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John ‘Duff’ Lowe, piano player in The Quarrymen lineup that featured John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison, has died at the age of 81.
A school friend of McCartney, Lowe was invited to join the band in February 1958. A Quarrymen member for two years, ‘Duff’ was part of the lineup when the band laid down a cover of Buddy Holly’s That’ll Be The Day and the McCartney-Harrison co-write In Spite Of All The Danger at Phillips Sound Recording Service in Liverpool – the first time the future Beatles would appear on a disc. The finished 78RPM acetate was handed around the band members with Lowe keeping it safe until McCartney finally bought it from him in 1981 for an undisclosed fee. The songs would eventually appear in remastered versions on The Beatles’ Anthology 1. Lowe rejoined The Quarrymen in 1994 and, despite not being classified as an official member, toured worldwide with Rod Davis, Len Garry and Colin Hanton as John Lennon’s Original Quarrymen at Beatles events until 2017.