THE MAN WHO GAVE THE BEATLES AWAY

Back in grungy Liverpool days, Allan Williams was the Beatles' first manager and he remembers them well as a group of ""layabouts and dreamers."" Crazy kids, but lovable. In the beginning they were making ""a bloody awful sound"" but he got them their first gig in 1959 and he still thinks that Tommy Moore who dropped out to work for the Garston Bottle Works was the ""best drummer the Beatles ever had."" They left him just before they became the biggest moneymakers in music and Williams' nose is still out of joint. His coffee bar and his rock clubs folded and now he's making a living stripping the furnishings from derelict churches and though he'll tell you ""I'm not really the crying kind,"" he can't resist getting in a few digs at the ingratitude of it all. He does manage to evoke the local color of Mersey side with its heroic curses, bloodied heads, casual stompings, greedy whores, jiving West Indians and the Liverpool sound (""a bellow from the wings as it were"") created by groups like Gerry and the Pacemakers and Rory Storm and the Hurricanes. Eventually Williams took ""my boys"" to Hamburg where they were a smash--and where they eventually got a job on their own and refused to pay him his commission. That was it: Williams and the Beatles went their separate ways. He warned Brian Epstein, ""Don't touch them with a fucking bargepole"" but Brian didn't listen and so everyone became rich except poor old Allan Williams, but no hard feelings, just pass the booze.