 In the late 1950s, when teenagers John Lennon and Paul McCartney were putting together their earliest group in one part of Liverpool, Tony Barrow was presenting jazz bands and skiffle-folk groups at local dance halls and clubs across town in the south Lancashire suburb of Crosby.Educated locally at Merchant Taylors School he later studied languages at Durham University.In 1954, when he was still a 17-year-old sixth-form schoolboy, he landed his first regular freelance writing job as pop-rock record reviewer for the "Liverpool Echo", the largest-selling provincial evening newspaper in the UK.