‘The Beatles used to experiment with chords, I did the same with photography’

Mike McCartney talks to David Lister about his career, the 1960s and ‘Our Kid’ – his brother Paul

John Lennon, Paul McCartney and Gene Vincent at The Cavern – www.MikeMcCartneyBook.com (© Mike McCartney)

It could have been John, Paul, George and Mike,” Mike McCartney tells me a little wistfully, but with a characteristic twinkle in his eye.

Paul’s younger brother has recently been reminded of a brief chapter in his life that, somewhat astonishingly, he had partly forgotten over the years. “I bumped into someone who was in the Quarrymen [an early incarnation of The Beatles] and he reminded me that I drummed for them before I broke my arm. So, I suppose I could have ended up drummer for The Beatles. But would it have worked? There’s not a great history of brothers in rock bands. Look at the Gallaghers.”

Besides, Mike, who actually gets on really well with his older sibling, has more pressing matters in hand than thinking of what might have been. He is about to reform his successful 1960s band Scaffold, along with Liverpool poet Roger McGough and entertainer John Gorman. The group, in which Mike was on vocals under his stage name Mike McGear, had big novelty hits with “Thank U Very Much” and “Lily the Pink”. They will play on 29 October at the Everyman theatre in Liverpool, where they started out.