Sometime around mid-afternoon the Quarrymen, a small musical group arrived to play at annual St. Peter’s Church event in Woolton, Liverpool. The day’s entertainment, in addition the musical performance, included were games of hoop-la, police dog demonstrations and the traditional crowning of the Rose Queen, which arrived in a convertible preceding that of Lennon and his group. That evening, as the group was preparing for its encore performance, the Quarrymen’s bass player, Ivan Vaughan, introduced one of his classmates from Liverpool Institute, the 15-year-old Paul McCartney.

On this day, July 6, in 1957 John Lennon met Paul McCartney, forming a friendship that would give birth to many of the Beatles’ immortal classics. McCartney showed Lennon how to tune a guitar, and recalls he was very impressed with Lennon’s singing.

In a 1995 interview with Record Collector magazine, McCartney recounted the meeting from his perspective: “I remember … hearing all this great music wafting in from this little Tannoy system. It was John and the band. … I just thought, ‘Well, he looks good, he’s singing well and he seems like a great lead singer to me.’ Of course, he had his glasses off, so he really looked suave. I remember John was good. He was really the only outstanding member, all the rest kind of slipped away.”