Allan Williams
Allan Richard Williams (21 February 1930 – 30 December 2016)[1] was a British businessman and promoter who was the original booking agent and first manager of the Beatles. He personally drove the van to take the young band to Hamburg, West Germany, in 1960, where they gained the vital show business experience that led to their emergence on the world stage. Williams was also a promoter and agent of a number of other Liverpool rock acts, helping stoke the Merseybeat boom of the early 1960s.
For the Canadian politician, see Allan Williams (politician).
Allan Williams
Allan Richard Williams
21 February 1930
Bootle, Lancashire, England
30 December 2016 (aged 86)
Liverpool, England
Talent manager, businessman
1959–2016
Ancestry and early life[edit]
Williams was born in Knowsley Road, Bootle. His father was Richard Edward Williams, a local council building inspector and dance promoter,[2] and his mother was Annie Cheetham; Williams traced part of his ancestry back to Owen Williams (Owain Gwyrfai), a Caernarfonshire millwright, poet and pioneer lexicographer in the Welsh language. His mother died when he was very young and his father remarried to Millie Twigg, the family living in Litherland and being completed by Williams's half-sister Olwyn (b. 1937) and half-brother Graham (b. 1938).[3] In his mid-teens he left home to sing with Joe Loss in the Isle of Man. Later he sang with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company and even tried to sell Blackpool rock in Spain.
In 1955, Williams married Beryl, a school teacher born in Liverpool to Chinese immigrants. The Williams' mixed-race marriage subjected them to verbal abuse from locals.[4]
Life after the Beatles[edit]
Years later, Williams and the Beatles spoke fondly of one another, with McCartney describing Williams in The Beatles Anthology as 'a great guy'. In the 1970s, Williams played a crucial role in producing the first Beatles conventions to be staged in Liverpool, and he was a perennial VIP guest at the city's annual Beatle Week Festivals. In 1975, he published a memoir, The Man Who Gave the Beatles Away, to which Lennon gave his endorsement. Recovering a tape of a latter-day Beatles show in Hamburg (performing on New Year's Eve of 1962–63), he saw it released (in 1977) as Live! at the Star-Club in Hamburg, Germany; 1962. The tapes were subsequently rereleased and bootlegged multiple times in the years since under different titles on budget labels. In 1999 the micro-budget film All Those Years Ago was released by Shotmaker Productions. The film is largely based on William's own recollections of his time managing the fledgling Beatles. Although initially flattered and sympathetic to the film, in his second book, A Fool on the Hill, Williams described the film makers as being deceitful and the film as "utter rubbish". The Man Who Gave the Beatles Away is also the title of a musical by Irish playwright Ronan Wilmot, which was performed at the New Theatre in Dublin in 2002.[34]
Williams carried on speaking at Beatles conventions from Liverpool to Singapore and South America. The Jacaranda reopened after a brief hiatus under new management in the mid-1990s and saw success build upon its cult status throughout the following decade; it remains a popular venue for young and old lovers of live music and hosted many gigs for Liverpool's Sound City[35] music festival.
Williams gave an extended interview in the 1982 documentary, The Compleat Beatles.
In the early to mid 1980s he had a stall at the entrance to the burgeoning Camden Market in London, where he would sell old brassware including taps and accessories.
In 2012 French comics Gihef and Vanders published Liverfool (Emmanuel Proust Editions) in which they relate Allan Williams's encounter with the "Fab Four" and their first steps together.[36]
On 9 May 2016, at a ceremony in Liverpool Town Hall, Williams was made a Citizen of Honour of the City of Liverpool, awarded by Liverpool City Council for his services to the local music scene.
Williams is briefly seen in Peter Jackson's 2021 The Beatles: Get Back documentary constructed from unused footage originally shot by Michael Lindsay-Hogg while making the Let It Be film in 1969.
Allan Williams died in Liverpool on 30 December 2016, at the age of 86.[37][1]