie Boyd, interview for the British Beatles Fan Club

“The boys are wearing all sorts of fantastic clothes for their film and introduce a very new, unusual gimmick. If they’re wearing corduroy, for example, then they have corduroy boots to match. If they’re seen in velveteen suits, then they’re coupled with velveteen boots. George first thought of the idea two years ago, but when he put the idea to a local bootmaker, he told him it couldn’t be done. Well, that’s one cobbler that’s been proved wrong.” - The Beatles Monthly, June 1965 (x)

[harrisonstories]

George Harrison turns his amp back on after police attempt to stop the rooftop performance. (Get Back, 2021)

George Harrison v.s. the police

“In Cleveland, without asking us, two senior police officers marched on stage and stopped our show completely because they said the crowd was getting out of hand. The safety curtain was pulled down, and we were ordered to our cars. With the cops shouting, ‘The show’s over, fellows, this is where we take over.’ It’s never happened to us before. But that’s the trouble with American cops – they’re over-enthusiastic, whether it’s for stopping shows, hurling us into cars, baton charging the crowd or just asking 30 autographs at a time." - George's column in The Daily Express (1964) [x]

"We've been and played here in Sydney, and it was the biggest drag of all time. The stage revolves every three minutes and we have to walk right down the aisles like boxers to get to the stage. At the first house I punched a policeman because he was shoving me like mad and some kids had a hold of me all at once and I was trying to get off the stage. I was swearing my head off at one policeman (sorry), and later the chief came and apologised to me." - George in a letter to his parents (1964)

“I noticed a police car. It says, written on the door, ‘To serve and to protect’, and that really sort of buzzed me. I was starting to wonder like, who are they serving, and who are they protecting? I mean that’s where it’s really at because maybe they do serve and protect, but you know…themselves or? Like, who? […] That’s the trick you see. They say, ‘It’s not me. It’s somebody up there telling me what to do,.’ and you can never find like, who is the guy at the top? Because they shift the load, you know? Take a load off Annie.” - George interviewed by Don Hall and Charles Laquidara (1968)

“George arrived home, with Mal Evans and Derek Taylor in tow. All the detectives instantly leaped from George’s settees to converge upon their quarry as he stormed, ranting and raving, into his kitchen. 'The foxes have got their lairs,' George shouted, 'and the birds have their fucking nests, but man doesn’t have anywhere he can fucking go without people breaking into his house!' Ignoring this tirade, the Drug Squad, charging him with possession of cannabis, produced two pieces of incriminating evidence. 'That one’s mine!' George snapped. 'But I’ve never seen this one before in me fucking life! You don’t have to bring your own dope to me house, I’ve got plenty meself! And you didn’t have to turn this whole fucking place upside down, I could have shown you where the stuff was if you’d asked me!' Their only response was to ask George to accompany them to the police station. 'Well, I don’t care where the fuck we go,' George retorted, 'just so long as you get all these fuckers out of my house!'" - Pete Shotton on the 1969 drug bust at Kinfauns [x]

"The prosecution had stated then that Harrison drove his car on to the busy junction of Wigmore Street and Orchard Street blocking traffic. When stopped by the Pc, Stephen Gardner he drove the car forward with the constable walking alongside and twice refused a requestion to drive to the offside of the road. Pc Gardner walked forward and stood in front of the car and Harrison advanced the car slowly and it hit the officer's knee. He drove against the officer three times. Police spent 15 minutes trying to get his name and address, but Harrison, who was heavily bearded, was finally recognized. Mr. Polden told the magistrate yesterday that Harrison was trapped in the boxed area. He was driving his wife's Mercedes, and drove slowly forward. He heard a hammering on the car roof. ‘Mr. Harrison's lot has been to find people hammering on the roof of his car and he did not associate it initially with police action.’

The policeman believed the driver was taking no notice of his signal. Harrison had the car radio on and did not hear the officer speak to him. When the policeman ran in front of the car Harrison realized for the first time he was being requested to stop ‘for reasons quite obscure to him.’ He decided to pull in to the near side and started to turn not realising he was being discourteous. ‘He should have stopped, but it stemmed from a misunderstanding. That is why he pleaded guilty.’ ‘Mr. Harrison's nature is such that the arrogant level of driving does not really enter into it. As far as a man in his position can have, he has a sense of humility. He is not capable of deliberately driving into a police officer, causing him to hurt. He took the whole business impassively rather than arrogantly.’” - Guy Rais, Ban on Harrison (1971) [x]

"George gives me a souvenir as I leave -- a baton belonging to the Chief Constable of Liverpool, which GH took off him at the Liverpool premiere of A Hard Day’s Night!" - Michael Palin, Halfway to Hollywood: Diaries 1980–1988

"I was 15 and then uh...had some little run-in with some policemen, and he told the policemen to fuck off. And that was when I realised he was actually cool, on my side, and not just a scary dad, y'know?" - Dhani Harrison, Living in the Material World

[banjoandthepork]

"One group John continued to see a great deal of was the Moody Blues, who lived communally not far from Weybridge. The Moodies regularly hosted Saturday night open house parties, at which the best hors d'oeuvres, the best booze, and the best dope were always there for the taking- along with the best-looking starlets and models. (It was at one of these parties, in fact, that I encountered my very first miniskirt). For John, however, the main attraction was the Moodies themselves, who --their relentlessly somber music notwithstanding-- were probably the funniest bunch of people John and I had ever met. 

A typical Moody Blues routine featured their original guitarist Denny Laine (now better known as one of Paul McCartney's Wings) in the role of a crusty old sergeant major, and the rest of the band as a platoon of raw recruits. Whenever Denny barked out his orders, the others would respond, to hilarious effect, as if they didn't have a clue -- tripping one another up, and marching out of step and into walls. As comedians, they all boasted a flawless sense of timing, and invariably left John and me laughing so hard we could scarcely breathe. "

-Pete Shotton, The Beatles, Lennon, and Me (aka John Lennon: In My LIfe)

[mydaroga]

John Lennon and Pete Shotton were

so inseparable that some called them LennonShotton or Shennon and Lotton. (John in turn often called Shotton ‘Penis’, because he was long and thin and his initials were PS.) As Pete reflects, John needed to be in a partnership: ‘He always had to have a support. He would never have gone and performed on his own. He always had to have a sidekick.’

Mark Lewisohn, Tune In

[saint-mona]

Picked up this out-of -print gem 💎 today...

[ludmilachaibemachado]

After Christmas show. Cynthia and John Lennon, Pete and Beth Shotton. At home, 1963🌻🌻🌻

Via Facebook🌻

[ceofjohnlennon]

From left to right: Pete Shotton, Bil Turner, John Lennon and Len Garry, presumably between 1956~1957. ㅡ From the book "John Lennon In My Life" by Pete Shotton.

[dateinthelife]

3 May 1968

While Cynthia is on holiday in Greece, John Lennon invites his childhood friend Pete Shotton over to Kenwood for moral support before calling a woman.

[muzaktomyears]

there is such unnecessary wanking detail in Pete Shotton's book. I know John would approve 💕

[beatle-stories333]

crying rn🥹

[paulsbrokenaglass-beatles]

Breaks my heart to read about John's struggles with his self-image and weight, and anecdotes like this really reveal a lot about why his self-image deteriorated so badly

His tastes in food ran to such basic English staples as eggs, steaks, bacon, chips, and bread and butter--along with vast quantities of exotic American breakfast cereals like Frosties (Frosted Flakes) and Sugar Pops. By the end of 1965, a distinct pot belly had begun to materialize on John's formerly slender frame. One afternoon, I happened to take an important call from television's David Frost when John was in the shower, and burst into the bathroom to give him the message. I'm not sure which of us was the more startled: John, who, characteristically, jumped a mile at the unexpected intrusion--or I, who hadn't seen him with his clothes off for some time. "What the hell," I demanded, "is that you've got hanging round your waist?" "It's getting terrible, isn't it?" he conceded. "I'd better do something about it, before I turn into a real Fattie Arbuckle!"

Pete Shotton, John Lennon: In My Life

[takeasadsongandanalyzeit]

The Fete

The earliest recording we have of John singing. Not strictly a Beatles recording, but it's certainly relevant.

This was recorded at Woolton Garden Fete on the day John and Paul officially met for the first time. (There are tantalizing hints that it wasn't the first time they met, but that's for another blog).

John was 16 when this was recorded.

Also performing with him were

Eric Griffiths - Guitar

Colin Hanton - Drums

Rod Davies - Banjo

Pete Shotton - Washboard

Len Gary - Tea Chest Bass

It's very cool to have any recording from that day and is pretty much a fluke that a fan would bring a recording device at all. They weren't exactly small.

Apparently, the entire set was recorded, but hasn't been released. Maybe it will be in the future. Who knows.

Here are the songs he's covering, if you haven't heard them:

It was recorded in 1926, but the most famous version was

As you can see, John changed it quite a lot. He made it more rock and gave it that Lennon flare. The Quarrymen would have absolutely rather done that version as seen here

but John was going to make it Rock n' Roll anyway.

This is Elvis' version of the second song. It's not originally Elvis of course, but this is what John was probably basing his version on.

This is the original

To be honest, John's version doesn't sound like either of these. As usual, John added his own thing and made the song all his own.

[mydaroga]

Pete insists that so great was John’s sex drive he could regain an erection within minutes and do so again and again, achieving several orgasms in a single session, which made him as extraordinary in this respect as he was in so many others.

Mark Lewisohn, Tune In, from In My Life by Pete Shotton