Johnny Gentle, singer whose backing band on a tour of Scotland was the future Beatles – obituary
Johnny Gentle, who has died aged 87, was a square-jawed rock singer with an Elvis-style quiff who failed to make the charts but had the distinction of being a headline act whose backing group, on a 1960 tour of small-town dance halls in Scotland, was a band called the Silver Beetles; while they went on to fame and fortune as The Beatles, he returned to his first trade, as a carpenter and joiner.
It was Larry Parnes, a flamboyant entrepreneur who specialised in re-naming his acts (Marty Wilde, Tommy Steele, Vince Eager, Billy Fury, Dickie Pride) who booked Gentle (real name John Askew) into a seven-show tour of Alloa and the Highlands in May 1960. Parnes had held auditions in Liverpool looking for people to back Billy Fury and Marty Wilde.
The Silver Beetles – then comprising John Lennon, Paul McCartney, 17-year-old George Harrison, Stuart Sutcliffe (bass) and Tommy Moore (drums) – flunked the audition, but they had a certain charm, and Parnes decided they would do as a backing group to a singer who had little to his name other than a few flop singles.
It was the group’s first professional gig and they were not even credited in the publicity: all the flyers stated was “Johnny Gentle and his group”. They met Gentle for the first time half an hour before the first show, in Alloa. He had sent them his set list – covers of hits by Paul Anka, Elvis, Jim Reeves and others – to rehearse so that they would know the songs on the night.
It was not an experience any of them remembered with pleasure. “We felt, ‘Yippee, we’ve got a gig!’ ” George Harrison recalled. “Then we realised that we were playing to nobody in little halls until the pubs cleared out, when about five Scottish Teds would come in and look at us... We were like orphans. Our shoes were full of holes and our trousers were a mess... I remember trying to play to ‘Won’t you wear my ring around your neck?’ – [Gentle] was doing Elvis’s Teddy Bear – and we were crummy. The band was horrible, an embarrassment. We didn’t have amplifiers or anything... We all slept in the van. There weren’t enough seats and somebody had to sit on the inside of the mudguard on the back wheel. Usually Stu.”
Gentle later claimed that he recognised the band had “something special”: “All things considered we sounded pretty good from the off. Every night the sound we made got better – by the end of the tour I knew these boys were as good as any I’d worked with.”
The Silver Beetles departed with less money than they had started off with; Tommy Moore, who had lost his front teeth when the band’s van, driven by Gentle, had a minor accident, returned to his old job in a Liverpool bottle factory.
But three months later, renamed the Beatles, after a short stint as the Silver Beatles, and with Pete Best on drums, they were in Hamburg and on the runway to fame. When Gentle next needed a band to tour with, they were unavailable.
John Askew was born on December 8 1936 in Liverpool. After leaving school he was apprenticed as a carpenter and made his own guitar. Teaming up with a friend, he began performing Everly Brothers covers at local clubs. Then, after a short period as a merchant seaman he started entering talent competitions as a solo singer, changing his stage name, first to George Baker and then to Ricky Damone. Moving to London, he won a talent competition at the Locarno Ballroom in Streatham and was taken up by Larry Parnes, who secured him a recording contract with Philips in 1959 and renamed him Johnny Gentle.
He released two singles that year, Wendy and Milk from the Coconut, but they did not chart; neither did an EP, The Gentle Touch. Then came the Scottish tour.
Gentle wrote a song on that tour, I’ve Just Fallen for Someone, reportedly with help from John Lennon. The song was later recorded by Adam Faith. He released three more singles on the Philips label, after which, changing his name for a fourth time, to Darren Young, in 1962 he released his own version of I’ve Just Fallen for Someone on Parlophone.
He made appearances on television pop series such as Oh Boy! and Drumbeat but chart success continued to elude him, and in 1963, with no recording contract, he replaced Gordon Mills in the Viscounts vocal combo. By the mid-1960s he had retired from show business.
Returning to his real name, he later moved to Jersey, where he worked as a joiner. He then moved to Kent. In 1998 he co-wrote Johnny Gentle & the Beatles: First Ever Tour.
He is survived by his wife Jane, by a son and daughter and by a stepson and stepdaughter.
Johnny Gentle, born December 8 1936, died February 29 2024
