Early Beatles mentor & collaborator Tony Sheridan dead in Hamburg at 72

Tony Sheridan (Telegraph)
Tony Sheridan, who has died aged 72, was the hard-driving rock and roll guitarist and singer teamed with the
Beatles on their first recording session, when they backed him on the hoary old standard My Bonnie in 1961.

The Liverpool foursome ran into Sheridan in Germany, where they had been booked to play the Indra, a sleazy club in the red-light district of Hamburg. Sheridan was the resident British attraction at the nearby Top Ten club, a larger-than-life figure who invariably turned up late, drunk, sometimes with — but often without — his guitar; when he did get himself and his act together, he often forgot the lyrics, and was notoriously unpredictable, tumbling off the stage on to the dance floor where he would moon at the gyrating fans and contort himself into obscene poses.

The Beatles, which then included Pete Best on drums, went to see him play every night after their own show and quickly fell under his spell.

When they moved to the larger Kaiserkeller club nearby, it was Sheridan who directed them up the Reeperbahn to the shop where they kitted themselves out in the sleek black leather Luftwaffe-style bomber jackets and hand-stitched cowboy boots that became their signature “bad boy” look until Brian Epstein became their manager and ordered them into suits.

But more significantly, Sheridan was a decisive influence on the Beatles’ early repertoire, introducing them to R&B records imported from America by artists like Little Richard which Sheridan covered in his own set. The Beatles covered several numbers from these recordings on their own early albums.
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much more at the links

Tony Sheridan obituary (Guardian)
Singer and guitarist who acted
as a role model to the Beatles

RIP Tony.

In a fashion, he was the fifth or sixth Beatle. I remember hearing My Bonnie on the radio when stations were looking for anything Beatles.

I'd forgotten this part (from the Guardian link):

Eventually, he was booked on to package tours of the UK headed by American singers, culminating in his appearance down the bill on Eddie Cochran and Gene Vincent's tour in 1960. After a show in Bristol, Sheridan asked the stars for a lift to London but he was turned down and thus avoided the road accident in which Cochran died and Vincent was seriously injured.

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Also, one of the police cadets who was first at the scene of the accident was Dave Dee, who went on to have a very nice career in rock and roll.