Bill Smith | |
---|---|
Birth name | William Frederick Smith |
Born | Liverpool, England, U.K. | 12 July 1940
Genres | Skiffle |
Instrument | Tea chest bass |
Years active | 1956 |
Formerly of | The Quarrymen |
William Frederick Smith (born 12 July 1940) [1] is an English former musician, who was a founding member of The Quarrymen. His tenure with the group was short, only performing with them for one month (November 1956).
Smith attended Quarry Bank High School. In 1956, classmates John Lennon and Eric Griffiths decided to form a skiffle group in November 1956. This initial line-up consisted of Lennon and Griffiths on guitars, Pete Shotton on washboard, and school friend Smith on tea chest bass. [2] Smith acquired a tea chest bass by stealing one from the woodwork shop at their school: [1]
I remember that we decided to decorate the tea-chest bass. We painted it first, and then John painted cartoons on the side of it. I kept it at my house and took it with me whenever we were playing.
The group, initially called the Blackjacks, quickly changed its name to the Quarrymen. Smith's tenure in the band was extremely short, and he was replaced in quick succession by Nigel Walley, Ivan Vaughan, and Len Garry throughout late 1956 and early 1957. Smith's tea chest bass was stolen by John Lennon and Pete Shotton. The two managed to steal by leaving school early with a forged letter claiming they were going to John's aunt's funeral, who didn't even exist. [1] Once Smith found out later on that his bass was stolen, he snuck into Shotton's house and retrieved it back. Bill hid the bass in his attic, before his father threw it out many years later. [1] Smith last saw John Lennon on a bus in January 1962. [1]
William Frederick Smith was born at Sefton general hospital. [1] He attended Mosspits Lane Primary School, which many future Quarrymen members, including Len Garry, Pete Shotton and Nigel Walley, and briefly, John Lennon, attended. [1] He trained at the National Sea Training School in Gloucestershire for six weeks. [1]
The washtub bass, or gutbucket, is a stringed instrument used in American folk music that uses a metal washtub as a resonator. Although it is possible for a washtub bass to have four or more strings and tuning pegs, traditional washtub basses have a single string whose pitch is adjusted by pushing or pulling on a staff or stick to change the tension.
The Quarrymen are a British skiffle and rock and roll group, formed by John Lennon in Liverpool in 1956, which evolved into the Beatles in 1960. Originally consisting of Lennon and several school friends, the Quarrymen took their name from a line in the school song of their school, the Quarry Bank High School. Lennon's mother, Julia, taught her son to play the banjo, showed Lennon and Eric Griffiths how to tune their guitars in a similar way to the banjo, and taught them simple chords and songs.
Skiffle is a genre of folk music with influences from American folk music, blues, country, bluegrass, and jazz, generally performed with a mixture of manufactured and homemade or improvised instruments.
Alice Mona Best was a British music club proprietor, best known as the owner of The Casbah Coffee Club, a club in Liverpool which served as a venue for rock and roll music during the late 1950s and 1960s. Among the bands to play at The Casbah was the Beatles, for whom her son Pete Best was a drummer at the time. Mona Best also had two other sons, John Rory, and Vincent "Roag" Best. It was later confirmed that Roag's father was Beatles' associate, music executive Neil Aspinall, although he was not registered as the father on Roag's birth certificate.
Leonard Charles 'Len' Garry is an English musician, best known for being a member of The Quarrymen, a band who would later evolve into The Beatles.
Eric Ronald Griffiths was a British musician and dry cleaner, he was best known as the guitarist in the original lineup of the Quarrymen until he left the group in the summer of 1958.
Peter Shotton was an English businessman. He was known for creating the Fatty Arbuckle's chain of restaurants and for his long friendship with John Lennon of the Beatles; he played the washboard in the Beatles' precursor the Quarrymen and remained close to the band, holding various positions related to their business ventures over the years.
Ivan Vaughan was a boyhood friend of John Lennon and later a schoolmate of Paul McCartney.
Colin Leo Hanton is an English musician, best known as the drummer for the 1950s skiffle band the Quarrymen, led by a young John Lennon. He currently plays for the reformed version of the Quarrymen.
Julia Lennon was the mother of English musician John Lennon, who was born during her marriage to Alfred Lennon. After complaints to Liverpool's Social Services by her eldest sister Mimi Smith, she surrendered the care of her son to Mimi. She later had one daughter after an affair with a Welsh soldier, but pressure from her family made her place the baby for adoption. Later she had two daughters, Julia and Jackie, with John "Bobby" Dykins. She never divorced her husband, preferring to live as Dykins' common-law wife for the rest of her life.
A tea chest is a type of wooden case originally produced and used to ship tea to the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. The conventional tea chest is a case with riveted metal edges, of approximate size 500 by 500 by 750 millimetres.
Charles Newby was a British musician who was briefly the bassist for the Beatles for several gigs in December 1960, while Stuart Sutcliffe was still in Hamburg focusing on his art career.
Christopher Nigel Walley is an English former golfer and tea-chest bass player and manager, best known for his association with band The Quarrymen, the precursor of The Beatles which included John Lennon. His surname has often been spelt incorrectly as 'Whalley' in numerous books and on web pages.
The Casbah Coffee Club, officially Casbah Club, was a rock and roll music venue in the West Derby area of Liverpool, England, that operated from 1959 to 1962. Started by Mona Best, mother of early Beatles drummer Pete Best, in the cellar of the family home, the Casbah was planned as a members-only club for her sons Pete and Rory and their friends, to meet and listen to the popular music of the day. Mona came up with the idea of the club after watching a TV report about the 2i's Coffee Bar in London's Soho where several singers had been discovered.
Songs We Remember is the third album by the re-incarnated version of the Quarrymen, which was the band that eventually evolved into the Beatles. It is also the final album to feature founder member Eric Griffiths before his death in 2005.
Get Back – Together is the second album by the reformed Liverpool band the Quarrymen, which was the band that, in its original conception, evolved into the Beatles. It is also the first of two albums by the band that feature all surviving founding members together, as while the name the Quarrymen name was used in the 1994 album Open for Engagements seen as the first album since the reformation, it only featured Rod Davis and part-time member John Duff Lowe. Eric Griffiths and Len Garry make their first appearances on a studio recording, with drummer Colin Hanton also returning to the band for the first time since 1959, having previously appeared on the "In Spite of All The Danger" recording in 1958 as a b-side to a cover of Buddy Holly's "That'll Be the Day". It is also the only full length album featuring Pete Shotton, who also returned to the band in 1997 but later retired due to ill health. Shotton subsequently died in 2017. The album was recorded and mixed at Liverpool Music House by record producer and engineer Lance Thomas.
Phillips' Sound Recording Services was a studio in the house of Percy Francis Phillips (1896–1984) and his family at 38 Kensington, Kensington, Liverpool, England. Between 1955 and 1969, Phillips recorded numerous tapes and acetate discs for Liverpool acts, people and businesses in a small room behind the shop his family owned.
Nowhere Boy is a 2009 British biographical drama film, directed by Sam Taylor-Wood in her directorial debut. Written by Matt Greenhalgh, it is based on Julia Baird's biography of her half-brother, the musician John Lennon. Nowhere Boy is about the teenage years of Lennon, his relationships with his aunt Mimi Smith and his mother Julia Lennon, the creation of his first band, the Quarrymen, and its evolution into the Beatles.
In His Life: The John Lennon Story is a 2000 American made-for-television biographical film about John Lennon's teenage years, written by the film's executive producer, Michael O'Hara, and directed by David Carson.
Rodney Verso Davis is an English musician, best known for being a member of The Quarrymen, a band who would later evolve into The Beatles.