Tony Booth (artist)

Tony Booth (born June 22, 1933, in Merseyside, England) is a British based commercial artist who is most notably recognised for being the original poster artist for The Beatles and other bands in the Merseybeat era. He was known around Liverpool in the early 1960s as Brian Epstein's "right-hand man".

Anthony (Tony) Booth
Tony with one of his posters for The Betales
Born	(1933-06-22) June 22, 1933 Merseyside, England
Nationality	British
Known for	His artwork for The Beatles, Brian Epstein, The Cavern Club and other Merseybeat artists/promoters
Website	http://thebeatlesposters.com

Early years

Born in 1933, Tony was a wartime schoolboy. In 1948 at the age of 15, he won a scholarship in Commercial Art and Design, to ‘The Wallasey School of Art and Crafts’ in Wallasey on Merseyside. After only 18 months at Art School he was offered his first position in a Commercial Art Studio that was also a Printing, Sign-writing and Poster-Writing Company on Merseyside.

Working for The Beatles and Brian Epstein

During the early 1960s Tony Booth worked in Liverpool City Centre, near to The Cavern Club and right next door to The Beatles manager Brian Epstein’s office. Tony did a lot of business with Brian, producing posters, printed leaflets and a wide variety of publicity and display material. Tony produced hand-painted gig posters during the early sixties for many promoters, including Brian Epstein, Promoter Sam Leach, Allan Williams and Cavern Club DJ -Bob Wooler.

Tony would hand-paint many of same poster using one-stroke brushes and liners with oil-based colours, mostly on white machine glazed ‘double-crown’ 30”x20” poster paper. If Brian required a larger number of posters for a specific event, then the original artwork would be sent to a local silk-screen printer for bulk printing and distribution and the same artwork was often used for leaflets and press adverts.

Very few of Tony’s 1960’s original posters have survived, as the posters would normally be disposed of after the event or destroyed during the silk-screen printing process. Most of Tony’s original hand-painted posters were either thrown away after the event or destroyed during the silk-screen printing process, but today at auction, the printed posters that have survived are sold to collectors for £6,000 or more. Christie’s of London sold one of Tony’s original hand-painted Cavern Club posters to an American collector a few years ago. for £27,500, which was double Christie’s valuation.

The Cavern Club

During the late fifties, before The Beatles fame, Tony hand-painted many posters for The Cavern Club on Mathew Street, Liverpool. When it first opened as a Jazz Club in 1957, ‘The Merseysippi Jazz Band’ were the big attraction on opening night, supported by The Wall City Jazz Men. One of the most notable piece of posters did in his early years was for the clubs opening night.

The Cavern Club always had plenty of Tony’s posters pasted on the walls outside, when The Beatles and other big name groups were playing there. It was amazing how long they stayed up, considering that they were only pasted up with a mixture of flower and water. In fact, it was hard work when they needed to be scraped off.

In October 2016, Tony had been commissioned to produce the artwork for the Cavern Club's 60th Anniversary and this is now on display inside the club.^[1]

Recent work

In early 2016, BBC1 aired a short documentary on Tony Booth on their Inside Out TV show.^[2]

In August 2016, Tony held an exhibition at The View Two Gallery in Liverpool as part of International Beatleweek Festival 2016. This was the very first time all of Tony's posters had been on displayed under one roof.^[3]

Tony is still hard at working reproducing the original posters in his studio for collectors and Beatle enthusiasts.^[4]

References