How Did John Lennon Learn Piano

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Folio ane of ix

I was wondering when Paul McCartney and John Lennon started to play the piano.
I always read they played guitars as teenagers and that George Martin played the piano on their early records.
Past the terminate of the Beatles and into their solo careers, they were piano players suddenly. Quite accomplished piano riffs at that: Martha My Dear, Imagine, Little Woman Love, Watching The Wheels etc...and singing at the same time!
Now for some reason I believe yous practise demand formal training to play the piano competently (as opposed to guitar) and wondered when these ii super-busy Beatles institute the time to exercise, did somebody teach them etc. My guess is that around 1966 they started spending time on the piano.
Paul had a piano in his habitation while growing up and his dad played. Paul definitely picked up stuff from his dad, and he (Paul) was naturally musical---so he probably got to be fairly decent without whatsoever formal grooming. Paul did play some piano during the Hamburg gigs likewise. Then, he took piano lessons from a piano teacher at some fourth dimension while he was living with the Asher family unit in 1963-65.
Equally for John, I remember that he just picked it up over the years.

Arnie

Last edited: Feb xiv, 2015
Photos exist of Paul playing piano on stage in Hamburg, and he ofttimes mentioned family unit become togethers as a kid as his dad played. And so I guess, being a natural musician, he picked information technology upward from an early age.
There's a 1963 demo of John playing I'm in Love, fairly proficiently. I wonder if he picked it up in Hamburg as well?

Am I wrong in thinking I'm Downward is the starting time time John played keyboard on record?
Piano is an inherently piece of cake musical instrument to make an OK sound on if you know how to play another instrument. Mastering it is something else.
I don't call back whatever of the Beatles ever claimed to take 'mastered' the pianoforte though.
I meant that, at whatsoever point, at least three of the Beatles could accept stumbled up to a piano and made a sound worthy of being added to a recording. Information technology's not like they had to consciously decide, "Hey, I've decided that I am going to larn the piano."
On a like note, I e'er wondered how Neil Immature and Bruce Springsteen learned how to play piano. Though both are guitarists, some of each ane's all-time work was actually composed on piano. I believe that all of Born to Run--with the exception of the title track and "Dark"--was written on piano. When did he pick it up?
humpf Immune to write something hither.

Does non McCartney play piano on some songs like Every Little Affair (She'due south a Woman?) from the belatedly 1964?
I remember reading a quote from George Martin about how Paul went from barely playing pianoforte to "Lady Madonna" in a few years.
I don't know if John was ever very accomplished on keyboards but he wrote slap-up songs over fairly elementary pianoforte parts on his solo records.
John seemed to do OK on Organ/Harmonium. Dainty parts on I'k Down and We Can Piece of work It Out. Didn't
Paul accept pianoforte lessons some time around 1966?
humpf Allowed to write something here.

Did he also e'er play keyboards at concerts or did McCartney play it too?
Probably the "natural musician" thing over again, more so in Neil's case I think (Bruce has had virtuoso players like David Sancious and Roy Bittan to help).
I think I'm Down at Shea Stadium is the just footage of any Beatle playing keyboards in concert.
*edit* Response to humpf - sorry, idea I'd clicked 'quote'!

Last edited: Feb 14, 2015
There's pic of Paul playing keyboards on December. 1965 tour, possibly doing Yesterday. John is besides pictured on another song, Nosotros Can Work It Out?
I besides think that similar McCartney, Neil grew up in a family with a pianoforte in the house, around which anybody would assemble around and sing.
As for Bruce, he had excellent players, just he yet wrote the songs on piano.
At first I disagreed nearly it existence "piece of cake" to play, simply i must concede--a hundred years ago , every middle form family had a pianoforte, and purchased canvas music.
Paul on Piano in Hamburg

And while it is non known for certain, some merits that John is playing organ in Hamburg on Red Hot, basing this on how his guitar drops out during the organ part and and then comes back in shortly after. Notwithstanding, that is speculation and probably can never be proven.
Not sure when they learned, only their styles are respective of their unique musical abilities. John's playing was e'er pretty rudimentary, just marked by his unique sense of fourth dimension and key signature changes. Lots of surprising chromatic changes and sudden bursts of ii or three-beat bars in the heart of a 4/4 song. No one else takes songs where he does.
Paul, on the other manus, grew quickly to play complex things similar lady madonna and Martha my dear - both very syncopated. But his playing, while impressive, feels intuitive rather than precise.

I am a formally trained piano histrion and experienced, cocky-taught guitar player, but I can never get Paul'southward stuff on guitar or piano simply right. He has a certain x-factor where he'll take a standard technique and add his own subtle twist.

George Martin, on the other hand, plays by the book. He's technically improve than both, but easier to replicate.
Thinking of Built-in To Run, "Meeting Across The River" has some of the most interesting chords from any Bruce song so he must have picked up some things if he came upward with that on his ain.
Roy Young sometimes played the piano at the Star Club.
I Desire to Hold Your Paw
Lennon describes the writing of this song as a 50/l collaboration, "i on one, eyeball to eyeball," which Paul agrees with. Since the basement music room conveniently had a pianoforte, they were both playing it at the same fourth dimension when the song came. "I remember when we got the chord that made the song," Lennon remembers, "we had 'oh, you-u-u…got that something…' And Paul hits this chord and I turn to him and say, 'That's it!...Do that again!'" That chord, a B major, became the inspiration of the moment which propelled them through the rest of the song.
http://www.beatlesebooks.com/hold-your-hand
You played piano on a lot of songs during the early years; it'south specially evident on the 'Hard Twenty-four hour period's Night'–era tracks. Was that literally because no i else could do information technology?

George Martin: To brainstorm with, of class, none of them knew what a keyboard was similar. They were guitar players. When I beginning met them, I was aware that they were guitar men and I was a keyboard man. And if you lot're running through a new song for the first fourth dimension, a guitar thespian will look at some other guy's fingers and encounter the shapes. You can run into what the guy'due south doing on the fret, and y'all know what chord he'due south playing. If you then take that guitar actor, and he doesn't know anything nigh keyboards, what you play on the piano will be completely meaningless to him. He won't understand the chords at all. And a keyboard player, if he knows a fleck about guitar, won't empathise what the chords are by looking at his easily. There'southward a hidden language there.
So I actually said to myself, "Hey, I'1000 going to have to learn the guitar, because I'll need to communicate with these guys on their level." And Paul, at the aforementioned time, said the same affair to himself: He said, "I think I'll have to acquire pianoforte, to come across what George is up to." Considering what I used to do, whenever Paul or John sang me a song, I'd sit down on a loftier stool and they'd play it in front of me. And I'd larn information technology, and I'd then go to the keyboard and I'd say, "Is this is?" and I'd play through the chords and hum the tune. And they'd say, "Yep, that'southward fine, Okay," and I'd know the song.

That piano sound was very distinctive.

George Martin: Pianoforte's a very useful instrument. And, of course, Paul was the one who really took it up and learned it more than apace and more than adaptably than anybody else. I hateful, he's such a fine, versatile musician; he could play near whatsoever instrument if he set his heed to it. So that by the fourth dimension he got to "Lady Madonna," he was doing a encarmine good solo. He couldn't possibly have done that in 1962.

And John never actually mastered the keyboard. His idea of playing the piano was having a group of triads – you know, three notes that formed a chord – and simply go up and down the scale with them. He could play rhythm all right on keyboard, but he wasn't very clever at doing single notes or lines.