MERSEYBEAT FOREVER

Mr & Mrs Mersey Beat.

By Bill Harry.

     When journalist Nancy Spain, one of the leading national media names of the Sixties, visited Liverpool, she dubbed Virginia and I ‘Mr. & Mrs. Mersey Beat’ in a full page feature in the News of the World.

     Virginia and I took her around the local music scene and dropped in to a Chants rehearsal in a basement in Upper Parliament Street.

     This was typical of what we used to do in those days, proudly escorting dozens of figures from around the world to the local venues and clubs, encouraging the media to feature the many Mersey groups, in addition to the Beatles.

     When Bob Dylan arrived in Liverpool to appear at the Odeon, it was Virginia and I who he requested take him around the Liverpool scene. We did the same for people such as Al Aronovitz of the Saturday Evening Post, Charlie Squires of Redifussion, members of the cast of ‘Coronation Street’, A&R men such as John Schroeder from London, Siegfried Loch from Hamburg and Shelby Singleton from Nashville. In fact, most people who descended on Liverpool during the heyday of the Mersey Sound made a beeline for the Mersey Beat offices – musicians, agents, managers, TV directors, record producers, journalists, poets, celebrities – and we did all we could to promote the city, taking them round and making them feel at home.

     I first met Virginia in May 1960 at the Jacaranda Club in Slater Street. She was 16 years old. I noticed her sitting with her mate May. She had striking auburn hair and was wearing a heavy green sweater and black barathea trousers.

     The coffee bar had been a haunt of mine for some time with John Lennon, Rod Murray and Stuart Sutcliffe. Then other members of John’s group used to hang around with us, George and Paul. I also dropped in regularly with another friend from college, Mike Bidston.

     Alan Williams had booked John’s group to appear downstairs in what I regarded as the ‘coal hole’. This is because it had a metal grid covering a section in the pavement where the coal used to be poured down into the cellar. Now it was a makeshift entertainment ‘room’, a tiny place in which a couple of dozen people would be extremely crowded together.

     Stuck in the corner, the group – they seemed undecided about a name at the time – had their girl friends Cynthia and Dot holding broom handles to which their mikes were attached.

     Virginia and I began to go out together, spending virtually every moment we could in each other’s company. On leaving school she’d worked at Freeman’s for a time and then at Woolworths as a comptometer operator.

     We’d spend each night moving from one club to the next, from the Jacaranda to Streates in Mount Pleasant to a basement club in Rodney Street but mainly spent our time at the Jacaranda where other regulars apart from John, George and Paul were Cynthia Powell, Dot Rhone, Rory Storm and Johnny Guitar, Adrian Barber, Casey Jones,

Johnny Gustafson, Pete ‘the Beat’ McGrath, Bernie Falk, Bob Wooler, Lord Woodbine and various other people we got to know. There was also a group of people from Liverpool University I’d worked with on Pantosphinx and we usually got together for drinks in the Marlborough, the pub next door to the Jac. There were also lots of parties, stretching to every part of Merseyside.

     Virginia lived in Bowring Park, with the Rocket pub on the corner. I used to take her home, but for the return journey generally the last bus had gone, so I’d walk back six miles into town. One time when I was about to pass the Rocket a car stopped and asked me if I wanted a lift – it was Paul.

     Alan Caldwell also lived nearby and Virginia and Alan’s sister Iris were friends who had gone to school together. Alan, of course, had changed his name to Rory Storm by deed poll. Often, after the clubs, we’d go to ‘Stormsville and Rory’s mum Vi would get out of bed and make chip butties for everyone – other regular drop-in guests varied but included Paul McCartney and Jimmy Tarbuck.

     Virginia and I also often dropped into the Gambier Terrace flat where Rod Murray and Stuart Sutcliffe lived. John had also moved in with them, as had Rod Jones and Margaret ‘Ducky’ Duxbury and Rod’s girlfriend ‘Dizzy.’  Margaret and Dizzy moved out to another flat nearby.

     At one time Virginia and I were so late chatting to John that we missed the last bus home. John got some pillows and blankets and put us up in the bath!

     Despite my training as an art student, having graduated with both a National Diploma in Design and a Graphic Art course, I had also won a Senior City Art Scholarship, but although I loved art, I was nutty about magazines,

      Little Richard & Virginia                          

having edited a number of amateur ones. I’d also been working on Frank Comments, a small glossy magazine for Frank Hessy’s the music store, which involved covering the local music scene.

     With the experience of working on Frank Comments I’d designed a little colour glossy magazine of a similar style which I called Storyville & 52^nd Street. I showed the dummy to various people in the Jac and when I noticed there was actually a jazz club called the Storyville I thought they might be interested. I knew someone at the Jac who said he was in with the people at the Storyville and asked him if he could contact them to see if they were interested. His name was Sam Leach and he suggested that he could fund the magazine himself. He arranged meetings with Virginia and myself to discuss it, but didn’t turn up at the first, the second or the third.

     A friend of his, Dick Matthews, felt that Sam had let us down and said he had a friend who would be interested in funding us. Virginia and I had been discussing the scene and with the venues I’d discovered via Frank Comments and the musicians we knew from the Jac and other clubs, we began to realise that something unique was happening in Liverpool, although hardly anyone knew it existed – and that was a thriving rock and roll scene.

I wrote a letter to the Daily Mail saying that what was happening in Liverpool was unique, it was like New Orleans at the turn of the century, but with rock ‘n’ roll instead of jazz.

Of course, there was no reply, but Virginia and I decided what we should do was not a magazine, but a newspaper – and it should be a ‘what’s on’ of the Liverpool music scene, covering every aspect – there was rock ‘n’ roll, jazz, country music and folk –  and clubs and coffee bars of every sort.

Dick brought his friend, Jim Anderson to see us and we explained our idea to him. He agreed to finance us and lent us £50. Jim and Dick also fixed us up with an office in an attic room at 81a Renshaw Street and got us a desk, chair and typewriter. Dick agreed to take photos for us.

I still had my Senior City Art Scholarship, so I didn’t take any salary and Virginia gave up her job to work full time on the paper for £2.10/- a week.

Initial times were tough, with little money and only the two of us, we launched the fortnightly newspaper and began to work on it virtually seven days a week. Virginia would man the office – with John, Paul and George dropping in to help her out, while I’d be out seeking outlets for the paper, delivering copies, trying to get advertising, organising photographs and interviewing musicians.

                                                                                        
                                                                                   Virginia

Virginia’s parents were extremely supportive, even taking out classified ads in the paper and arranging for us to have our first photographs taken together.

Brian Epstein, the manager of Nems, took a particular interest in the publication and by Issue No. 2 (with the Beatles record in Hamburg cover) had ordered 12 dozen copies of each issue. His record reviews and advertisements began appearing from Issue No.3 in August 1961 and he became a frequent visit to the office. He popped in one day after a weekend in Amsterdam and brought Virginia a box of chocolate liquors, which we thought was a nice gesture, no one had shown their appreciation of our work before. Then, on his birthday he invited Virginia and I, along with Bob Wooler, for dinner at the Royal Restaurant in Hanover Street, Max Wall was performing there at the time.

As his local empire grew he was keen to utilise the obvious power of Mersey Beat and took regular advertisements. One day he came to the office to place a half page advertisement for the Big Three. Then he demanded that the Big Three should be on the cover. I told him that I’d already promised the cover of the next issue to Lee Curtis. Brian got very uptight about that and said that unless we guaranteed the Big Three on the cover he would withdraw all his advertising. Virginia stepped in to tell him he couldn’t manipulate us like that, that it was our decision as to what editorial was featured – and that we’d done incredible publicity for his groups, but there were other talented artists who deserved to be featured in the paper.

Considering that Epstein had only discovered the local scene through Mersey Beat and that fact that it was me who’d arranged for him to go to the Cavern and see the Beatles for the first time, it seemed he was now acting like a Jekyll and Hyde character, trying to intimidate us.

He stalked out of the office and wrote me a note of complaint, referring to Virginia as ‘your secretary.’ I wrote back to him stating that we were independent and decisions regarding editorial were in our hands – and that his groups had already received incredible coverage in the paper.

      Virginia, Bill, & Cynthia Lennon

He then phoned to apologise and invited me to his office for a drink.

Virginia and I went out of our way to help anyone promoting the Mersey scene, although in a number of cases we didn’t even get a ‘thank you’. We received a telephone call from Stern magazine in Germany who said that they wanted to take a photograph of as many Liverpool groups as possible, all at the same time. They asked if we could suggest a suitable venue and we said that the steps of St. George’s Hall could fit the bill. They then asked if we could help them to get the groups together, offering £1 to each member of a group who turned up. They said that if we could contact the groups, they would reimburse us of any costs.

     Virginia spent two entire days on the phone, calling as many group members as possible and giving them the details of time and place. Stern took the suggestion of having Astrid Kirchherr take the photograph and a huge crane was hired in order to take the shot from a high angle.

     We attended the session and it went very well. In fact, it must have proved a very lucrative venture for Stern and the photograph appeared in a centre page spread in the Daily Mirror and in newspapers and magazines throughout the world for years.

     We never got a thank you, we never got reimbursed for all the phone calls Virginia made and the time and trouble we took to organise the groups. We didn’t even get credit for the work we did as the only mention of the event that appeared in a book by Astrid was that the groups turned up because of an advert in the Echo. Perhaps she didn’t realise, because Stern probably didn’t tell her, but it was Mersey Beat, not the Echo, which was responsible for the turn out.

I doubt if anyone else saw as many performances by the Beatles and Liverpool groups as Virginia and I did in those days. We’d be out every night at venues throughout Merseyside, often visiting two or three venues in an evening to meet the groups and promoters and listen to the music. Harry Bostock at the Plaza St Helens, Brian Kelly at Litherland Town Hall, Vic Anton at Hambledon Hall, Doug Martin at St. Luke’s Hall, Crosby, Dave Foreshaw at St John’s Hall, Wally Hill at Blair Hall, Gordon Knowles at the Locarno, Bill Marsden at the Majestic were just some of the promoters and managers we met at the venues, which also included the Rialto, the Floral Hall, Southport, Tower Ballroom, New Brighton, the Grafton (where the Beatles requested that I personally introduce them on stage), Lathom Hall, Queen’s Hall, Widnes, La Scala Ballroom Runcorn and many others.

Virginia knew all the groups and had a good ear for the music and was very supportive of a lot of the artists. Her part in the Mersey Beat story has never really been acknowledged in the many books and articles that have appeared about the scene after the heyday of the Mersey Sound was over.

It was the best of times and, as John Lennon once said, you had to be there! Yet the story didn’t end there. When Virginia and I moved to London it was another case of seven days a week as part of the music scene, invited as guests to stay with Bobby Darin when he rented a house in London, travelling to America with Jethro Tull and Ten Years After, socialising in clubs with the Beatles and Rolling Stones, organising receptions with the Kinks, dropping in on pubs with David Bowie, playing board games with Jimi Hendrix, taking the Beach Boys to Apple, plus regularly attending all the TV shows from Top Of The Pops To Ready Steady Go and watching groups virtually every night on venues ranging from the Marquee to the Savile Theatre.

It was two people living the rock life for over two decades!

pictures (c) bill harry

See more of Bill Harrys articles on this site , also... At www.merseybeatabd.co.uk 

The Beach Boys were one of the groups you were press agent for. What were they like?

They were very easy to get on with and not as raucous or as fond of the booze as some of the British groups I represented (can you image what it was like having afternoon drinking sessions with Keith Moon!). I’d initially met them when I was writing for Record Mirror and first interviewed them at the Hilton Hotel in Park Lane.

A lot of it involved social interaction. We’d go clubbing at the Revolution with Al Jardine and Sandra, a friend of ours who he went out with (sadly, she died last year), I interested Carl in physic books and took him to the psychic book shops off Charing Cross Road. I also took Carl on visits to Apple. I accompanied them on a camera shoot at Strand on the Green, outside the pub where the Beatles had filmed Help! I used to drink in De Hems with Dennis Wilson and he told me how excited he was about this group of people he’d become involved with, who had a place in the desert with lots of girls. It turned out to be Manson and his crowd. Sitting in the Palladium during rehearsals I interested Mike Love in the book ‘The Morning of the Magicians,’ he was intrigued about Atlantis and mystical things. Dick Duryea, film actor Dan Duryea’s son was their road manager and we used to go to parties with them. I represented them on a couple of their British visits.

What was Apple like?

I only saw Apple from a social point of view and initially visited their original offices before dropping in regularly when they moved to Savile Row. Derek Taylor used to invite me along to listen to previews of new albums. In his office smelling of pot, in which bottles of lager were freely available, he would be busily writing memos, inviting me to create memos (I didn’t write it, but he made a memo, allegedly from me, asking would the Beatles appear at the Cavern again). His memos were bizarre, but intriguing. Another Apple friend was Tony Bramwell, whose autobiography is published this year by St Martin’s Press. At the Revolution one night, Sandra, a friend of ours, introduced us to members of the Hell’s Angels who had been invited over by George Harrison. She’d told them all about me and they wanted me to handle their publicity. I said I couldn’t, but they insisted – fortunately they forgot about it and didn’t press it. Then, at the Apple party, the Hell’s Angels were there. The main place where the party was held was crammed with people in the fashionable psychedelic styles and colours of clothes of the time. A girl was breast feeding her baby, Caleb was crouched on the floor reading tarot cards, there were lots of kids around, it seemed a bit of a mayhem, so I drifted to the floor above. In the main room were two solitary figures, sitting cross-legged in the middle of the floor: Mr & Mrs Santa Claus - John and Yoko. John introduced me to her and we shook hands, but she wasn’t very communicative.

    As mentioned with Carl Wilson, I often dropped around with people to introduce them. I took Mike Moorcock, a former pen pal of mine, who had become a science-fiction author and was currently publishing New Worlds magazine. The Beatles were impressed with the magazine and donated £1,000 towards it.

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