Ivan Vaughan


Ivan Vaughan was a boyhood friend of John Lennon, and later schoolmate of Paul McCartney at the Liverpool Institute, both commencing school there in September 1953. He was born on the same day as McCartney in Liverpool. He played tea-chest bass part-time in Lennon's first band, The Quarrymen, and was responsible for introducing Lennon to McCartney at a community event on 6 July 1957, where The Quarrymen were performing. McCartney impressed Lennon, who invited McCartney to join the band, which he did a day later. This led to the formation of Lennon and McCartney's songwriting partnership, and later of The Beatles.

Personal life

Vaughan studied Classics at University College, London, married in 1966 and settled down to family life with a son and daughter, and became a teacher.
Lennon and McCartney never forgot the friend who brought them together. For a time they put Vaughan on the payroll of their Apple company, in charge of a plan that never took off to set up a school with a Sixties, hippie-style education ethos. Vaughan's wife Jan, a language teacher, was hired to sit down with Lennon and McCartney and help with the French lyrics to the 1965 song "Michelle".

Autobiographic and documentary

In 1977 Vaughan was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. His book, Ivan: Living with Parkinson’s Disease was published in 1986 and he also featured in a documentary produced for the BBC in 1984 by Jonathan Miller about his search for a cure. He died of pneumonia in 1993.
Vaughan's death touched Paul McCartney so deeply that he began to write poetry for the first time since he was a child. He wrote the poem "Ivan" about him after his death, which was published in McCartney's book, Blackbird Singing.