Hi Dave , A great interview with Jim some terrific stories will have to get his book . Never knew Jimmy Nicol had so many strings to his bow and amazing the amount of coincidences that happen during Jim's research . Hope you're keeping well mate ! 👍👍🎸😎🎸 BB (👍67 )
Trying to locate the video you posted about Capitol records, Vee Jay, Sean. You had an author on that explained it all perfectly. He talked about the JFK assassination and the myth that the Beatles benefited from the country being depressed when they arrived in ‘64. Can you give me the name of the video? Thanks
Yes indeed, I believe Mimi bought JL his 1st electric, which was JL's *2nd* guitar, 1957. Julia Lennon bought JL's 1st guitar, mail order, 1956: Gallotone Champion acoustic, at a time when Mimi frowned on skiffle, let alone rock 'n' roll. Mimi in an interview glossed over Julia's precedent to disclose her own down payment as signatory to Hessy's HP contract on the Club40. There's been confusion over this for decades: reporters conflating the 2 guitars as one & then being confused as to whether Julia or Mimi bought "the" guitar, when in fact the 1st was was acoustic, the 2nd electric. The Dallas Tuxedo found in the attic is harder to sort out. PM & GH said that when Johnny & the Moondogs competed in Ardwick, Manchester, another reason for their hasty retreat for the last train was that JL stole an electric guitar. No one knows what he did with it. And so some speculated that the guitar found in the loft was JL's guilty booty Whatever happened to that stolen guitar, JL would know Mimi would've hit the roof had she known he'd stolen it. So JL would've stashed it as close to the roof as possible. That's the reasoning. But it's made complicated by disagreement over *when* Johnny & the Moondogs played that M/C gig, NOV 1958 or '59. Either way, since 2 Beatles confirm JL stole a guitar that night, the question remains unanswered & for the most part unexplored as to what JL did with his stolen guitar. If the loft explanation is to be discounted, the only other likelihood is that JL did what any self-respecting Scouser would do with stolen property - - fenced it & pocketed the proceeds. I think there's some credence to the loft story. My attic is exactly that floorless design, & I went up there once & took out a cathode tube television, heavier than a guitar. It might be that JL hardly ever played it, already owning the Club40 Mimi bought him, & so it languished in the attic by default. I don't know.
Thanks for the detailed account... I knew the story that both Mimi and Julia had bought him a guitar, separately, but didn't know the full backstory...
@@Merseyrock Ray Coleman interviewed Beatles often, & interviewed Mimi & her account of buying John his Club40 in: *Ray Coleman, Lennon* , 1984, London: Pan. Early OOP Beatles-related books are often very cheap to buy because they're supposedly out-of-date on what we know & may have one or 2 myths not debunked yet. But what they have that new books cannot have is original interviews with relatives & 1st generation fans, insiders no longer with us. A 1980s McCartney bio that I bought for 4 quid last spring comes to mind. So now, all these years later, those old beat-up books with their primary research are good & cheap to peruse for today's secondary-researchers.
"The Dallas Tuxedo found in the attic..." A good premise for a book, or at least a feature article: What happened to the electric guitar stolen in Ardwick, Manchester, by John Lennon? A detective trail for a diligent writer. Even as an article it calls for major investigative journalism. Who is left alive to have any clue what Lennon did with that guitar? No one even knows whose guitar it was or from which band. Not even the Bests could help: it's before Pete's introduction. JL didn't give it or sell it to GH or PM. If the writer could get to Paul McCartney with a series of Qs, instead of the same old same old, it would be: "What did John do with the stolen Dallas Tuxedo? Do you recall him ever playing it at gigs instead of his Club40? Did he ever say he stashed it in the attic? Did he ever mention it down the line?" And if PM doesn't know, who is left to offer a clue? This Q should have been researched in the 1980s. It was too obscure for Lewisohn to investigate in his tome - one example of why Lewisohn's fine tome is not the sacred incontrovertible be-all-&-end-all of Beatles foundations.
Surely the guy who John stole the guitar from exists? Word of the theft would've soon gotten around around, considering the cost of such an item back then If he's still alive then I'm pretty sure he's still pissed about it and with it so chronicled you'd think he or (had he passed since) his family would've made the connection and come forward to identify the guitar or at least the model and verify the incident before now, so much unnatural/myth/legend attached to the Beatles
@@Tom-nt9dz Well Tom, at the time, the guy would have zero idea it was Johnny & the Moondogs who took his guitar. The story surfaced whenever JL started talking about it, which would be....what? maybe 1967 in Hunter Davis's Beatles bio? I'm not sure, it may have been later. Say, maybe 10 years after the Ardwick gig? It wasn't a big revelation when JL outed himself, so the point would not get any traction in the press - - there were at the time much bigger revelations, such as JL living with his Aunt & what happened to his mother, which we take as standard facts now but which would have been revelatory for Beatles fans around 1967. The guitar-owner wouldn't have even identified Beatle John as the leader of Johnny & the Moondogs until, at earliest, I think, 1963. Even then, it's not certain the guitar-owner ever saw Johnny & the Moondogs perform that night in Manchester: the competing bands wouldn't have all seen each other play in every instance. The Quarry Men didn't perform another gig as Johnny & the Moondogs. (Maybe the theft was a disincentive to carry on the band name!) The guitar-owner may *never* have pieced together for himself that JL was the leader of that band that night: it was just another band that didn't win. And until JL outed himself, it was not known at the time that Johnny & the Moondogs had stolen the guitar: the thief could just as easily been a Mancunian with a fleeting opportunity. The former owner would have to be a Beatles aficianado years later, in the 1980s, when Beatle books started mining the Quarry Men's past gigs, to get any hint. And we don't know when the former owner died. I'm assuming he did die somewhere back there, else, as you say, he'd have mentioned to a journo or a magazine or a webforum that he was the lad whose guitar was stolen. And what confuses me right round the block is that there are now TWO separate stories of Lennon guitars found in different attics. The other's a 12-string used in HELP!
