The man who played drums on the Beatles’ first release Love Me Do has died aged 85.
Andy White, who also played on Tom Jones songs including It’s Not Unusual, was drafted in by the band’s producer George Martin to do a version of the single in 1962 while drummer Ringo Starr played the tambourine.
White, who was born in Stranraer and raised in Glasgow but moved told the US in the 1980s, was modest about his role in the recording at Abbey Road studios, which opened 84 years ago today.
His wife Thea said: “He didn’t talk about it very much, except to joke about it.
“He liked to say: ‘It could have been anybody. It just happened to be me.”‘
White started out playing drums in a bagpipe band when he was 12, and after moving to London in his 20s he toured in America with Rock Around the Clock group Bill Haley and the Comets.
Years later Starr recorded himself singing Love Me Do, and playing drums, and said in three decades he had “never let George Martin forget it (the snub)”.
White died on Monday in New Jersey, having suffered a stroke a few days earlier.
