Bill Harry tells true story of how Brian met the Beatles

In an exclusive article published today on the Internet Beatles News and Opinion Magazine, Beatles Today, Mersey Beat founder Bill Harry tells how it really happened that Brian Epstein came to be interested in the Beatles. In his autobiography, A Cellarful of Noise, published in 1964, famous Beatles manager Brian Epstein tells the story of teenager Raymond Jones who happened into Brian's record shop asking for a record by a "German group called the Beatles". But Bill Harry says it couldn't possibly have happened that way. Bill says he met and had a relationship with Brian previous to this time. He had just started the new Mersey Beat paper, and was distributing them to stores by hand. He says, "At NEMS in Whitechapel I asked to see the manager and a dapper young man called Brian Epstein came down the stairs from his office. I showed him the publication, explained its content and he took a dozen copies. Then he began to phone me ordering more and more copies. With issue No. 2 he ordered 12 dozen copies, an incredible amount of newspapers from a single store."Brian called me into the office to discuss the newspaper. He poured over the pages, astonished that such a thriving music scene existed around him. He asked if he could be my record reviewer and his reviews began to appear beginning in Issue No. 3. on 3 August. "Brian Epstein invited me to lunch on a couple of occasions to discuss this new musical scene which he found exciting. He asked me if I could arrange for him to visit the Cavern one lunchtime so that he could have a look at these Beatles himself. "I had discussed the Beatles on numerous occasions with Brian, he had noticed them in his store during the months following their lunchtime sessions at the Cavern. They'd drop into NEMS to listen to the B sides of records in the recording booths – and Pete Best even recalls Eppy looking at the boys clad in black leather to ask his shop girls who they were. "I don't know the reason why Brian opened his book 'A Cellarful of Noise' with the claim that he'd never heard of the Beatles until a boy came into his store on 28 October asking for a copy of the record which I'd promoted in the pages of Mersey Beat, but the physical copies of Mersey Beat, display the truth in black and white and put the lie to it." Mr. Harry recounts many more remembrances from the earliest years of Mersey Beat on this, its 45th Anniversary, in the new article on Beatles Today. The full article can be read here.

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