Meet the Quarry Men of Liverpool, 41 Years Later

Forty-one years ago the Quarry Men, a group of teenagers from Quarry Bank prep school in Liverpool, played the St. Peter’s Church Rose Queen and Garden Fete in the suburb of Woolton.

The show was not memorable for the band’s performance. Its place in music history is that it was where the band’s unquestioned leader, John Lennon, first met the lad with whom he’d change pop music, Paul McCartney.

Lennon and McCartney became the Beatles, but what of the five other guys onstage at the Woolton fete that afternoon? What became of the rest of the Quarry Men?

More than four decades after that date, the Quarry Men have reunited, recorded a CD and are in the United States on their first tour of any type.

“We thought we’d wait long enough to handle the adulation,” says Quarry Man Rod Davis over the phone from England, reflecting the Liverpudlian wit the world got to know through his former bandleader. “We thought we’d wait until we could slow down so the groupies could catch us.”

Screaming throngs will not greet the Quarry Men as they did when the Beatles conquered America in 1964. But the reunion offers a chance of “being one of the lads again,” says Davis, who originally played banjo in the group. “It’s great fun, which is why we’re doing it, I suppose.”

Davis acknowledges that the group--whose members’ ages range from 56 to 59--is “a bit long in the tooth” to embark on its first rock tour. “Some of us need a good ironing,” he deadpans. But a demand has been created by Beatles conventions, where they have appeared as speakers.

“We were bowled over by the fact that people knew who we were,” Davis says. At Beatles meetings, fans who knew every detail of the Fab Four also know about the Prefab Five. “They’d say, ‘We heard of you guys, we wondered if you were still alive. We never ever expected to see you, let alone see all five of you together.’ ”

It was a surprise for members, too, who didn’t see one another again until they were each invited to a 40th anniversary party for the old Cavern Club in Liverpool, where jazz fans booed an early Quarry Men gig in 1957. There was Pete Shotton, a washboard player for the Quarry Men who stayed Lennon’s friend for life. Shotton was later tapped by Lennon to run the Apple boutique in London 30 years ago and eventually ran a string of restaurants. For the Quarry Men, he’ll alternate between washboard and a distinctly British version of the washtub bass called the tea-chest bass.

There was Colin Hinton, who lasted long enough with the Quarry Men to cut a 1958 single with Lennon and McCartney and their new guitarist George Harrison. “That’ll Be the Day,” backed by a McCartney-Harrison original, “In Spite of All the Danger,” got its first release in 1995, as part of the best-selling “Beatles Anthology I.” Quite an accomplishment for an upholsterer who hadn’t touched the drums in 40 years.

On guitar is Eric Griffiths, who was replaced by Harrison and ended up running a chain of dry-cleaning stores.

Len Garry, who played tea-chest bass, had to quit the Quarry Men because of health reasons. After a career as a special-needs teacher, he’s switched to Lennon’s role: guitar and lead vocals.

Davis, for his part, left before McCartney formally joined the band in the fall of 1957. A fan of skiffle, an offshoot of traditional jazz, he was unhappy with Lennon’s insistence on playing rock ‘n’ roll. Davis kept a hand in playing American bluegrass music but made his living operating a church tour business for a decade, following that with lectures on tourism.

So he was happy to agree to play the first big gig for the reunited Quarry Men--a benefit for the crumbling church hall they played the day Lennon met McCartney--on the 40th anniversary of the event. A couple of subsequent appearances came at international Beatles conventions.

“None of us are brilliant musicians,” Davis warns. “But people are interested in us as walking antiques, you know. This is as near as you can get to hearing the Lennon lineup in 1957.

“We don’t pretend to be fantastic,” he says. “We hope to be an interesting act. We’re basically five old guys who know someone who became someone famous.”