An Afternoon With The Man Who Gave The Beatles Away

The self-proclaimed Welsh Bard had a million stories. Some of them you wished you hadn't heard

My preposterous life: an occasional series

I wrote last week about Does This Train Stop On Merseyside. I was thinking about the line, ‘Allan Williams in the Marlborough Arms’ and thought it worth telling a story about a 1990s meeting with the first manager of The Beatles.

SO MANY OF my first memories are tied up with The Beatles. I remember my auntie singing All My Loving to me. My cousin took me to see the band’s triumphant return to the Town Hall in 1964, lifting me on to a high window sill for a better view. In the mid 1960s, you would hear their records playing everywhere.

But in Liverpool there were more personal connections, too. Everyone seemed to have some sort of contact with them, even if it was only tangential. My mother worked with Maureen Cox, who would become Ringo Starr’s wife. Merseybeat touched every part of Merseyside in the Swinging Sixties.

My dad barely mentioned the group. To him, they were just customers at a nightclub where he worked the door. One of his jobs as a bouncer was at the Blue Angel, owned by Allan Williams. His employer entered legend as The Man Who Gave The Beatles away. Williams was first manager of the Fab Four before passing them on to Bob Woolmer, who was a DJ rather than an organiser. Luckily for group, they soon caught the eye of Brian Epstein. Fame, fortune and glory beckoned.

The Blue Angel was one of the hip places in the city. Cilla Black worked in the cloakroom. The Beatles were banned for a while after a financial dispute with Williams but eventually the owner relented. They were regulars until they became famous.

Dad was neutral on The Beatles but could not abide Black. She came from our area and everyone spoke well of her mother, Mrs White. Not Cilla. The symbolism of her name change could not have been more apt: she went to the dark side.

He did laugh about Williams, who died nine years ago. His former boss was a rampant alcoholic: Williams joked that “they call me the Welsh bard – I’ve been barred from every pub in town.”

This was only half true. He was born in Bootle but had Welsh ancestry; and not every pub denied him entry. Just most of them. Was the drinking a form of protection from the realisation that greatness had slipped through his grasp? Who can tell?

In the mid-1990s, I was back living at home after a spell in the United States. I’d run away after Hillsborough. But running can only go on so long.

Facing some of your demons comes with costs. One of mine was that it meant I was approaching 35, back in the family house and with no prospects. Despite working for newspapers in California, it was impossible to generate any interest from the media at home. One course mandated by the dole was designed to teach us how to write letters. When I protested that I’d been a professional writer, the barely literate ‘teachers’ – for this was a commercial company providing the lessons – laughed in my face.

Enter a friend who I’ll call Pete. We were introduced by a mutual mate and got on well. Pete was a Beatles fanatic and a bootlegger (I used some of his adventures for characters in Good Guys Lost, my novel). He got into CDs earlier than most and made a huge amount of cash. His biggest claim to fame was that he’d slept with Cynthia Lennon – at least that was his story. She was in the region of 20 years older than Pete and, if true, this was a strange twist on groupieism.

Anyway, Pete knew I was struggling for cash. He was good enough to give me a couple of days work on his stall at the Beatles Convention. In the Lennon Bar on Mathew Street when the weekend was wrapping up, he slipped me £200. He’d been paying for all the drinks and food for the duration of the festival. Then he said, “You’re a writer, aren’t you?”

The correct answer should have been “no.” You’re only a writer when someone is paying you to write and no one was. I was a doleite. But I answered in the affirmative. “I might have something for you,” he said. “I’ll ring you in a couple of weeks.”

Sure enough, he called me a month or so later. We were to meet in The Grapes at 3pm. With no idea what it was about, I turned up. He was sitting with Williams. The Welsh Bard. The Man Who Gave The Beatles Away.

You didn’t see much of Williams in this part of town. He tended to set up camp in the Marlborough Arms, next door to where the Jacaranda Club had operated in the early 1960s. He would entertain tourists with tales of the past in exchange for being supplied with drink.

Pete introduced us. “You know who this is? Jimmy Evans’s son.”

Williams looked sceptical. “How’s your dad?” He knew how he was.

“Dead,” I said.

Silence for a moment. “How’s your uncle?”

“Dead. All three of them.”

He was only interested in one, asking about him by name. Again, he knew quite well about this uncle’s circumstances.

I had a sense of what information he was after. “His death was particularly sad, after all those years in jail. He didn’t get time to enjoy his freedom.” Williams visibly relaxed. A test had been passed. He talked for some minutes about my dad and his brother.

His memory was sharp. “I came to your house when your dad died.” That was 1975. “You’re the eldest, aren’t you. Do you remember.”

I did. “You signed a copy of your book for me.” The Man Who Gave The Beatles Away was either about to be published or had only recently hit the shops.

“Can I have it back?” he asked.

I spat beer all over the table. Yet I could see Pete was pleased.

“What I want to do,” Pete said, “Is to get Allan to write another book. I’ve spoken to a few journalists, but he didn’t like any of them. Then I remembered you said your dad worked on the door at the Blue Angel.”

Williams nodded along. The drinks kept flowing.

Pete outlined his plan. Send Allan and his ghostwriter to a villa in Spain. Stock the place with huge amounts of alcohol. There was only one rule: Williams had to be kept sober(ish) in the morning and afternoon when he’d unload his memories on to tape. After 5pm, we could both drink as much as we wanted. The Welsh Bard was willing to commit to this. Lapses were to be expected, but…

I was just beginning to dream. Imagine a book about The Beatles where you could explore the social and political dynamics of post-war Liverpool, shot through with the authentic voice of a participant in their story. You could drill down into the influence of Irishness, the impact of Cunard Yanks – the seamen who set the tone in fashion and music when they returned from the Atlantic run to New York – and whether Scouse particularism caused or was in part created by Merseybeat.

And then I asked the question that ended it all.

“You need to have something new to say,” I told him. “It can’t rehash the first book.

“Oh, there’s plenty that hasn’t been told,” he said, smugly.

“OK. What’s the top line.” He looked confused. “Right, we sell the serialisation rights to the News Of The World. What’s the front-page headline on the first Sunday.”

He hadn’t finished his answer by the time I was back on Mathew Street. He told a story so appalling and scurrilous about one of the three living Beatles that it ended any interest in collaboration. I won’t repeat it, because I don’t believe it, but as I went out the door I heard him shout: “Ten quid was a lot of money in those days.”

I was almost at the Cavern when Pete caught me. “What’s wrong?”

“He’ll get us killed,” I said. I was thinking figuratively, with lawyers crushing us into dust. Pete took it literally.

“Yeah, maybe…”

I stopped, turned and faced Pete. “If someone said this shit about you, what would you do? Anyway, how would you get this past the lawyers?”

At that point he grinned. “I’d kill them,” he said happily. He always had a mildly deranged look in his eyes. Occasionally he’d talk about his experiences in the army. It might not have been a thousand-yard stare but that gaze was fixed in the multiple hundreds.

Then came the clincher. “We don’t need lawyers,” he said. “I’m going to publish myself. No money goes to publishers. All to us!”

There was only one thing for it. I broke into a run. The bounds of sanity had been severed.

The book obviously never got written. I often wondered whether Allan told this tale to legions of foreign visitors.

About two years later I bumped into Williams in the Marlborough Arms. He was well away but remembered enough to ask me about how my mother was.

Oh, and whether I still had that first edition of The Man Who Gave The Beatles Away. He still wanted it back.