In tune with The Quarry Men

Lennon and Griffiths were the guitarists in the new group. Lennon used his Gallotone, Griffiths an inexpensive archtop instrument possibly made by the Dutch manufacturer Egmond. This non-cutaway, full-size, hollow-body guitar was distinctive thanks to its unusual cat's-eye-shape f-holes.

The two Quarry Men guitarists did not use the standard guitar tuning of E-A-D-G-B-E, mainly because their guitar-playing education was less than orthodox. Griffiths explains how he and Lennon visited someone in nearby Hunts Cross who advertised guitar lessons. " We only went twice, because the chap wanted to teach guitar properly, whereas we wanted instant music. So we gave up on that. But John's mother had played the banjo, so she re-tuned our guitars to banjo tuning and taught us banjo chords, maybe three or four at the most. And that was it: instant guitar playing."

Griffiths says they adopted a five-string-banjo tuning. " Lennon and I used this for some time, until probably a couple of months after Paul McCartney joined. So far as I recall we played the correct banjo chords for the songs instead of guitar chords." ¹³

Some accounts of The Quarry Men's music-making have Lennon and Griffiths travelling to see someone just to get their guitars tuned. Griffiths corrects this, insisting that he and Lennon tuned their own guitars. Recently, Davis found an original pack of their favourite Cathedral strings in his banjo case, a leftover from his Quarry Men days. This most interesting relic has a handwritten note on the back revealing a banjo " C tuning" of G-C-G-B-D. Only these five notes arc written down, confirming Lennon's recollection that five of the guitar's six strings would be tuned, leaving the sixth un-tuned and " flapping about".