Paul McCartney spoke out this week to recall the first time he ever laid eyes on John Lennon, who would go on to find international fame with him as a member of The Beatles band.

“I’d seen him a couple of times and thought, ‘Wow, you know, he’s an interesting looking guy,’” McCartney, 78, told Lennon’s youngest son, Sean Ono Lennon, during a BBC Radio 2 special celebrating what would have been the iconic singer/songwriter’s 80th birthday.

“And then I once also saw him in a queue for fish and chips and I said, ‘Oh, that’s that guy off the bus,” McCartney added. “I’m talking to myself, in my mind I thought, ‘I saw that guy off the fbus, oh he’s pretty cool-looking. Yeah, you know, he’s a cool guy.’”

McCartney went on to say that they were both teenagers at the time, and that they were each interested in ‘50s “Teddy Boy” fashion, which consisted of slicked-back hair, drainpipe trousers and long jackets.

“I knew nothing about him except that he looked pretty cool,” he added of Lennon. “He had long sideboards and greased back hair and everything… it was the Teddy Boy look. All of us were trying to do a bit of that at that point, so if you ever noticed someone who was trying to do it you thought, ‘I’ll probably get on well with him.’”

“But I didn’t know anything about him,” McCartney said. “And I didn’t know who he was except that I’d seen him on the bus and I’d seen him in the fish and chip shop.”

Fox News reported that McCartney and Lennon were finally introduced at a church fair by a mutual friend named Ivan on July 6, 1957. They hit it off right away, and Lennon began visiting McCartney’s home to learn chords and practice.

McCartney and Lennon had no formal music training, and neither did their eventual bandmates George Harrison and Ringo Starr. In fact, McCartney said that this is what forced the members of The Beatles to learn how to write, play and record music together.

“I look back on it now like a fan,” McCartney explained. “I think, ‘Wow. How lucky was I to meet this strange Teddy Boy off the bus who turned out to play music like I did, and we get together and, boy, we complemented each other.’ You know, it was a bit yin-yang.”

This piece originally appeared in UpliftingToday.com and is used by permission.

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