Julia then went to live permanently with another man (who John called Twitchy), and felt that she couldn't properly take care of John, so he went to live with his Aunt Mimi (Julia's sis) and Uncle George. Mimi raised John as her own son, and stood no nonsense.
Schooling
John first attended Dovedale Primary, where it was discovered that he always wanted to be the boss. He soon had his own little gang, which led to fights with everyone just to prove that he was the best. He even fought with his two best friends, Pete Shotton and Ivan Vaughn. John and his gang would go about shoplifting, pulling down girls' knickers, and taking rides on the tram cars then not paying. Whenever the group got in trouble, John was the only one that didn't get caught, and Mimi never found out.
In 1952, John and Pete started at Quarry Bank High School, but Ivan went to the Liverpool Institute. John started out near the top of the first form, but by the third year he had been demoted to the B stream. His report cards had comments like: "Hopeless," "Rather a clown in class," and "He is just wasting other pupils' time." It was around this time that John was spending more and more time around Julia. As he got older, he had more rows with Mimi, and he would go live with Julia for the weekend or even a few weeks. John liked to hang around Julia more because she was more like John and his friends: she did everything for laughs and said what they wanted to hear. Ivan thinks that it was Julia that really messed up John: she encouraged him to be a rebel and laughed at everything he did. Even though Mimi made sure John didn't drink or smoke, Julia always encouraged him to do so.
Like Paul, John's mother died when he was in his teens. As she was walking from Mimi's house one day, Julia was hit by a drunk driver, who immediately sped away.
By this time, John was in 4C, the lowest stream. On this John said: "I was really ashamed this time, being with the thick lads. The B stream wasn't bad, because the A stream had all the drips. I started cheating in exams as well. But it was no good competing with all the mongols and I did as badly as ever." "Most of the masters hated me like sh**."By the end of his fourth term, John was ranked 20th in his class, the bottom of the bottom. "Certainly on the road to failure," wrote one teacher.
Musical Beginnings
In 1956, Lonnie Donegan came out with a song that popularized skiffle. It was played on instruments that anyone could play. For the first time, anyone with no musical talent could have a try. Even the guitar could be played by anyone who knew a few simple chords. The other instruments - washboard or tea-chest, could be played by any idiot. Hunter Davies, author of the authorized Beatles book, said of skiffle: "It was like giving painting sets to monkeys. Some of them were bound to produce something good sometime." About that time, Elvis was also becoming really big. He had one song topping the charts in 14 countries. John said that nothing really affected him until Elvis.
Mimi sent John to piano and violin lessons when he was young, but he couldn't be bothered by anything with lessons. He wanted to do everything immediately without taking any time to learn. Towards the end of his school days, John became interested in pop music, which Mimi always discouraged. He had no musical teachings or practice whatsoever, but John taught himself to play the mouth organ. When he became interested in guitars, Julia bought him a 2nd hand one and taught him how to play a few banjo chords. Mimi wouldn't let John practice in her house because she said: "A guitar's all right, John, but you'll never earn your living by it."
Eventually, John formed a group at school, and John says he thinks "the bloke whose idea it was didn't get in the group." The group consisted of Len Garry, Ivan Vaughn, Pete Shotton, and John. They called themselves the Quarrymen, after the school that all but one of them attended.
People came and went from the group, until one day John met some guy named Paul McCartney....