“I had a mate at school who was called Ivan Vaughan and we were born on the exact same day in Liverpool, so we were great mates. And one day he said “Do you want to come to the Woolton Village Fete?” So I said “Yeah, alright.” So we went along one Saturday afternoon. I remember coming into the field where they had the fete and just a bit over there, there was a wagon, and on the back [there was] this little stage or something. On the stage there were a few lads. And there was one particular guy I noticed at the front. He had a checked shirt, sort of blondish kind of hair, a little bit curly, sideboards, looking pretty cool. And he was playing one of these guitars “guaranteed not to crack,” you know, not a very good one. But he was making a very good job of it, you know. I remember being quite impressed and he was doing a song by The Del-Vikings called “Come Go With Me” and the thing about it was: he obviously didn’t know the words. But he was pulling in lyrics from Blues songs, so instead of going “Come, little darling, come go with me,” which is right, he’d then go “Down, down, down to the Penitentiary”. He’d be doing the sort of stuff he’d heard on Big Bill Broonzy records. So I thought “That’s clever, he’s pretty good”.

That was John.

(Source: agnesnutter)