Tony Sheridan

 ( The Beatles ) 

Ringo Starr briefly played in Sheridan's backing band during early 1962, before returning to Rory Storm and the Hurricanes. Starr was reportedly unhappy with Sheridan performing songs he had not rehearsed with his band (other musicians made the same complaint, as well as about Sheridan's penchant for fist-fights). Infosite, Beatlesource.com; accessed 19 April 2015.

During these sessions at Polydor nine songs were produced, seven of them for Sheridan: "My Bonnie", "The Saints", "Why", "Nobody's Child", "If You Love Me, Baby (Take Out Some Insurance on Me Baby)", "Sweet Georgia Brown" and "Swanee River" (this last recording is now lost, but it was recorded later on by Sheridan with another backup group). Two more songs without Sheridan were recorded by the Beatles: "Ain't She Sweet" and "Cry for a Shadow" (formerly titled "Beatle Bop").

It was said that "Sheridan didn't have a lot of originality, his performances mostly channeling Elvis".

Polydor's beliefs in Sheridan's coming stardom were so strong that they buried the two Beatles tracks until much later. Additionally, Lennon, Best and Sheridan all swore that there were several other Beatles tracks that were recorded during the two-day session, but they have not surfaced. In the spring of 1962 in order to fulfil contractual obligations, the four surviving Beatles (plus Roy Young but without Sheridan) recorded an instrumental version of "Sweet Georgia Brown"; later, Sheridan cut his vocal overdub for the song while solo in the studio. Reportedly "Swanee River" was also recorded by the Beatles and Young, though Polydor released a version in 1962 on Sheridan's album My Bonnie; however, Polydor states they have never found this last recording. A contemporary newspaper story also mentioned that Sheridan had recorded "You Are My Sunshine" with the Beatles as well for single release.

In 1962, after a series of singles (the first of which, "My Bonnie"/"The Saints" made it to number 5 in the German chart), the record was released in America on Decca with a black label and also in a pink label for demo play. The record has the distinction of being one of the most expensive collectible 45 rpm with the black label in mint condition selling for $15,000 in 2007 and the pink label selling for $3000.

Also in 1962, Polydor released the album My Bonnie across West Germany. The word "Beatles" was judged to sound too similar to the Hamburgisch dialect word "Pidels" (pronounced "peedles"), the plural of a slang term for penis, hence the album was credited to "Tony Sheridan and the Beat Brothers". After the Beatles had gained fame, the album was re-released in the United Kingdom, with the credit altered to "Tony Sheridan and the Beatles". The Beatles' Hamburg studio recordings, as well as some live recordings from the same period, have been reissued many times.

By 1967, Sheridan had become disillusioned with his Beatle-brought fame. Because he was more concerned by the Vietnam War and the thought of further Communism aggression, Sheridan agreed to perform for the Allied troops. While in Vietnam, the band that he had assembled was fired upon and one of the members was killed. For his work entertaining the troops, Sheridan was made an honorary Captain of the United States Army. Due to the repeated shellings he experienced in Vietnam, Sheridan subsequently suffered from great sensitivity to the sound of explosions.

With his Polydor contract gone, Sheridan did what he could to survive. In the early 1970s, he recorded a single as a pop duo, teamed with Carole Bell, and they toured Europe together with fair success. Following that phase he returned to playing in West Germany (usually Hamburg) or London. The mid-1970s saw him disc jockey a West German radio programme of blues music, which was well received. He then managed to record a live album of early rock classics, a number of which had been part of his and the early Beatles live act but had never been released.

In 1978, a record producer in the United States heard Sheridan's early Polydor recordings (with and without The Beatles), and was impressed by Sheridan's singing and playing. Sheridan immediately accepted an offer to record a whole studio album in Los Angeles. Elvis Presley's TCB Band was hired to play on the album along with bassist (and former Hamburg friend) Klaus Voormann. An album of rock classics plus a few country tunes resulted but, with no major label release, it was restricted to direct TV sales. Thus, the prospect of a career in Las Vegas evaporated.

In 1978, the Star Club was reopened, and Sheridan performed there along with Elvis Presley's TCB Band.

In 1991, Joe Sunseri, Sheridan's biographer and then-manager, completed Nobody's Child: The Tony Sheridan Story. However, due to a falling-out, the biography remained unpublished.

On 13 August 2002, after a long hiatus away from the record industry, Bear Family Records released Sheridan's album Vagabond, a collection of his own material, except for a new cover version of "Skinny Minnie", a Bill Haley song he had recorded years earlier for his first album My Bonnie. Vagabond was different from his previous repertoire, consisting mainly of reflective ballads. "His development as an artist and on a personal and spiritual level makes Vagabond an interesting departure that bona fide r’n’r that made his reputation on the Hamburg scene way back in the 60's. Those who know his story know that he gradually departed from that said scene after his experiences in Viet Nam and his search for spiritual awareness.".

In 2002, the Argentinian rock musician Charly Garcia recorded his album Influencia, on which Tony Sheridan contributed as a singer/guitarist on the song "I'm Not in Love".

On 29 February 2004, the German classical music group "CHANTAL Instrumental Ensemble" produced a tribute concert for The Beatles, where they performed 15 instrumental Beatles songs along with an additional 11 played with Tony Sheridan as their guest star.

One of the highlights of the night, was the live performance of Sheridan's song "Tell Me If You Can", which he co-wrote with Paul McCartney during their time in Hamburg more than 40 years prior. The full set of the songs played on that night are found on the DVD of the event, entitled "CHANTAL meets Tony Sheridan - A Beatles Story". An abridged set of these songs was issued on CD (including all the tracks sung by Sheridan).

In 2005 the Ensemble CHANTAL and Sheridan produced the first studio version of the song "Tell Me If You Can" recorded at Abbey Road Studios, which was issued as a CD-Single including an instrumental version.

In 2007 Sheridan went to the Opus 3 Studio in Sweden to record some songs, three of which he sang: "Tell Me If You Can", "Indochina" (a song relating his experience when he performed for the US soldiers in Vietnam in the 1970s) and "The Puzzle". They were issued as part of the album: Tony Sheridan and Opus 3 Artists, which was released posthumously in 2018. The remaining nine tracks were original songs recorded by Sheridan in his home by himself with only his guitar, to which additional post-production arrangements were added to the basic tracks by the "Opus 3 Artists".

A biography of Sheridan, titled The Teacher (), was published in 2013 by Norfolk author Alan Mann, a childhood-friend of Sheridan. The book was an email question and answer interview.

In 2015, Colin "Melander" Crawley, Sheridan's former bassist, published another biography, Tony Sheridan – The One The Beatles Called "The Teacher" ().

"My father disappeared by the time I came to my senses... My mother went to London to check on her relatives because of the German The Blitz, and she came back pregnant. The effect it had on my life was that my father and mother broke up. He obviously said, 'How can you be pregnant? It wasn't me!' The end result was that I finished up in this children's home, and I remember standing in this kid's bed, holding onto the railings and shaking them, and seeing my mother disappear down the ward. I was screaming! In those five minutes, I lost my mother forever, definitely, definitely, definitely. Not just my mum, she was taking the love with her as well. So now I'm this horrible piece of nothing with these other horrible pieces of nothing."

Even though she came back to pick him up many months later, Tony explains that no matter how joyful it felt, "the damage has been done. The damage, it's there. The story of my life, basically, apart from the music (...), it's been about the sort of relationships which haven't worked, one way or another.

His friend and former bassist Crawley stated that in 1960 Sheridan confided that despite his mixed Irish-Catholic and Jewish background, he was at that point viewing himself as a Buddhist. Later Sheridan became a devotee of the guru Rajneesh and lived in the 1980s at the guru's Rajneeshpuram commune in Oregon, United States.

In the later part of his life, Sheridan lived in Seestermühe, a village north of Hamburg, and in addition to music, he was interested in heraldry and designed coats of arms.

Sheridan played and sang backing vocal on one track of the Charly García 2002 album

• Sheridan biography, from Tony Sheridan's Website, retrieved from Archive.org, snapshot of August 27, 2007
• Daniels, Frank (1998, 2000, 2001) The Beatles with Tony Sheridan, retrieved 1 January 2005
• Craig Cross (2026). 9780595314874, iUniverse. ISBN 9780595314874
• Thorsten Knublauch and Axel Korinth: Komm, Gib Mir Deine Hand – Die Beatles in Deutschland 1960–1970. Books on Demand Gmbh: 2008;
• Krasker, Eric. The Beatles – Fact and Fiction 1960–1962, Paris, Séguier, 2009;
• Mann, Alan. "The Teacher: The Tony Sheridan Story", Norwich, AMPS, 2013;
• Crawley, Colin. "Tony Sheridan: The one The Beatles called 'The Teacher', 2015;

• Alan Mann official web site of Tony Sheridan biographer Alan Mann.