BILLY FURY - MR PARNES SHILLINGS AND PENCE

Laurence Maurice Parnes (3 September 1929 – 4 August 1989) was a British pop manager and impresario. Larry Parnes was the first major British rock manager, and his stable of singers included many of the most successful British rock and roll singers of the late 1950s and early 1960s. His reputation was later damaged by testimony from many of the artists he managed alleged they were exploited. In 1956, Parnes began to manage young rock and roll singer Tommy Hicks, Hicks become known as Tommy Steele. Steele achieved popular success, some of his songs being co-written by Parnes' friend Lionel Bart, and Parnes succeeded in presenting Steele as an "all-round entertainer". After Steele's success, Parnes looked to find other young men who he could groom to become pop stars. At Bart's suggestion, he next signed Reg Patterson (né Smith), whom he re-christened Marty Wilde, and who also rose to pop stardom in the UK. leading British songwriters providing songs for his growing stable of talent, and many of his protégés achieving success in the UK Singles Chart. Parnes' approach was to select handsome young men who would be attractive to a teenage audience. He also gave them new stage names, which were rumoured to reflect what he considered to be their sexual characteristics. Among those he managed were Billy Fury Vince Eager Dickie Pride Lance Fortune, Duffy Power, Johnny Gentle, Terry Dene, Nelson Keene, and Georgie Fame. He also managed Tommy Bruce, as well as Joe Brown, who he unsuccessfully tried to persuade to change his name to Elmer Twitch. Vince Eager began to wonder why he had never received any record royalties. "You're not entitled to any," Larry Parnes told him. "But it says in my contract that I am," Eager protested. It also says I have power of attorney over you, and I've decided you're not getting any, Parnes replied. This BBC TV programme 'Panorama' featured Parnes as a "beat svengali" and the press gave him the nickname "Mr Parnes, Shillings and Pence". Parnes also promoted concerts, including the 1960 tour by Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochran during which Cochran was killed in a road crash. Later the same year he hired the Silver Beetles, an early incarnation of the then-unknown Beatles, to back one of his singers, Johnny Gentle, on a short tour of Scotland. Although Gentle tried to persuade him to manage the group, Parnes decided not to do so. Parnes developed the idea of the package tour, for which his stars toured the country together in a bus, playing one-night stands around the country. In 1962, he hired the Tornados as backing group for Billy Fury, and also claimed to have given "their first breaks" to entertainers Jimmy Tarbuck, and Mike Yarwood. Parnes retired in 1981 and died from meningitis in London in 1989, aged 59.