“Hello mate, can I have me trousers back? It’s Paul.”

Roger McGough, one of the cool “Liverpool Poets” of the 1960s deeply influenced by the Beats, was in the band, The Scaffold, with Paul McCartney’s brother Mike from 1964-1973. Mike went by the stage name Mike McGear to avoid being too obviously associated with Paul. He is the Mike mentioned in the poem below, “To Macca’s Trousers.”

McGough recalled that he owned a pair of McCartney’s old pants (“They were part of a blue mohair suit and they’ve got quite a sweaty waistband. They’ve obviously been worn a bit.”) when a museum exhibit about the “Mersey Beat”—and Mersey Beats, to make that distinction—scene(s) of the 1960s was staged in Liverpool in 2009.

McGough wrote the poem about having them framed and then got the idea for pairing the pants and poem together as a work of art. He told Laura Davis of the Liverpool Post: “I didn’t want to put them on eBay, just because of knowing the family, it would be a tacky thing to do.”

“Paul used to give Mike some of his old cast-offs and the trousers were too short for Mike so he gave them to me. I never wore them, forgot I had them and then I realised ‘oh I’ve got a pair of Paul McCartney’s trousers’.

“Then, as the trousers unfolded, so did the story.”

In 1973, McGough and Mike McGear joined GRIMMS, a merger of The Bonzo Dog Band, The Scaffold and Andy Roberts from Liverpool Scene. McGough is the author of more than 50 books and plays. He also worked on the script for The Beatles’s Yellow Submarine cartoon. 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
GRIMMS: The most incredible 70’s Supergroup, you’ve probably never heard of

Below, Roger McGough reads “To Macca’s Trousers” at National Museums Liverpool