The date of issue of this birth certificate is significant as it preceeded The Beatles first trip to Hamburg by only four days [August 16th 1960]. This certificate would have been issued as a replacment for his original copy which he had lost - it was essential for John to have a certificate in order to get a passport. It was this trip which ....was to convert John Lennon, aged nineteen, Paul McCartney, aged eighteen, and George Harrison, aged seventeen into world beaters. The Hamburg Experience, as they later called it, was to teach them not only to hurl themselves full-bloodedly into making a great show; but...survival.. (See Ray Coleman John Winston Lennon Sidgwick & Jackson, p.117).