It is June 1957. Paul is a bright grammar-school boy; he has been encouraged to take two of his GCE O-Level exams – Spanish and Latin – a year early.
His father, Jim, keeps pointing out that it’s not possible to do your homework and watch television at the same time. Paul argues that it makes no difference. His good marks at the Liverpool Institute seem to support this view. But in truth, his mind is on other things. All he wants to do is play records with his friend Ian James. The two of them go from record shop to record shop. Sometimes they play their guitars together. Revision takes a back seat.
At the end of August Paul’s GCE results come through.
(a)
He has passed Spanish, but failed Latin. This means he will not be able to go up a year, as planned. Instead he must remain in the Remove, alongside boys a year younger. Jim is upset. He thinks Paul failed Latin deliberately, because he didn’t want to go to university. Paul is also upset. When he goes back to school in September, he hates being in classes with his juniors.
Paul is now in the same year as a little boy he recognises from the bus as a fellow smoker. When he was in the year above, he never really spoke to him. But now that they are in the same year, the two grow close. The boy is called George Harrison.
From the heights of the Lower Sixth, Paul’s friend Ian James is baffled by the burgeoning friendship. To him, they have totally different personalities: ‘George always seemed a bit moody, morose, whereas Paul was light-hearted – he probably could have been a comedian if he’d wanted, he can tell a tale so well. George was nothing like that. I found it really strange that they were friends.’
Paul is impressed by George’s guitar-playing, and introduces him to John Lennon, who is seventeen and no longer at school. John doesn’t want to be seen socialising with a fourteen-year-old. He is irritated by the way Little George, as he is known, follows him ‘like a bloody kid, hanging round all the time’.
But one day, when John is on the same double-decker, Paul seizes the opportunity to get George into their new band. On the upper deck, Paul tells George to play the song ‘Raunchy’. ‘Go on, George, show him!’ Little George, as they all call him, takes his guitar out of its case and starts to play. John is impressed. ‘He’s in, you’re in, that’s it!’ The audition is over.
(b)
He has passed both Spanish and Latin. This means he goes up a year, joining the Lower Sixth with his best friend Ian James. Now and then he sees George Harrison in the school corridors, but Little George is in the year below, and anyway, they don’t have much in common. George and Paul occasionally bump into each other on the bus, but there is no reason why Paul would ever introduce him to John; so he never does.