#(transcribed from a photo of the text in the liverpool beatles museum)

[muzaktomyears]

Recollections of Liverpool School of Art 1957 - Pat Jourdan

We all gathered at the front hall that September morning and John Lennon, Tony Carricker and Jeff Mohammed were sitting together on the marble steps. John and Terry were wearing their old school blazers with the pocket-badge removed, while Jeff, already about 25 years old, was wearing a speckled tweed jacket. The office window had the register for us to sign, and a small selection of art materials to buy.

We were never taught how to draw, how to create or handle a line, construct shapes via pencil, pen and ink or charcoal or the dreaded Conte crayon which we bought every Monday from the office by the front door. Two colours of Conte - black or terra cotta. Everyone preferred the terra cotta as it made any scratch look as though it was something by Leonardo da Vinci.

We were plunged into the Life Room, Room 73, with no preparation, just with half-imperial sized paper, 2B pencils or crayons. I conscientiously went round the outline of the model (Mrs Dornan or June Furlong?). We were all skating on thin ice, unassisted, only criticised by the lecturer, Phillip Burton, a small Welshman. Most of the lads were embarrassed, they said later.

So I went carefully round the model's edges and produced something like pale tramlines, week after week. Phillip Burton eventually brought me some of John Lennon's drawings, bold black simple lines. "Look at these definite statements. This is what you should be aiming at. See, here and here." He pointed out how one dashing line completed the top of an arm or the slope of a hip - all in one flow, finished. I looked at them and saw the difference. John was not present, he may have finished and gone down to the canteen.

Mr Wiffen's weekly subjects started off with a cup and saucer, then a teapot, a humpback bridge, painted in black and white special poster colour. We were out drawing the Protestant Cathedral on Friday 4th October 1957 (the Catholic one was not yet built). Thursday 17th October we were in Princes Park, hugging trees, to learn that trees - especially winter trees - were not just flat silhouettes. We each had to put our arms around a tree. It was hilarious. It looked like something from the Goon Show. This was 'Elements of Drawing' with Mr Wiffen, who always wore a white overall like a scientist.

One painter, Tony Byrne, had been to the Tate Gallery show of American abstract painters. He bought sheets of hardboard and decorators' paint, and started painting on the floor. John Lennon made fun of him (as he did of many people) and watched Tony painting on the floor. The next evening, John did one perfect floor-based painting and left it at that. He was quick to absorb whatever was new, and then move on.

When we returned in the autumn term, John was wearing a smart black corduroy jacket and I remarked how good it looked. "I'm wearing it because of my mother, the daft git walked between a tram and a car and got squashed," he said sharply. I did not know if he was being his usual sarcastic self, or if it could possibly be true - no one else had mentioned her death. So, I said, 'What a pity, that was really awful' and other sympathetic remarks, being puzzled about what he meant. It was never discussed again at all.

The college suddenly had also had a sort of investigation about our productivity, and John gave me his more outlandish drawings to hide in my locker on the top corridor. "They won't find them here, I've got to show them all my sketchbooks," John said. They turned out to be the foundation of his book, In His Own Write, in 1964.