The Daily Telegraph has an interview with Rod Davis, a pal of John Lennon's who played in the pre-Beatles band, the Quarrymen.
A childhood friend of John Lennon has revealed he turned down an offer to join The Beatles because he “didn’t like rock ‘n’ roll” and he didn’t know how to play the drums.
While drummer Pete Best is best known as the “fifth Beatle” – being let go from the band in 1962 before they achieved international fame – Rod Davis, who played with Lennon in The Quarrymen in the 1950s, rejected an offer to join Lennon’s new band as Best’s replacement.
Davis, 82, is selling the £5 banjo he used in The Quarrymen and it is expected to fetch up to £15,000 at auction.
Davis, who had known Lennon since he was five, joined the Liverpool skiffle band with only a banjo after he missed out on buying the guitar he really wanted.
He admits he wasn’t much of a banjo player – in fact, he had no idea how to play it – but said he would try his best and “thrash the chords” on his new instrument.
...when Lennon quit school and embraced his new obsession of rock ‘n’ roll, Davis decided he wasn’t interested and stayed at school to finish sixth form.
He even turned down an offer from Lennon in 1962 to replace Best as the drummer in The Beatles – which had changed its name from The Quarrymen and now had McCartney on board – during their Hamburg years.
“John was moving towards rock ‘n’ roll which I didn’t like, then in the fifth form he left the school as did other members of the band. I stayed on into the sixth form,” Davis said.
“I met John again in 1962 and he asked me if I could play drums for The Beatles in Hamburg, but I wasn’t a percussionist.”
As Best's replacement? When they already had Ringo lined up? I somehow doubt whether he has his chronology right.
ReplyDeleteI think it should be noted that The Quarrymen were not a "pre-Beatles" band. The Quarrymen never broke up. They gradually evolved into The Beatles over the years.
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