When They Were Boys Read Online Free Page A

looked forward, not back, and the parents of the boys in the band who kept saving money for their sons, worried that the bubble would burst.
    And the boys themselves? They were not always saints, but like their fellow citizens, they always had people covering their back. These people wereso important, and in many ways, so ignored by history. Surrounded by a cast of characters no writer of fiction could ever invent, blessed with inordinate talents and a determination to succeed, ordained with tons of luck, and destined to narrowly escape the dangers of their path, they wrote their history, and gifted their joy to a surprised world.
    And it all began in the coastal city in northern England, where life, some of it soaked in rain, can, in itself, be a daily surprise.

WHEN
    THEY
    WERE
    BOYS

    P ART O NE: S TIRRINGS

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    T he milkman makes his rounds, smoking and dreaming. Little Paulie pines for his mother, tinkles with the piano. George has his own bus, sort of. Pete studies hard; Richie not so much, instead listens to Donegan, while Johnny Boy scrapes up the money to buy the contraband 45s, hoping for a peek at the Everlys. Paulie loves the bicycle and the comb and strumming the strings of his future, while the milkman terrorizes teachers with a vengeance. The teachers have no clue. The hearts are beating fast, the stomachs churning, the dreams lighting up the dark of the night, along with the booze, the cigs, and the sounds on the radio from the small country that dares to play the censored music. There are stirrings, and seeds planted; will they grow?
    Treachery, honesty, desire, respect or lack of it, wealth, native talent and talent acquired, lucky breaks, winning by design, love found and lost, leaving your mentors in a fog of mediocrity, respecting your contemporaries, frailty, power, revising your history, living in the truth, peace, violence—all of our lives’ histories are padded with pieces of all of the above, including the four boys who would become the best-known music stars of all time.
    These factors of life combine to make our histories, but as time moves on, and people vanish to a different world, legends remain that often are not true.
    One of the legends is the “rags to riches” story that emerged from Liverpool after the success of the Beatles, who in this book will often be referred to as the “boys,” as they were in their day. When they were boys, and with only one exception, they really didn’t all rise from the depths of poverty.
    Scholar Mike Brocken of Liverpool Hope University has studied the reality for decades:
    T HE B EATLES, INCLUDING P ETE B EST, WERE FROM SOUTH L IVERPOOL, A LEAFY SUBURBAN AREA AND COMPLETELY DIFFERENT THAN WHAT WAS PORTRAYED—WORKING-CLASS, LOWER-MIDDLE-CLASS, IMPOVERISHED BACKGROUNDS . O F COURSE, THIS DID NOT INCLUDE R INGO, WHO CAME FROM A MORE UNDERPRIVILEGED AREA OF L IVERPOOL . T HE REALITY OF THE CLASS BACKGROUND IS COMPLETELY DIFFERENT THAN WHAT HAS BEEN PORTRAYED HISTORICALLY, QUITE DIVERGENT FROM DEPICTEDNARRATIVE, REALLY . T HE B EST FAMILY WAS A PROMINENT FAMILY WITH A GRANDFATHER WHO WAS THE L IVERPOOL BOXING STADIUM PROMOTER . H IS MOM WAS A POWERFUL AND FORCEFUL WOMAN IN HER OWN RIGHT . T HEY RAN AN UPSCALE CLUB . T HOSE AREAS AND IDEAS OF RACE, WEALTH AND INFLUENCE, DEMOGRAPHICS REALLY NEED TO BE TAKEN INTO ACCOUNT IN THOSE EARLY YEARS IN PARTICULAR . T HEN YOU CAN START TO UNDERSTAND THE NARRATIVE THAT DOESN’T REPEAT THE SAME OLD MATERIAL OVER AND OVER AGAIN .
    Â Â Â Â Â  T HESE LADS, WITH THE EXCEPTION OF R INGO, CAME FROM A RELATIVELY COMFORTABLE AND A RELATIVELY AFFLUENT PART OF L IVERPOOL, ALTHOUGH IN THEIR EARLY DAYS, THE FAMILIES OF G EORGE AND P AUL WERE FINANCIALLY STRESSED . T HE PERCEPTIONS ABOUT THE DISTRICTS OF L IVERPOOL NEED TO BE ADDED INTO THE EQUATION . E VENTUALLY, THEIR FAMILIES COULD AFFORD TO PROVIDE THEM WITH GUITARS, AMPLIFIERS, AND SOMEONE TO RIDE THEM AROUND IN A VAN .
    So, to begin,