How John Lennon and Paul McCartney's Chance Meeting Changed Music Forever

History is filled with moments that seemed ordinary at the time but ultimately changed the world. Arguably no moment in rock history fits that description better than what happened 69 years ago today, on July 6, 1957.

On that summer afternoon, 16-year-old John Lennon met 15-year-old Paul McCartney for the first time at the Woolton Parish Church Garden Fête in Liverpool, England. It was, as History notes, "the start of one of the most fruitful musical partnerships in history." Just seven years later, Lennon and McCartney, joined by George Harrison and Ringo Starr, would become The Beatles, forever changing the course of popular music.

The meeting almost never happened. "It's easy to assume that John and Paul would eventually have met on some other day," History observes. "But as much as they had in common, the two boys lived in different neighborhoods, went to different schools and were nearly two years apart in age." Without that church fête and a mutual friend who introduced them, one of music's greatest creative partnerships might have begun very differently, or perhaps not at all.

Earlier that day, Lennon had performed with his skiffle group, The Quarrymen. Afterward, McCartney picked up a guitar and played Eddie Cochran's "Twenty Flight Rock," Gene Vincent's "Be-Bop-A-Lula" and a medley of Little Richard songs entirely from memory. He also showed Lennon how to properly tune his guitar and jotted down chords and lyrics to some of the songs he'd played.

Source: yahoo.com/Andrea Reiher

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