In Memoriam-Chas Newby, A Beatle for Four Gigs

[purchase The Quarrymen Live in Penny Lane, featuring Chas Newby on bass and vocal]

You’re a teenage (left-handed) bass player, and a former band mate asks you to fill in on a few gigs with a cover band that had recently been on tour, because their bass player is unavailable.  Needing a bit of extra Christmas cash, Chas Newby agreed, and played four shows in England with his old friend Pete, and his fellow band members, John, Paul and George.  Chas had fun and pocketed all of £4.  But when John suggested he stay with the band for a tour in West Germany, Newby declined, figuring that he had a better chance of success in his preferred field of chemistry.

Of course, the rest is history.  Nearly two years after Newby declined Lennon’s offer, the Beatles hit it big with “Love Me Do,” featuring Paul McCartney on (left-handed) bass.

As Newby said:

To me then it was just four gigs with a different band. Music was never going to be a living for me. All of us at that time were thinking what we were going to do with our lives, some doing teaching, or science, or whatever.

I wanted to do chemistry. John, Paul and George, they just wanted to be musicians.

They had been away in Hamburg. They’d played a hell of a lot over there so they were very tight, very proficient, and they gave it some stick. But I did the four gigs and went back to my college course the week afterwards.

In fact, Newby went back to St. Helens College and continued his studies in chemistry, eventually getting his Master’s from Manchester University.  In 1971, a decade after his brief encounter with possible superstardom, he joined Triplex Safety Glass, which manufactured windscreens for trains and aircraft.  He retired in 1990 and became a math teacher. 

Further proof of his being merely a blip in Beatles’ history, Chas only had one encounter with any of the band after his four gigs (the last of which was 63 years ago today--New Year's Eve 1960--at the Casbah).  In 1962, he recounted:

I was on my way home and I pulled up at some traffic lights. There, waiting at the crossing, was George. I said hello and asked if he needed a lift. He said he was waiting for someone and that was that. Off I went.

Before his death on May 22, 2023, Newby played in a charity band, The Racketts, and in the reformed Quarrymen, which once counted John, Paul, George, and Newby’s predecessor in the Beatles, Stu, as members.