Laurence Maurice Parnes (3 September 1929 – 4 August 1989) was a British pop manager and
impresario
An impresario (from the Italian ''impresa'', "an enterprise or undertaking") is a person who organizes and often finances concerts, plays, or operas, performing a role in stage arts that is similar to that of a film or television producer.
Hist ...
. He was the first major British
rock
Rock most often refers to:
* Rock (geology), a naturally occurring solid aggregate of minerals or mineraloids
* Rock music, a genre of popular music
Rock or Rocks may also refer to:
Places United Kingdom
* Rock, Caerphilly, a location in Wales ...
manager, and his stable of singers included many of the most successful
British rock and roll
British rock and roll, or sometimes British rock 'n' roll, is a style of popular music based on American rock and roll, which emerged in the late 1950s and was popular until the arrival of beat music in 1962. It was important in establishing Brit ...
singers of the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Parnes' reputation was later damaged by testimony from many of the artists he managed in the late fifties and early sixties who alleged they were exploited.
Early years
Parnes was born to a
Jewish
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
family
in
Willesden
Willesden () is an area of northwest London, situated 5 miles (8 km) northwest of Charing Cross. It is historically a parish in the county of Middlesex that was incorporated as the Municipal Borough of Willesden in 1933, and has forme ...
, London, England.
After leaving school he began work in a clothing store, and by the age of 18 ran a women's clothing shop in
Romford
Romford is a large town in east London and the administrative centre of the London Borough of Havering. It is located northeast of Charing Cross and is one of the major metropolitan centres identified in the London Plan. Historically, Romford ...
, Essex. He then bought a share in a bar in Romilly Street,
Soho
Soho is an area of the City of Westminster, part of the West End of London. Originally a fashionable district for the aristocracy, it has been one of the main entertainment districts in the capital since the 19th century.
The area was develop ...
. He agreed to invest in a touring play, ''The House of Shame'', which became both successful and notorious in 1954 after its publicist, John Kennedy, persuaded two actresses to stand outside the theatre dressed as prostitutes.
Music management
In 1956, with John Kennedy, Parnes began to manage young
rock and roll
Rock and roll (often written as rock & roll, rock 'n' roll, or rock 'n roll) is a Genre (music), genre of popular music that evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s. It Origins of rock and roll, originated from Africa ...
singer Tommy Hicks; he and John Kennedy approached his parents, after Hicks, aged 19, had already signed another contract, which was under the legal age.
Hicks anglicised the name of his Swedish grandfather to become known as
Tommy Steele
Sir Thomas Hicks (born 17 December 1936), known professionally as Tommy Steele, is an English entertainer, regarded as Britain's first teen idol and rock and roll star.
After being discovered at the 2i's Coffee Bar in Soho, London, Steele reco ...
. Steele achieved popular success, some of his songs being co-written by Parnes' friend
Lionel Bart
Lionel Bart (1 August 1930 – 3 April 1999) was a British writer and composer of pop music and musicals. He wrote Tommy Steele's " Rock with the Caveman" and was the sole creator of the musical ''Oliver!'' (1960). With ''Oliver!'' and his wor ...
, and Parnes succeeded in presenting Steele as an "all-round entertainer".
Parnes claimed in a court action that he and Kennedy took 40 per cent of Steele's "gross takings", out of which they had to pay 10 per cent to booking agents as well as the costs of Steele's accommodation, advertising and publicity, travel and other aspects "needed to keep Tommy on the road to stardom". This became the standard arrangement with Parnes' artists.
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
Marty Wilde, (born Reginald Leonard Smith; 15 April 1939) is an English singer and songwriter. He was among the first generation of British pop stars to emulate American rock and roll, scoring several 1950s hit singles including " Endless Sl ...
, and who also rose to pop stardom in the UK.
Parnes developed a network of contacts within the British recording industry and entertainment business, with leading British songwriters providing songs for his growing stable of talent, and many of his protégés achieving success in the
UK Singles Chart
The UK Singles Chart (currently titled Official Singles Chart, with the upper section more commonly known as the Official UK Top 40) is compiled by the Official Charts Company (OCC), on behalf of the British record industry, listing the top-s ...
. A flamboyant gay man, Parnes' approach was to select, and then groom, 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 with at least some degree of success were
Billy Fury
Ronald Wycherley (17 April 1940 – 28 January 1983), better known as Billy Fury, was an English singer, musician, songwriter, and actor. An early star of rock and roll, he equalled the Beatles' record of 24 hits in the 1960s and spent 332 we ...
(originally Ron Wycherley),
Vince Eager
Vince Eager (born Roy Taylor, 4 June 1940, Grantham, Lincolnshire, England) is an English pop singer. He was widely promoted by impresario Larry Parnes, but later quarrelled with him over his commercialising of Eddie Cochran's tragic early dea ...
(Roy Taylor),
Dickie Pride
Dickie Pride (born Richard Charles Kneller; 21 October 1941 – 26 March 1969) was an English singer. He was one of Larry Parnes' stable of pop music stars, who didn't achieve the same successful career as some of his contemporaries.
Early li ...
(Richard Knellar),
Lance Fortune
Christopher Morris, known by the stage name Lance Fortune (born 4 January 1940, Birkenhead, Cheshire, England),Larkin C 'Virgin Encyclopedia of Sixties Music' (Muze UK Ltd, 1997) p197 is an English pop singer.
Morris was classically trained on ...
(Chris Morris),
Duffy Power
Duffy Power (born Raymond Leslie Howard; 9 September 1941 – 19 February 2014) was an English blues and rock and roll singer, who achieved some success in the 1960s and continued to perform and record intermittently later.
Career
Ray Howard w ...
(Ray Howard),
Johnny Gentle
John Askew (born 8 December 1936), known as Johnny Gentle, is a British pop singer best remembered for having briefly toured Scotland with the Silver Beetles (later known as the Beatles) as his backing group in 1960.
Life and career
John Ask ...
(John Askew),
Terry Dene
Terry Dene (born Terence Williams, 20 December 1938) is a British rock music singer popular in the late 1950s and early 60s. He had three Top Twenty hits between June 1957 and May 1958.
Career
Dene was born in Lancaster Street, Elephant & Ca ...
(Terence Williams),
Nelson Keene
Malcolm Holland (born 9 March 1942), better known by the stage name of Nelson Keene, is a British pop singer who was prominent in the early 1960s.
Keene was born in Farnborough, Hampshire, one of ten children. As a singer, he was managed by Larr ...
(Malcolm Holland), and
Georgie Fame
Georgie Fame (born Clive Powell; 26 June 1943) is an English R&B and jazz musician. Fame, who had a string of 1960s hits, is still performing, often working with contemporaries such as Alan Price, Van Morrison and Bill Wyman. Fame is the on ...
(Clive Powell).
He also managed
Tommy Bruce
Tommy Bruce (16 July 1937 – 10 July 2006) was an English rock and roll singer who had most of his success in the early 1960s. His cover version of " Ain't Misbehavin'" was a number 3 hit in the UK Singles Chart in 1960.
Life and career
H ...
, as well as
Joe Brown, who he unsuccessfully tried to persuade to change his name to Elmer Twitch.
[
Music journalist Richie Unterberger has commented:
Sometimes, Parnes employed his charges himself rather than being employed by them, and paid them a weekly wage.] According to one report:
The BBC TV
BBC Television is a service of the BBC. The corporation has operated a public broadcast television service in the United Kingdom, under the terms of a royal charter, since 1927. It produced television programmes from its own studios from 19 ...
programme ''Panorama
A panorama (formed from Greek πᾶν "all" + ὅραμα "view") is any wide-angle view or representation of a physical space, whether in painting, drawing, photography, film, seismic images, or 3D modeling. The word was originally coined in ...
'' featured Parnes as a "beat
Beat, beats or beating may refer to:
Common uses
* Patrol, or beat, a group of personnel assigned to monitor a specific area
** Beat (police), the territory that a police officer patrols
** Gay beat, an area frequented by gay men
* Battery (c ...
svengali
Svengali () is a character in the novel ''Trilby'' which was first published in 1894 by George du Maurier. Svengali is a man who seduces, dominates and exploits Trilby, a young half-Irish girl, and makes her into a famous singer.
Definition
...
" and the press gave him the nickname "Mr Parnes, Shillings and Pence". He was bitingly satirised as the manipulative "Major Rafe Ralph" by Peter Sellers
Peter Sellers (born Richard Henry Sellers; 8 September 1925 – 24 July 1980) was an English actor and comedian. He first came to prominence performing in the BBC Radio comedy series ''The Goon Show'', featured on a number of hit comic songs ...
, from a script by Frank Muir
Frank Herbert Muir (5 February 1920 – 2 January 1998) was an English comedy writer, radio and television personality, and raconteur. His writing and performing partnership with Denis Norden endured for most of their careers. Together they wro ...
and Denis Norden
Denis Mostyn Norden (6 February 1922 – 19 September 2018) was an English comedy writer and television presenter. After an early career working in cinemas, he began scriptwriting during the Second World War. From 1948 to 1959, he co-wrote the ...
, on the 1959 album ''Songs For Swingin' Sellers''.
Parnes also promoted concerts, including the 1960 tour by Gene Vincent
Vincent Eugene Craddock (February 11, 1935 – October 12, 1971), known as Gene Vincent, was an American musician who pioneered the styles of rockabilly and rock and roll. His 1956 top ten hit with his backing band the Blue Caps, " Be-Bop-a-Lula ...
and Eddie Cochran
Ray Edward Cochran (; October 3, 1938 – April 17, 1960) was an American rock and roll musician. Cochran's songs, such as " Twenty Flight Rock", "Summertime Blues", " C'mon Everybody" and " Somethin' Else", captured teenage frustration and desir ...
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
The Beatles were an English rock band, formed in Liverpool in 1960, that comprised John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. They are regarded as the most influential band of all time and were integral to the developme ...
, 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
The Tornados (The Tornadoes in North America) were an English instrumental rock group of the 1960s that acted as backing group for many of record producer Joe Meek's productions and also for singer Billy Fury. They enjoyed several chart hi ...
as backing group for Billy Fury, and also claimed to have given "their first breaks" to entertainers Jimmy Tarbuck
James Joseph Tarbuck (born 6 February 1940) is an English comedian, singer, actor, entertainer and game show host.
He was a host of ''Sunday Night at the London Palladium'' in the mid-1960s, and hosted numerous game shows and quiz shows on ITV ...
, Rolf Harris
Rolf Harris (born 30 March 1930) is an Australian entertainer whose career has encompassed work as a musician, singer-songwriter, composer, comedian, actor, painter and television personality. He often used unusual instruments in his performan ...
and Mike Yarwood
Michael Edward Yarwood, (born 14 June 1941) is an English impressionist, comedian and actor. He was one of Britain's top-rated entertainers, regularly appearing on television from the 1960s to the 1980s.
Early life
Michael Edward Yarwood was ...
.[
]
Theatre and other interests
Parnes remained an influential impresario even after the rise of the Beatles and other groups had eclipsed those in his stable. However, his attitude and approach rapidly became old-fashioned. In 1967 he announced that he was going to devote himself to the theatre, and in 1968 put on ''Fortune and Men's Eyes'', a play about homosexuality in a Canadian prison, but it lost money. He bought a lease of the Cambridge Theatre
The Cambridge Theatre is a West End theatre, on a corner site in Earlham Street facing Seven Dials, in the London Borough of Camden, built in 1929–30 for Bertie Meyer on an "irregular triangular site".
Design and construction
It was des ...
in 1972, where during his tenure the first UK production of ''Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
, image_map =
, map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago
, coordinates =
, coordinates_footnotes =
, subdivision_type = Country
, subdivision_name ...
'' played. During the 1970s he ran the business affairs of the Olympic ice skater
Ice skating is the self-propulsion and gliding of a person across an ice surface, using metal-bladed ice skates. People skate for various reasons, including recreation (fun), exercise, competitive sports, and commuting. Ice skating may be perf ...
John Curry
John Anthony Curry, (9 September 1949 – 15 April 1994) was a British Figure skating, figure skater. He was the 1976 1976 European Figure Skating Championships, European, Figure skating at the 1976 Winter Olympics, Olympic and World Figure Sk ...
, and presented two stage productions with him at the Cambridge Theatre and at the London Palladium. He also persuaded actress Joan Collins
Dame Joan Henrietta Collins (born 23 May 1933) is an English actress, author and columnist. Collins is the recipient of several accolades, including a Golden Globe Award, a People's Choice Award, two Soap Opera Digest Awards and a Primetime ...
to perform her first West End play, ''The Last of Mrs Cheyney'', at his theatre in 1976.
Parnes was a horse racing
Horse racing is an equestrian performance sport, typically involving two or more horses ridden by jockeys (or sometimes driven without riders) over a set distance for competition. It is one of the most ancient of all sports, as its basic p ...
fan, and owned racehorses, including Cambridge Gold, named after his involvement in the Cambridge Theatre and John Curry. He had a penthouse
Penthouse most often refers to:
*Penthouse apartment, a special apartment on the top floor of a building
*Penthouse (magazine), ''Penthouse'' (magazine), a British-founded men's magazine
*Mechanical penthouse, a floor, typically located directly u ...
property in South Kensington
South Kensington, nicknamed Little Paris, is a district just west of Central London in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. Historically it settled on part of the scattered Middlesex village of Brompton. Its name was supplanted with ...
, and country mansions in Send, Surrey
Send is a village and civil parish in the Guildford borough of the English county of Surrey. Send acquired its name during the Great Vowel Shift from the word sand, which was extracted at various periods until the 1990s for construction and ...
, and Icklesham
Icklesham is a village and civil parish in the Rother district of East Sussex, England. The village is located about six miles (10 km) east of Hastings, on the main A259 Hastings to Rye road. The surrounding countryside is a made up of f ...
, East Sussex
East Sussex is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in South East England on the English Channel coast. It is bordered by Kent to the north and east, West Sussex to the west, and Surrey to the north-west. The largest settlement in East Su ...
.
Later years
Parnes retired in 1981 and died from meningitis
Meningitis is acute or chronic inflammation of the protective membranes covering the brain and spinal cord, collectively called the meninges. The most common symptoms are fever, headache, and neck stiffness. Other symptoms include confusion or ...
in London in 1989, aged 59. His obituary in ''The Daily Telegraph
''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a national British daily broadsheet newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed across the United Kingdom and internationally.
It was fo ...
'' said:[
]
References
Notes
Citations
External links
Then & Now Article
* ttp://www.bbc.co.uk/radio2/documentaries/50s_parnespeople.shtml Parnes' People(Radio 2 documentary)
Gay History article
{{DEFAULTSORT:Parnes, Larry
1929 births
1989 deaths
Deaths from meningitis
English music managers
English theatre managers and producers
People from Willesden
Gay men
English Jews
LGBT businesspeople from the United Kingdom
LGBT Jews
LGBT people from England
Businesspeople from London
Impresarios
20th-century English businesspeople
Neurological disease deaths in England
Infectious disease deaths in England
20th-century LGBT people