John Lennon (l.) as The Beatles invade America in 1964

The former member of John Lennon’s first band, The Quarrymen, Len Garry knows more than a little something about his boyhood friend, John Winston Ono Lennon.  Pop Tarts asked Garry for some memories in the shadow of Nowhere Boy, the new film about Lennon’s early life, debuting tonight.

“The Beatles are arguably the best band in history, back then they actually made good music that told a story,” Garry said, believing that Lennon would not especially like today’s music.  “Today, you get one line that repeats over and over and over and over.”

Before becoming a revolutionary, Garry remembers, Lennon as a full-blown rebel.  “When we were in school, we had a religion teacher, a very serious guy.  John said…This teacher is not going to be satisfied, unless we’re all priests.”  Lennon dressed up everyone in the class with white cardboard collars, “so when the teacher came in, and started marking the register, he looked up and saw the whole class filled with priests.”

The new film, directed by Sam Taylor-Wood, follows the 15-year old Lennon in Liverpool at critical moments.  Here Lennon has been dumped on his prim grandmother in 1955, then while discovering Elvis and American R&R, finds his avant-garde mother just blocks away.  And then he meets up with another rebellious genius (Paul McCartney) to learn the guitar.

John Lennon would have turned 70 tomorrow.