Bill Harry

• 1. A Father Lost At Sea

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  William Harry was born on the 17th of September 1938 at Smithdown Road Hospital in Liverpool. His childhood unfolded within a rough neighborhood near the city's dockyards, where poverty defined daily life. The shadow of war fell heavily over his family when his father, John Jelicoe Harry, died during World War II. On the 14th of December 1940, a German U-boat torpedoed the SS Kyleglen British Steam Merchant ship in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. None of the crew survived that attack, leaving young Bill without a parent before he turned three years old.

  His early education took place at the Catholic St. Vincent's Institute, an environment marked by strict discipline and corporal punishment. Harry recalled being beaten regularly by priests and bullied by classmates due to his small stature. One incident involved a kick to the appendix that left him for dead, forcing his mother to transfer him to another school. Despite these hardships, he found solace in science fiction literature, reading comics by candlelight since his house lacked electricity. He joined the Liverpool Science Fiction Society and produced his own fanzine called Biped at age thirteen using a Gestetner machine to print sixty copies.

• 2. The Art School Connection

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  At sixteen, Harry secured a place at Liverpool College of Art located on Hope Street. There he studied typography and page layouts while borrowing the college duplicating machine to publish a newspaper named Jazz in 1958. The publication reported concerts held at venues like the Temple Jazz Club and the Cavern Club. He also served as assistant editor for Pantosphinx, a charity magazine from the University of Liverpool, and contributed to Frank Comments, a newsletter for Frank Hessy's musical instruments store.

  Harry became the first student enrolled in the new Graphic Design course and won a Senior City Art Scholarship. He maintained that art students should be bohemian rather than conforming to the styles of duffle coats and turtle neck sweaters worn by others. Arthur Ballard, an artist and teacher at the college, later stated that Harry and Stuart Sutcliffe overshadowed John Lennon academically. Both were extremely well educated and eager for information. Harry organized a film society showing works by Jean Cocteau and Salvador Dalí alongside Luis Buñuel's L'Age d'Or. Meeting Lennon was initially a shock due to his Teddy boy appearance, yet Harry introduced him to Sutcliffe who had painted a portrait of Harry.

• 3. Fifty Pounds And A Dream

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  The foundation of Mersey Beat began with a loan of fifty pounds from Jim Anderson, a local civil servant introduced by photographer Dick Matthews. Harry decided to publish the newspaper every two weeks covering music scenes across Liverpool, Wirral, Birkenhead, New Brighton, Crosby, Southport, Warrington, Widnes, and Runcorn. Virginia Sowry gave up her job as an accountancy operator at Woolworths to work full-time for £2.10 per week while Harry lived on his scholarship funding.

  They operated out of a small attic office above David Land's wine merchant shop at 81a Renshaw Street in Liverpool. The rent cost five pounds weekly, and Anderson provided a desk, chair, and Olivetti typewriter. Harry borrowed printing blocks from various sources including the Widnes Weekly News because they were too expensive for the fledgling company. He contributed free charity advertisements on the front cover page to support local causes. After taking Virginia home to Bowring Park each evening, he returned to work through the night, pausing only to buy tea and a hot pie at four o'clock in the morning at the Pier Head. The first issue released on the 6th of July 1961 sold all five thousand copies within a short time.

• 4. The Voice Of Youth

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  Harry described Mersey Beat as the voice of young people who wanted their own styles and music during a time when older generations controlled media outlets. The paper became known as the Teenagers Bible with circulation growing rapidly to seventy-five thousand copies. Local groups began calling themselves beat groups and venues advertised concerts as Beat Sessions. The Cavern Club doorman Pat Delaney was employed to deliver copies alongside secretary Pat Finn and advertising promoter Raymond Caine.

  Between 1958 and 1964 approximately five hundred different groups formed and broke up in the Merseyside area. In 1962 Harry held a poll to determine the most popular group which initially placed Rory Storm & the Hurricanes first. Upon recounting votes he discovered forty written in green ink from the same handwriting and area so he declared them void. The results announced on the 4th of January 1962 placed the Beatles in first place printed in issue thirteen of Mersey Beat. Rushworth's music store manager Bob Hobbs presented Lennon and George Harrison with new guitars following this announcement. Many groups complained that the newspaper should be called Mersey Beatles due to frequent features about them.

• 5. The National Shift

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  On the 13th of September 1964 Brian Epstein approached Harry to create a national music paper named Music Echo. Epstein promised full editorial control but later hired a female press officer for fashion columns and a DJ for gossip without informing Harry. This left Harry with no option but to resign from his position. The paper subsequently ran into financial problems leading Epstein to merge it with another publication as Disc & Music Echo.

  Harry and his wife moved to London in 1966 where he contributed columns to magazines like Weekend, Marilyn, and Valentine. He became feature writer, news editor, and columnist for Record Mirror using pseudonyms such as Brenda Tarry and David Berglas. He also wrote features for Music Now under the name Nick Blaine for Record Retailer. During the next eighteen years he served as public relations officer for artists including Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull, Procol Harum, David Bowie, Led Zeppelin, and the Beach Boys. He started monthly magazines Tracks and Idols which ran for thirty-seven issues from 1988 to 1991.

• 6. A Lifetime Of Ink And Paper

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  Harry received a gold award for Lifetime Achievement in Music from the British Academy of Songwriters Composers and Authors in 1994. He participated in over three hundred fifty international television and radio shows throughout his career. Rediffusion hired him as program assistant for the documentary Beat City while he assisted BBC's Everyman documentary about Lennon titled A Day in the Life. The British Council asked him to represent them in Hong Kong promoting the Beatles. Mersey Beat returned to publication in August 2009 with a twenty-four page special issue celebrating Liverpool International Beatle Week.

  His bibliography spans decades starting with Arrows: The Official Story published by Everest Books in 1976. Subsequent works include The Beatles Who's Who in 1982, Beatle-mania: The History of the Beatles on Film in 1984, and The Book of Lennon also released that year. Later titles encompassed individual encyclopedias for Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr published between 2002 and 2004. Harry compiled a thirty-four track compilation named Mersey Beat for Parlophone records released on the 31st of October 1983. His son Sean Harry is now a director and producer continuing the family legacy.