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I should have been a Beatle, too: Macca’s little brother reveals HE was the band’s first drummer – until a Scout camp accident wrecked his dream

Snippets from the article…there’s a lot more there.

Then Mike lobs in his hand grenade of a confession. ‘I was nearly in The Beatles,’ he says. ‘I was The Beatles drummer, but I broke my arm in the Scouts.’ Hang on, Mike. Rewind. You were a Beatle?

‘It was when John [Lennon] used to come to the house in Forthlin Road with The Quarrymen, before George [Harrison] was even there. I broke my arm at camp and it affected the nerves that control the wrist. They were dead.

‘Dad bought me a banjo and Paul a Spanish guitar after she died. He used to play the piano, which gave him a way of escaping the poverty of his childhood. So, we began playing.

‘If Mum hadn’t died, there wouldn’t have been a musical existence for me or my brother. She’d have wanted us to go into the professions. I guess that was fate or luck. Mum’s death is not what you want, but Paul and I had an affinity with that.

‘We had an affinity with John, who lost his mum, too. Only people who have had death forced upon them like that understand. It’s the things you don’t say.’

Paul met John Lennon in the summer of 1957, when he was playing with The Quarrymen at a fete. Paul joined his band and they began rehearsing in the McCartneys’ front room at 20 Forthlin Road. Mike, then 13, soon moved from the banjo to the drums.

‘I remember doing the drum test with my brother,’ he says. ‘I’d say, “Walk down the street and see how far you get before you don’t hear me. I started to bash the drums and, apparently, he could still hear me a few blocks away. With drumming, you’re either a natural or you’re not.’

By which, I take this modest man to mean, he was. Two summers later, Mike was at Scout camp, near Sheffield, when he broke the humerus in his left arm. Today, it’s noticeably weaker than his right. ‘I was on a cliff on a zip wire, getting logs up to the camp. The wire was released too fast and I went into a tree,’ he says.

‘You could look at this another way. If I hadn’t broken my arm, if I had joined The Beatles, maybe we’d have ended up fighting like Liam and Noel Gallagher in Oasis. So, it’s fortuitous and lucky I didn’t join. I have a nice, close, stable relationship with my brother.’

parlance said

More pics of Paul in LA: 1 2 3

parlance

@parlance, you know there is at least one addict in the house. And we thank you for feeding our addiction. You keep us supplied.