The University of Liverpool students Mimi takes in to supplement her widow’s state pension don’t interest John, though he’s also earned a place at the Liverpool College of Art after a portfolio review of his cartoons and caricatures. Maybe I can get a job drawing gorgeous girls for toothpaste posters is his thought.

“We’ve got this song, Mimi, do you want to hear it?” John asks his aunt.

“Certainly not,” Mimi scoffs. “Front porch, John Lennon, front porch.”

John closes the door, telling Paul that he likes it out on the porch “as the echo of the guitars bounce[s] nicely off the glass and the tiles.”

The moment Mimi leaves the house, they race upstairs and play Little Richard records. They both worship the singer from Macon, Georgia, and Paul can even mimic those trademark hollers and screams on “Tutti Frutti” and “Long Tall Sally.”

But Elvis Presley is God, and they are his acolytes. They don’t just play Elvis records—they also analyze them, trying to figure out the chord progressions, every single sound. All the rock songs they know are played with C, F, and G or G7. They’re determined to crack the chords to Elvis’s “Blue Moon,” but it’s not until early winter that they discover that C, A minor, F, and G are the exact same chords Paul Anka used in his hit “Diana,” recorded in 1957, when he was fifteen, the same age as Paul.

John’s excitement is so fierce, so intense, that it’s nearly blinding. It confirms what he’s known all along: music is the reason he was put on this earth.

And he’s going to do music with Paul McCartney.

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Help me get my feet back on the ground.

—“Help!”

Paul walks home, still riding the high of finally cracking the chord progression for “Blue Moon.” He prefers riding his bicycle, but he can’t do that when he brings his guitar, since it doesn’t have a case.

His father still has no idea he’s hanging out with John Lennon, but it doesn’t matter, really, whether his dad likes John. They’re friends now. Musical brothers in arms.

John, of course, knows how Jim McCartney feels about him. John gives Paul some cleverly worded advice: Face up to your dad! Tell him to fuck off!

He’s thinking about it.

Paul wishes he could find a way, some combination of words, to explain to his father just how deep John is. Not only in his passion for music but also in his art. That John composes poetry; that he could be a great writer.

Paul takes a shortcut via the Allerton Municipal Golf Course, which is closed for the season.

Paul is good at the guitar. And he’s pretty good at singing. But playing and singing…that takes practice. And what a better place than the middle of an empty golf course?