Pc, I took this from one of your links posted in byotb. Might be interesting to our dear members and guests:
The Raymond Jones mystery
The Beatles' manager Brian Epstein claimed until his death in 1967 that he had first heard of the group when someone called Raymond Jones came into his shop on 28 October 196 to ask for the My Bonnie single that the Beatles had recorded with Tony Sheridan in Hamburg in June 1961. Today no fewer than three persons claim to be this mysterious Raymond Jones! Whether or not he actually existed, it is important to show that Brian Epstein used this story to present the Beatles as a "clean" group, and above all a group without a past.
It is easy to prove that Epstein did indeed know the Beatles before this date, mainly thanks to the efforts of Bill Harry, a close friend of the group and founder of the bi. monthly newspaper Mersey Beat, but also because the Beatles themselves used to buy their records in Epstein's shop in Whitechapel.
If Brian Epstein ensured he took all the credit for discovering the group, it was in fact because he was concerned about preserving the image of his proteges. If he had revealed the exact role of Bill Harry and Mersey Beat in the Beatles' rise to fame, Epstein would have run the risk of the media asking Harry for more information about the new Liverpool attraction.
Bill Harry did indeed know a lot about the Beatles' past, and by making clumsy revelations or releasing embarrassing documents he could have seriously tarnished the group's clean image. This is why Epstein implored Hamburg Star Club owner Manfred Weissleder not to circulate a handful of photographs in which the Beatles could be seen playing with tubes of Preludin amphetamines (the famous "Prellys"). Epstein also hastened to ask Bill Harry to hand over photos showing John Lennon walking along Hamburg's Reeperbahn in his underpants.
This chapter was recently updated following the publication of Spencer Leigh's book The Best Of Fellas at the end of 2002, which revealed the existence of a real Raymond Jones.
