When Paul McCartney met John Lennon on July 6, 1957, one of the songs Paul played on guitar and sang for John was Eddie Cochran’s “Twenty Flight Rock”. The occasion was the garden fete of St Peter’s Church, Woolton, Liverpool, where John’s band, the Quarry Men, were performing. Mutual friend Ivan Vaughan had introduced the two future Beatles and this impromptu audition took place. Lennon was impressed that Paul knew all of the lyrics to “Twenty Flight Rock”, and McCartney wrote them down for him. A couple weeks later Paul was invited to join the Quarry Men and he eventually did so.
Unfortunately, Cochran didn’t live to hear about the significance his song had on the two future music legends. On April 17, 1960, at the young age of 21, he died from injuries from a traffic accident in a taxi. This was a few years before The Beatles were to became famous. Ironically, the name of the taxi driver in the accident was George Martin.
Paul McCartney released a cover version of “Twenty Flight Rock” on his “Russian album”, Choba B CCCP (Back in the USSR)
Listen to Eddie Cochran’s original version of “Twenty Flight Rock”:
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
“Cry for a Shadow” is the only Beatles song to be credited to John Lennon and George Harrison alone. It’s an instrumental that was written by John and George as a parody of The Shadows style. The Shadows were Cliff Richard’s backing band and the biggest British instrumental rock & roll group at the time. “Cry for a Shadow” was recorded on June 22, 1961 in Hamburg, Germany, while The Beatles were backing up Tony Sheridan in the recording studio.
According to Mersey Beat newspaper editor Bill Harry, the original title of the track was “Beatle Bop”.
From the way Paul McCartney holds his bass guitar, it’s pretty obvious that he’s left handed. Less obvious as a left hander is Ringo Starr. Although Ringo is left handed, he plays the drums as a right hander and his drum kit is set up as such. As a side note, this is the opposite of Micky Dolenz of The Monkees who is right handed but plays with the kit set up for a left hander.
