But he feels comfortable with Paul, who’s like a younger brother. One who’s insanely talented, ambitious, and determined.

They go at the chords over and over.

John works his guitar until he nails the intro.

To celebrate, Paul lights up his dad’s spare pipe with a pinch of tobacco they find in the tea caddy.

John takes a puff and thinks, Practically every Buddy Holly song is three chords. We should write our own.

Though John ignored Paul the first time he talked about his songwriting techniques, now he’s curious and draws him out.

Paul starts at the beginning. “I’d either sit down with a guitar or at the piano,” he says, “and just look for melodies, chord shapes, musical phrases, some words, a thought just to get started with.”

John wants in on this creative process, but it doesn’t take long for him to discover that songwriting is hard.

Their first collaboration, “Too Bad About Sorrows,” remains incomplete, as does their follow-up, “Just Fun.” The next one they work on, “Because I Know You Love Me So,” has a Buddy Holly feel to it. They’ve already worked out the harmony.

Paul turns to a fresh page in his notebook to start a new song. Up at the top, he writes, “Another Lennon-McCartney Original.”

*  *  *

“I’ve got a mate who can play ‘Raunchy,’” Paul says. Bill Justis’s “Raunchy” is a recent hit from America and a tricky instrumental to cover. Being able to play it is a sign of a really good guitarist.

“Who?”

“George Harrison.”

Right. Little George Harrison. John has met him, that small kid with a thick mop of hair who’s still fourteen, eight months younger than Paul and a class below him at Liverpool Institute.

Still, Paul keeps talking his mate up. In addition to his rock-solid guitar skills, Paul tells John, Little George is cool. He even dresses cool—sometimes outrageously, to get a rise out of the adults. “Cocky” is the word Paul uses to describe him, approvingly.

But John isn’t swayed from his opinion that “George was just too young.”

“I didn’t dig him on first sight,” John says later. “George looked even younger than Paul, and Paul looked about ten with his baby face.”

On February 6, 1958, the Quarry Men are playing Wilson Hall, sharing the bill with the Eddie Clayton Skiffle Group. (Clayton is the lead guitarist, backed by a drummer named Ringo Starr.)

After the show, John challenges George.

“John said if I could play like that, I could join them,” George recalls.

Paul remains George’s champion. “Go on, George, show him!”

George aces the audition. “I played ‘Ranchee’ [sic] for them, and he said I could join.”

John agrees that George “knew more chords, a lot more, than we knew.”