Original Beatles manager Allan Williams dies at 86

Allan Williams, the club owner known for discovering the Beatles and serving as their first manager, only to part ways with them before they rocketed to superstardom, has died at age 86. The Jacaranda Club, a Liverpool music venue Williams opened as a coffee bar in 1957, announced the news on social media.

Williams met the fledgling band — then consisting of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Stuart Sutcliffe — when they asked to play the Jacaranda. He wound up working with the group from 1960 to 1961, booking gigs locally and in Hamburg, Germany, until they had a falling out.

A decade and a half later, Williams published a memoir titled The Man Who Gave The Beatles Away.

More recently, in 2010, he told the Liverpool Echo, “I was just glad to have been there in the ’60s, at the start of it all. People say to me, ‘You should be a millionaire,’ and I say, ‘But I am a millionaire!’ Then they ask ‘How come? Has Paul McCartney given you some money?’ And I tell them I’m a millionaire of memories.”

He added, “I’ve always been proud of the Beatles and proud and happy to have been just a small cog in the wheel of the most famous group in the world.”