Bill Harry Q and A

THESE QUESTIONS HAVE BEEN ASKED BY MERSEYBEATLOVER TO BILL HARRY... AND WHO HAS BEEN GIVEN THE RIGHTS TO PUBLISH THEM IN THESE PAGES. THANK YOU BILL.

Some questions to Bill Harry...more to follow.........Questions asked by merseybeatlover1 (Brian). Bill will answer the questions below.
These are questions...that I and many more would love to know.......
(answers supplied by Bill Harry) (c) Bill Harry
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 imagine 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.

Many people say the Beatles first No.1 was ‘Please Please Me’ while others dispute this. Why is that?
The confusion has been caused by the situation which surrounded the compiling of the charts in those days. Various music publications in London published a weekly chart. Each compiled them by contacting various record stores around the country. As a result the entries could prove confusing. The Swinging Blue Jeans pointed out the undesirability of such charts and suggested one main chart to be shared by all. They said this after the sales of the Rolling Stones’ ‘Little Red Rooster’ were affected when it was seen to rise in some charts and fall in others.

The charts were compiled by the New Musical Express, Record Retailer, Record Mirror and Disc. The most influential chart at the time was the New Musical Express and ‘Please Please Me’ topped the NME chart on 23 February 1963 and also on 2 March 1963. However, in the Record Retailer chart it only reached No. 2. Record Retailer was the music industry trade publication and when chart books began to appear, such as the Guinness books of hits, they used the Record Retailer charts, which meant that they didn’t acknowledge ‘Please Please Me’ as being No.1. As Record Retailer changed its name to Music Week and remained the trade paper for the industry, their charts are the ones usually regarded as the official ones, which means that Gerry & the Pacemakers were the first Liverpool group to top the British charts and not the Beatles…..on the other hand, the NME was Britain’s biggest musical paper, far more influential than the Record Retailer, so many people consider the fact that the Beatles topped the NME chart and therefore they became the first Liverpool group to top the charts!

Take your pick!