Tony Sheridan


Tony Sheridan was an English rock and roll singer-songwriter and guitarist who spent much of his adult life in Germany. He was best known as an early collaborator of the Beatles, one of two non-Beatles to receive label performance credit on a record with the group, and the only non-Beatle to appear as lead singer on a Beatles recording which charted as a single.

Biography

Sheridan was born in Norwich, Norfolk, where he grew up at 2 Hansell Road in Thorpe St Andrew and attended the City of Norwich School.
In his early life, Sheridan was influenced by his parents' interest in classical music, and by age seven, he had learned to play the violin. He eventually came to play guitar, and in 1956, formed his first band. He showed enough talent that he soon found himself playing in London's "Two I's" club for some six months straight. In 1958, aged 18, he began appearing on Oh Boy!, made by the ITV contractor ABC, playing electric guitar on such early rock classics as "Blue Suede Shoes", "Glad All Over", "Mighty Mighty Man" and "Oh, Boy!". He was soon employed backing a number of singers, reportedly including Gene Vincent and Conway Twitty while they were in England. In 1958 Johnny Foster sought to recruit Sheridan as a guitar player in Cliff Richard's backing band, but after failing to find him at the 2i's Coffee Bar opted for another guitarist who was there, Hank Marvin. Early in 1960, he performed in a tour of the UK, along with Vincent and Eddie Cochran. On 16 April, Vincent and Cochran rebuffed his request to ride along with them to the next venue. He therefore escaped the road accident which would leave Cochran dead and Vincent badly injured.
Sheridan played guitar for Cherry Wainer on her recording of "Happy Organ". Despite these successes, his penchant for being late, showing up without his guitar, etc., soon got him a reputation for having gone a bit "haywire", and cost him much of his professional standing in England. Providentially, an offer for a gig came from Bruno Koschmider's "Kaiserkeller" club in Hamburg, Germany for an English group to play there. Sheridan and others joined an ad hoc group promptly dubbed "The Jets" and were put on the ship headed for Hamburg. As fate would have it, legal woes caused "The Jets" to not last long, but Sheridan were soon back onstage in Hamburg.
While performing in Hamburg between 1960 and 1963, Sheridan employed various backup bands, most of which were really "pickup bands", or simply an amalgam of various musicians, rather than a group proper. However, in 1961, the young Beatles who had met and admired Sheridan during their first visit to Hamburg in 1960, and who openly worked with him on their second visit, became even closer. The Beatles sometimes backed Sheridan, who, in turn, often joined the Beatles during their own sets backing them on guitar. They even visited Sheridan's home and had jamming sessions in the back garden.
When a colleague of German Polydor producer/A & R man Bert Kaempfert saw the pairing on stage, he suggested that Sheridan and the Beatles make some recordings together. Kaempfert viewed Sheridan as the one with "star" potential, and though they signed the Beatles to play on Sheridan's records their contract with them stipulated that the four Beatles were insured to play on a minimum of two songs. Of the seven songs recorded during Sheridan's two-day-long sessions for Polydor in June 1961, at times the band behind Sheridan would be down to only two Beatles. And that conversely some say that only on their two solo songs do all four Beatles play, while Sheridan plays on all of his tracks. John Lennon's rhythm guitar is heard only on the two Beatle solo tracks These sessions produced Sheridan's "My Bonnie" and "The Saints", and the Beatles' "Ain't She Sweet" and "Cry for a Shadow", plus three other songs.
Polydor's beliefs in Sheridan's coming stardom were so strong that they buried the two solo Beatle tracks until much later. Additionally John Lennon, Pete Best and Tony Sheridan all swore that there were several other Beatle tracks that were recorded during the two-day session, but they have not surfaced. In the Spring of 1962 in order to fulfill contractual obligations, the four surviving Beatles recorded an instrumental version of Sweet Georgia Brown; later, Sheridan cut his vocal overdub for the song while solo in the studio. . A newspaper story of the day also mentioned that Sheridan had recorded "You Are My Sunshine" with the Beatles as well for single release.
In 1962, after a series of singles, the record was released in America on Decca with a black label and also in a pink label for demo play. The record has the distinction of being one of the most expensive collectible 45 rpm with the black label in mint condition selling for $15,000 in 2007 and the pink label selling for $3000. Ringo Starr briefly played in Sheridan's backing band during very early 1962, before returning to Rory Storm and the Hurricanes. Starr was reportedly unhappy with Sheridan performing songs he had not rehearsed with his band.
Also in 1962, Polydor released the album My Bonnie across Germany. The word "Beatles" was judged to sound too similar to the Hamburgisch dialect word "Pidels", the plural of a slang term for penis, hence the album was credited to "Tony Sheridan and the Beat Brothers". After the Beatles had gained fame, the album was re-released in the United Kingdom, with the credit altered to "Tony Sheridan and the Beatles". The Beatles' Hamburg studio recordings, as well as some live recordings from the same period, have been reissued many times.
In the mid-1960s, Sheridan's musical style underwent a drastic transformation, away from his rock and roll roots and towards a more blues- and jazz-oriented sound. Though these recordings were praised by some, many fans of his earlier work felt wildly disappointed. This change was presaged by liner notes from his 1964 album Just a Little Bit of Tony Sheridan in which his musical preferences are listed as "jazz and classical" rather than rock. The liner notes also mention his wanting to visit the southern US "to hear at first hand the original negro music and experience the atmosphere that has been instrumental in creating negro jazz and the spiritual, for which he has a great liking." Polydor continued releasing Tony Sheridan singles with German record producer Jimmy Bowien through 1967.
By 1967, Sheridan had become disillusioned with his Beatle-brought fame. As he was more concerned by the Vietnam War and the thought of further Communist aggression, as such Sheridan agreed to perform for the Allied troops. While in Vietnam however, the band that he had assembled was fired upon and one of the members was killed. For his work entertaining the Allies, Sheridan was made an honorary Captain of the United States Army. Due to the repeated shellings encountered there, Sheridan henceforth suffered a great sensitivity to the sounds of any kind of explosions, even fireworks.
With his Polydor contract gone, Sheridan did what he could to survive. In the early 1970s, he managed to cut a single as a pop duo teamed with Carole Bell, and they toured Europe together with fair success. Following that phase he returned to playing in Germany or London. The mid-1970s, saw him deejaying a West German radio programme of blues music, which was well-received. Somehow he then managed to record an entire live album of early rock classics, a number of which had been part of his and the young Beatles early live act but of which had never been recorded.
In 1978 a record producer in America heard Sheridan's early Polydor recordings, and was impressed by Tony's singing and playing. Immediately Sheridan was offered and accepted the offer to come and record a whole studio album in Los Angeles. Elvis Presley's TCB Band, not working at the time, was hired to play on the album along with top bassist Klaus Voormann. An album of rock classics plus a few country tunes resulted, but with no major label release, it was restricted to direct TV sales. Thus the possible prospect of a long American career in Las Vegas evaporated.
In 1978, the Star Club was reopened, and Sheridan performed there along with Elvis Presley's TCB Band.
In 1991, Joe Sunseri, Sheridan biographer and then-manager, completed Nobody's Child: The Tony Sheridan Story. However, due to a falling-out, the biography remained unpublished. A biography of Sheridan, titled The Teacher, was eventually published in 2013 by Norfolk author Alan Mann, a childhood-friend of Sheridan. This book was essentially an email question and answer interview. While repeated probings by the author did bring out Sheridan's one time of two weeks spent in an English jail, aside from that the author unfortunately takes Sheridan's memory of things at total face value. On 13 August 2002, Sheridan released Vagabond, a collection largely of his own material, but also including a new cover version of "Skinny Minnie", a song he had years earlier recorded for his first album. Tony played guitar and sang for the Argentinian rock musician Charly Garcia. The album was called Influencia and it was released in 2002. In 2015, Colin "Melander" Crawley – Sheridan's former bassist, published another biography, Tony Sheridan – The One The Beatles Called "The Teacher". Of the two published biographies it definitely gives the most insight into Sheridan's major career of the early '60's.

Personal life

Sheridan lived in Seestermühe, a village north of Hamburg, and in addition to music, in his later life he was interested in heraldry and designed coats of arms. Sheridan was extremely secretive about his personal life though it's known that he was married three times, lastly to Anna Sievers, and previously to Rosi Heitmann and to Hazel Byng. His friend and former bassist Crawley stated that in 1960 Sheridan confided that despite his mixed Irish-Catholic and Jewish background, he was at that point viewing himself as a Buddhist. Later Sheridan became a devotee of the guru Bhagwan Sri Rajneesh and lived in the 1980s at the guru's Rajneeshpuram commune in Oregon, United States.

Death

Tony Sheridan died on 16 February 2013 in Hamburg, after undergoing heart surgery.

Discography