A trumpet for a Zenith

The 1950s Slim Whitman ad from Melody Maker that helped Paul realise a guitar could in fact be strung and played left-handed.

Lennon always thought McCartney was more advanced musically, writing songs that usually had more chords, probably as a result of his dad having been something of a musician. Lennon's songs were at first based on the simple banjo chords (he called them " funny chords") his mother had taught him. " Paul told me the chords I had been playing weren't real chords, " said Lennon. " And his dad said they weren't even banjo chords, though I think they were. Paul had a good guitar at the time. It cost about £ 14. He got it in exchange for a trumpet his dad had given him. When we first started playing together I learned some chords from Paul - and of course he taught me left-handed shapes. So I was playing a sort of upside-down version of the correct thing, if you can work that one out." ²⁵

McCartney's guitar at this time was a six-string Zenith Model 17, an archtop non-cutaway acoustic with f-holes. Boosey & Hawkes, a leading British manufacturer and distributor of musical instruments, marketed Zenith guitars in the UK. They were made in Germany and what was then Czechoslovakia. The Model 17 was made by German company Framus. The Zenith brand must have been reasonably popular in Liverpool at the time - Gerry Marsden, later of Gerry & The Pacemakers, had a skiffle group at the time and also owned one. " That was my first guitar, a Zenith, " he says. " It actually played quite good." ²⁶

Probably the nearest equivalent for playability and sound among American-made instruments of the time would have been one of the cheaper laminated-wood archtop guitars by Harmony. But even if musicians could afford them, American instruments were not available in Britain at that time. A UK government embargo on foreign imports had been in place since 1951 and would not be lifted until 1959. So budding musicians in those days had to rely on European-made guitars of sometimes questionable quality.

McCartney traded a trumpet for the Zenith, which retailed for 14 guineas (£ 14.70, about $40 then; around £ 215 or $300 in today's money). McCartney explained that his father had first bought him the trumpet. " I tried to play [it] and learned 'The Saints' and a couple of things, but my lip was going funny, and I realised I wouldn't be able to sing while I was playing a trumpet. I liked singing. So I traded that in for [the Zenith], which was a right-handed one." ²⁷

In another interview, McCartney recalls being about 15 when he got the trumpet. " It was kind of a heroic instrument at that time, The Man With The Golden Arm and all that. I liked it, and [my father had] been a trumpet player so he showed me a bit. But I realised I couldn't sing with it... so I asked him if he wouldn't mind if I traded it in for a guitar. He said fine. He was very understanding, an amateur musician himself- he'd had a little band called Jim Mac's Band, in the 1920s.

" So I went down and got a Zenith guitar, which I've still got around somewhere. Quite nice, and I learned on that. My biggest problem - and I realised this when I got it home - was that it was right-handed and I was left-handed, and I didn't know what you did about that, there were no rule books, nobody talked about being left-handed. So I tried it this way and I couldn't get any rhythm because it was the wrong hand doing it. And then I saw a picture of Slim Whitman in NME or Melody Maker, one of the early musical papers... and I noticed how he had the guitar on the wrong way around... And I found out he was left-handed - so I thought, that's good, you can have it the other way 'round.

" Then I changed the strings around. I never could change the nut, I wasn't a tech... The sixth string always had a fat hole, where the first string would have to go - we'd chop a little bit of a match off, stick that in there, and that would lift the nut enough. And then you had to hollow out a bit of the nut to get the bass string in, because that kept slipping out. So you did your own technical work. High precision! A very do-it-yourself affair. But it eventually worked, and it would hold all the strings, that was the main thing... if you clouted it, it would just come off." ²⁸

As well as his Zenith, McCartney also brought a new style of playing to The Quarry Men. Lennon later explained how he had to revise his banjo-oriented playing. " I thought it was the correct way to play, but after a while I discovered it wasn't and I had to start learning all over again." ²⁹

But there were changes afoot in The Quarry Men line-up: Davis and Shotton left - Davis says it was probably late July/early August in his case. McCartney first appeared with The Quarry Men on October 18th 1957 at the New Clubmoor Hall in Norris Green, Liverpool, by which time the group had begun taking a greater interest in rock'n'roll, rather than skiffle. The Lennon & McCartney partnership was born.

Lennon still played his Gallotone Champion guitar, McCartney had his new Zenith arch top guitar, Griffiths his Egmond guitar, Len Garry the tea-chest bass, and Hanton his

Broadway drum set. McCartney recalls: " I went in as lead guitarist, because I wasn't bad on guitar. When I wasn't on-stage I was even better, but when I got up on stage my fingers all went stiff and found themselves underneath the strings instead of on top of them. So I vowed that first night it was the end of my career as the lead guitar player." ³⁰ That autumn Lennon had enrolled in the Liverpool College Of Art, allowing him time to keep his music and his band alive. The Quarry Men continued playing scattered performances around Liverpool throughout 1957.