So much has been written and recorded about the mythology of the Beatles that it almost seems like they're not quite a band anymore — as though they have transcended the physical world of albums and tours and singles and morphed into some sort of benevolent cosmic presence. And maybe they have (and they probably deserve it, even if you only consider side three of The White Album). But even legends started somewhere, and the Beatles first began their journey to greatness on this day in 1957 when Paul McCartney met John Lennon for the first time.
As the story goes, McCartney had become a fan of Lennon's first band the Quarrymen, a skiffle group he formed while he was still at school with four other friends. On July 6, 1957, the group had a gig at a festival hosted by St. Peter's Church in Woolton, a suburb of Liverpool. McCartney was introduced to Lennon by a mutual friend. Eager to impress the confident Lennon, McCartney grabbed a guitar and played a pair of tunes for Lennon (Eddie Cochran's "Twenty Flight Rock" and "Be-Bop-A-Lula" by Gene Vincent). McCartney also showed Lennon and fellow Quarrymen guitarist Eric Griffiths how to tune their instruments, which was something they had been relying on other people to take care of for them.
A few weeks later, Lennon invited McCartney to join the Quarrymen permanently. The lineup continued to change over the course of the next few years (they added a young but masterful guitarist named George Harrison in early 1958) and eventually morphed into the Beatles by the time they were playing gigs in Hamburg, Germany in 1960. From there, they wrote a bunch of songs and became pretty popular.