Friday, December 3, 2010

The Straggler

December 3, 1960

The game is up for the Beatles in Germany.  Because of an oversight (or by design)  proper work permits were never obtained for any of them.  Now that official notice has been taken of these foreigners, none of them will be able to stay on indefinetly.

So a couple of days after his band mates are deported, John Lennon leaves for home, via more affordable modes of travel, bus,  train, and ferry.  He carries his Rickenbacker guitar and his amplifier with him.  Years later he would remember how he was constantly on his guard, afraid they would be stolen during the journey.  But he does make it back to Liverpool and drags himself back to Aunt Mimi's semi-detatched house in a middle class part of Liverpool.  One can only imagine the reception he received from his rather straight-laced aunt.  Especially after he had bragged to her about the hundred pounds a week he would be pulling down in Hamburg.

A collective depression seems to settle over the boys now, there is no evidence that they even talked to each other for the next two weeks.  It must have been some comfort to John to have a steady girlfriend, the pretty and devoted Cynthia Powell,  to return to and one gets the impression that for John, Paul, George and Pete, this was a time to quietly reconnect with friends and family outside of their musical circle.  To recharge their spirits and re-experience life in a northern town after the high energy, exhaustion producing world of the Reeperbahn.  Stuart Sutcliffe, however, his relationship  with Astrid in full flower, remains in Germany, laying low at her house in Hamburg for a while, yet.


John's Aunt Mimi's house in Woolton (left half of this building)

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