Chas Newby, maths teacher and bassist who briefly played with The Beatles – obituary

Chas Newby, who has died aged 81, was a chemistry student who played four gigs as a bass player with the fledgling Beatles in 1960, but decided to return to his studies, unconvinced there was a future for him in the music business.

In December 1960 the band, who mostly played covers of US rock’n’roll records, were fresh from four months of hard gigging in Hamburg and were in need of a bassist after Stuart Sutcliffe had decided to remain in West Germany to focus on his art career.

Pete Best, the band’s then drummer, with whom Newby had played rhythm guitar in a band called the Blackjacks, suggested Newby, a second-year chemistry and chemical engineering student at St Helens College. As it was the Christmas holidays, Newby (left-handed, like his successor on bass, Paul McCartney) agreed to play four gigs to earn a bit of extra cash: “I borrowed a bass from a guy called Tommy McGuirk, but of course Tommy was right-handed, so I got this bass guitar and I just played it upside down.”

Over two weeks he played gigs at Liscard on the Wirral, and at Litherland Town Hall, bookended by gigs at the Casbah Coffee Club in Liverpool. He denied suggestions that John Lennon had invited him to West Germany for The Beatles’ second trip.

“They were getting £1 each per show, which was no living. I was working and having my education paid for by Pilkington Glass,” he recalled. Besides, he reflected, the chances of The Beatles making it big were “miniscule”, and his mother would never have approved of his giving up his studies: “She would’ve killed me.”

While earning a living as an engineer and later a maths teacher, Newby’s time with the Fab Four earned him a place in numerous “fifth-Beatle” footnotes and as a wrong answer in the popular pub quiz question “Which former Beatle is pictured on the front cover of Sgt Pepper?” (answer: Stuart Sutcliffe).

He never felt jealous when three of his old bandmates – Lennon, McCartney and George Harrison (plus Ringo Starr, who had joined as drummer after Pete Best was sacked in 1962) made the big time. Unlike them, after all, he could still go down to the pub for a quiet pint.

Charles Newby was born on June 18 1941 and educated at Liverpool Collegiate grammar school, where he played in a skiffle group before joining Best’s band, the Blackjacks, in 1959. Best’s mother, Mona, had opened the short-lived Casbah in an old coal cellar. As the Quarrymen, John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison played at the club – as did the Blackjacks.

But, as Newby recalled later, “Music was never going to be a living for me... I wanted to do chemistry. John, Paul and George, they just wanted to be musicians.”

After leaving college, Newby married Margaret and in 1971 moved to Alcester in Warwickshire. He worked as an engineer until 1990, when he became a schoolteacher, teaching maths at Droitwich Spa High School.

When Best decided to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the opening of the Casbah in 1999 Newby, with former band members Bill Barlow and Ken Brown, joined him to reform the Blackjacks, playing a short set on the Casbah stage.

Newby and Barlow then formed a band called Blue Suede Feet, playing in the Bedford area, and Newby joined a charity band near his home called the Racketts. He also sang in a local male voice choir, with whom he toured Italy in 2004.

In 2016 he started playing bass with the latest incarnation of the Quarrymen, touring the Czech Republic, Hungary, Spain and Mexico.

Newby’s wife Margaret died in 1992 and he is survived by their son and daughter.

Chas Newby, born June 18 1941, died May 22 2023