Mersey Beat magazine - the first social network for new music fans
The effect of Mersey Beat upon popular culture needs no exaggeration. Arguably the first major youth movement in Britain, spawning The Beatles and Rock N’ Roll in the UK, it’s difficult to imagine how music history might have turned out without it. But what got the beat going?
Back then in Liverpool- fifty years before Facebook and Spotify - people had to find out about bands and gigs the old fashioned way. Step forward Mersey Beat Magazine - the unsung hero of a scene that placed Liverpool at the centre of the musical universe.
In 1959, Bill Harry was getting the cash together to fund a jazz publication but, after becoming friendly with a then little known group called The Beatles, he decided to change tack. Harry was a close friend of John Lennon and Stuart Sutcliffe, who - alongside artist Rod Murray - made up The Dissenters (Lennon’s other band who preferred a pint and a rant to playing guitars).
They’d regularly meet in city-centre pub Ye Cracke (where a commemorative blue plaque hangs in their memory) and discuss how they would one day change the world. They did a pretty ‘gear’ job of it.
After numerous failed attempts to get the national press interested in the musical goings-on of Liverpool, Bill and his then girlfriend Virginia (now wife) published the first issue of Mersey Beat in 1960.
By: Jonathon Turton
Source: Liverpool Echo
