The Beatles
"The first time we ever saw the Beatles was at Blair Hall and anybody who played at Blair Hall will know that it had a sloping stage. I'd played there quite a lot, but Pete Best hadn't.

"He set up his drum kit - and Pete was very very heavy on his bass drum which, to me, was a lot of the Beatles sound in those early days. The really heavy sound was coming from Pete's bass drum and it started sliding on the stage so I immediately ran round the back and got some string out of my case, which I always carried round with me, specially for Blair Hall. We tied it round Pete's bass drum ands then we tied it round his seat - and that stopped his bass drum from sliding on the stage, no matter how hard he hit it.

"George Harrison worked in Blackler's store for six monghs and my mother was the cook at Blackler's store and she used to serve George with his dinner. He came up to me once and said, 'Does your mother work at Blackler's? Is she the cook?' I said 'Yeah' and he said, 'Will you do us a favour and will you ask her to stop telling me to get my hair cut.'

"I thought Pete Best in those early days was a lot of the Beatles sound, when they were really hitting it out. All that stuff in the Cavern and Hamburg and the Hambleton Halls and the Blair Halls.

"When we drummers are asked what we thought of Pete Best we should all stand up and say, 'Yeah, he didn't last that long by being a bad drummer and they didn't get where they got to Brian Epstein signing them up by being a bad group. So he must have played his part somewhere along the line and I think people should give him credit for that."

Harry, like so many other Mersey musicians, dispels that old myth that Liverpool bands got their records from 'Cunard Yanks.'

"We found our numbers basically by listening to the radio and buying records.. Mostly it was listening to Radio Luxembourg. You bought your records, you went away and practiced and practiced 'til you could get them right and we did buy the records at the local record store. I mean, my local record store used to be the Musical Box in Tuebrook, Liverpool, the same place where Billy Butler used to go.

"We chose the numbers by just deciding between ourselves which were our strengths and which weren't. Certainly, in the instrumentals we played a lot of Shadows, who were our heroes. With Colin Manley being the fine guitar player that he was, we tended to stick to guitar instrumentals.

The Shadows
"We appeared with the Shadows during their only Cavern appearance, first playing the lunchtime session. I felt eyes watching me from the dressing room and when I turned round Tony Meehan, Hank Marvin and Bruce Welch were all in the little hole watching us and we were playing a Shadows number. I shouted to the rest of the lads, 'Look who's watching us!'

"In the evening we were also on with the Shadows. When Jet Harris came in he was absolutely gone. Someone said he'd been on the sherbet, but he was drunk, there was no doubt about it. Hank Marvin agreed that the Remo Four were better than the Shadows that night. He said, "We had a bass player that fell off the stage, so there were only three of us playing.' But he admitted we were the better group which, coming from Hank Marvin, was really nice for us.. "Colin Manley was the finest guitarist to come out of Liverpool. I don't care what anyone says. I've still got some unreleased recordings of Colin playing Chet Atkins and Shadows stuff, done in 1961 and they're absolutely brilliant.. "Don Andrew was a great bass player. He looked the part, stood up with that big Fender bass and looked as if he was enjoying it.

"Keith Stokes was one of the most underrated singers and front men in Liverpool at the time. he was a big heart throb with the girls and he was a brilliant singer. He could sing anything from 'Runaway' to Karl Denver.

"We worked together from late 1958 to late 1962, perhaps early 1963 and we were good.

"I left the Remo Four because we were playing an awful lot, seven nights a week and we were working in the daytime and I was sort of getting ready to get married and Epstein was sniffing round the guys and one thing and another, so I thought it was time to just step back and have a little break. "It didn't last long because I ended up in Liverpool's first supergroup, 

Group One
"We appeared on the Beatles first BBC documentary and played with the Rolling Stones at the Locarno Ballroom. But that's another story."
Photos courtesy Harry Prytherch

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