Billy Fury - Early Years

Early Years

Wycherley was born at Smithdown Hospital (later Sefton General Hospital, now demolished), Smithdown Road, Liverpool. He commenced music lessons on the piano before he was a teenager, and was bought his first guitar by the age of 14. Wycherley fronted his own group in 1955, but simultaneously worked full-time on a tugboat and later as a stevedore. He entered and won a talent competition, and by 1958 had started composing his own songs. Wycherley first attended a concert in Birkenhead, run by impresario Larry Parnes, in the hope of interesting famous singer Marty Wilde in some of the songs he had written. Instead, in an episode that has become pop music legend, Parnes pushed young Wycherley up on stage right away. He was such an immediate success that Parnes signed him, added him to the tour, and renamed him 'Billy Fury'. However, his early sexual and provocative stage performances received censure, and he was forced to tone them down. In October 1959, the UK music magazine, NME, commented that Fury's stage antics had been drawing much press criticism.

He released his first hit single for Decca, "Maybe Tomorrow", in 1959. He also appeared in a televised play Strictly For Sparrows, and subsequently on Oh Boy! By March 1960, he reached #9 in the UK Singles Chart with his own composition "Colette", followed by "That's Love" and his first album The Sound of Fury (1960), which featured a young Joe Brown on lead guitar, with backup vocals by The Four Jays.

After securing more hits and jettisoning his band The Blue Flames, Parnes held auditions in Liverpool for a new group. Among those who failed were The Beatles, who for the first time called themselves The Silver Beetles. They were offered the job for £20 a week on condition that they sacked their bassist Stuart Sutcliffe. John Lennon refused and the band left after Lennon had secured Fury's autograph. The Tornados were recruited as his backing band and toured and recorded with Fury from January 1962 to August 1963.