Early Paul and George

Paul, tall Ivan Vaughan and George. The picture was taken in 1959, according to the Flaming Pie book.

As you may or may not know, George Harrison and Paul McCartney were mates before they met John Lennon. In the recently released archive version of Paul’s 1997 album, “Flaming Pie”, there are a couple of interesting artefacts from way back when. The first of these is the hitherto unseen photo shown above, of Paul and George flanking Ivan Vaughan. “Jive with Ive on the bass” Vaughan was Paul’s friend and used to play in John’s Quarry Men on occasions, and it was he who introduced Paul for John  in 1957 at the village fete in Woolton.

Another interesting image from Paul’s release is this one – a list of presumably songs Paul could sing and songs George knew.

List of songs

Also listed is the key for each song. And George’s go into instrumentals, “INSTRIES” on the paper sheet, after “That’s Right” + “Just Because”. The first instrumental is “Catswalk”, with alternate title “Catcall” already noted in parentheses.  “George’s Instrliy” may be his own composition (?) and what about “WinstonsStuart” – a Lennon-Sutcliffe co-composition?

Paul’s list is shorter, and some of the songs featured are mainly songs we know John Lennon would be handling the lead vocals for. “Thinking of Linking” is an early McCartney composition.

Reminiscing about the teenage years in Liverpool in a recent interview, Paul talked about a performance with George: “I remember making a guitar with George, going on hitchhiking holidays… I was a big hitchhiking fan, so I would persuade George and John, mainly, to come on holidays. So George and I hitchhiked one time to Wales. We went to Harlech and stayed in a little place there and played a little gig, just me and George.”

So perhaps his memory was jogged by having included this photo and paper lists in his new archival release.