In 1956, teenager John Lennon (1940-1980) organised an amateur pop group
called the Quarry Men (or Quarrymen), which he named after Quarry Bank High
School in Liverpool, an industrial and shipping city on the west coast of England and
the Beatles’ ‘home town’. Paul (later Sir Paul) McCartney (1942- ), another
Liverpudlian—as citizens of Liverpool are called—joined the band the following year.
George Harrison (1943-2001) joined in 1958. The Quarry Men mostly played skiffle: a
mixture of 1930s Black and folk musical styles. During the Folk Revival of the 1950s,
White performers in Germany and the United States also played skiffle, but the style
became especially popular in Great Britain. For the most part, skiffle bands consisted
of one or more singers, most of whom doubled as instrumentalists. Skiffle songs were