John ‘Duff’ Lowe, Bandmate of McCartney, Lennon and Harrison in The Quarrymen, Dies

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John “Duff” Lowe in 2011

John Lowe, who was invited in 1958 by his Liverpool chum, Paul McCartney, to join the Quarrymen, the pre-Beatles rock ‘n’ roll/skiffle band formed by John Lennon, died February 22, 2024. Lowe, known as “Duff,” was 81. News of his passing was announced on the social media site X (formerly known as Twitter) by the Liverpool Beatles Museum and by Beatles historian Mark Lewisohn. Neither the cause nor place of death were revealed.

In 1958, the Quarrymen—Lennon, McCartney, George Harrison, drummer Colin Hanton and Lowe, on piano—recorded a pair of songs at a home studio in the Kensington neighborhood of Liverpool. Only one copy of the two tracks, a cover of “That’ll Be the Day” and a McCartney-Harrison original, “In Spite of All the Danger,” existed. Lewisohn noted in his 2013 book, The Beatles–All These Years, that the members shared the disc.

Lowe retained the historical artifact and McCartney ultimately purchased it in 1981. More than a decade later, and after much restoration, “In Spite of All the Danger” was included on 1995’s Beatles Anthology 1.

Lowe was born on April 13, 1942. On the Quarrymen website, he noted that he met McCartney at Liverpool Cathedral in 1953. “Over the next five years,” he wrote, “we became good friends and one morning in February 1958 he said he’d joined a friend’s group called the Quarrymen and asked me if I’d like to join them to play piano, which I did. Getting to Paul’s house on the south side of the City on Sunday afternoons for rehearsals or on Saturday evening if John or Paul had arranged a gig which was usually over their way, took about an hour as I lived in the Liverpool suburb of West Derby on the north eastern side of the city. I was too young to drive or own a car and so had to travel on two buses, changing at Penny Lane. I think this, and a complaining girlfriend, was why I eventually left the Quarrymen.”

RIP John Duff Lowe, 81. At Liverpool Institute with Paul McCartney and George Harrison, Lowe was pianist in the Quarry Men when age 16, and played on their only recording date, That’ll Be The Day and In Spite Of All The Danger. It was thanks to Lowe that the disc was preserved. pic.twitter.com/Uc3KekcqUh

— Mark Lewisohn (@marklewisohn) February 22, 2024