The man who introduced The Beatles to Brian Epstein in 1961: interview with Mersey Beat founder Bill Harry

Bill Harry is the man who introduced The Beatles to their famous manager Brian Epstein in November 1961 by arranging for him to see them play at The Cavern Club in Liverpool.

He is also the man who created the legendary weekly music publication Mersey Beat running from 1961 to 1964 which documented the golden age of Liverpool music and was the first periodical to feature The Beatles and other Liverpudlian bands of the time, including Gerry and the Pacemakers and The Merseybeats.

Bill Harry is also someone who went to school with John Lennon and Stuart Sutcliffe at the Liverpool College of Art; as you may or may not remember, poor Stuart was the original bass guitarist of The Beatles and a talented painter who tragically died in Hamburg in 1962, aged 21.

Before The Beatles even existed, Bill Harry, John Lennon, Stuart Sutcliffe and Rod Murray formed The Dissenters, and they made a vow to "make Liverpool famous" with their music, their art and their writing. And that's exactly what they did, to the point that Bob Dylan asked specifically for Bill to show him around Liverpool when he went playing there in 1966.

Let's face it: if the entire world eventually got to know The Beatles, it is primarily thanks to Bill Harry and its Mersey Beat paper - and no, don't say that success would have happened in any case, because, in 1962, The Beatles were famously turned away by Decca Records that picked The Tremeloes instead. Bill Harry really is the true Fab Four's gatekeeper and a living legend who wrote over 25 books about The Beatles;

And so, after the plan he had with Brian Epstein to create a national music paper in 1964 failed, Bill moved to London and started doing PR for artists like Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, David Bowie, The Beach Boys, Suzi Quatro and many others. To date, he is still putting together memories and stories about his famous mates so much so that this interminable interview needed to be broken down into 7 separate parts to finally say it all.

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