Terry Doran

Terence James Doran (14 December 1939 – 18 April 2020) was an English luxury car dealer, pop music manager and music publishing executive, best known for his association with the Beatles.

Doran was born in 1939 and grew up in Liverpool.

His parents were Joseph and Elizabeth (née Molloy) Doran.

He was the second of four children, and had three sisters.

His childhood nickname was "Teddy".

After leaving school, Doran started working for a car dealership in Warrington, near Liverpool.

He met Brian Epstein, who was then managing the Epstein family's NEMS record stores, in a Liverpool pub in 1959 and the pair became close friends.

Beatles historian Mark Lewisohn describes Doran as "a car salesman with a sharp mind and a ready Liverpool wit".

With Beatles manager Brian Epstein, he co-owned Brydor Cars in the 1960s, supplying sportscars to many figures in the Swinging London era, including the Beatles and members of the Rolling Stones and the Moody Blues.

He met the Beatles in the early 1960s, shortly after Epstein had become the band's manager.

As a salesman for Hawthorne Motors in Warrington, Doran sold the first car owned by a member of the Beatles – a blue Ford Anglia – to George Harrison, the youngest member of the group.

In exchange for the reasonable terms offered by Doran, Harrison agreed to pose with his bandmates John Lennon and Paul McCartney, and the car, in an advertisement for Hawthorne.

The ad appeared in the local Mersey Beat music newspaper in July 1962, at a time when the Beatles' popularity had yet to expand beyond the north of England and the club circuit in Hamburg.

Doran then supplied the band – who were soon to fire Pete Best as their drummer and probably lose Best's van as their means of transportion to gigs – with an eight-seater Ford Thames van, which NEMS purchased on the group's behalf.

He relocated to London in 1963 when they moved south to capitalise on their national breakthrough.

He remained among the group's inner circle, along with other friends from Liverpool who went on to work at Apple, and was a trusted confidant to each of the band members.

In 1963, Doran moved to London when Epstein relocated NEMS there, following the Beatles' national breakthrough.

He shared a flat in Shepherd Market in Mayfair with BBC Radio producer Bernie Andrews.

According to Harrison's first wife, Pattie Boyd, Doran's move from Liverpool came about through a heated telephone conversation with Bradshaw Webb, an upmarket car dealership in Chelsea, during which Doran declared, "If you treat your customers anything like you treat me you're fucked – you'll never sell another car."

The company's chairman responded by sending him a first-class train ticket to London and offering him a job.

As a Bradshaw Webb salesman, Doran sold a Maserati to Epstein, who became interested in the potential of a car sales business.

Doran co-owned (with Epstein) and ran the car dealership Brydor, based in Hounslow, west of London.

The company name was an amalgamation of Epstein's first name and Doran's surname.

His customers included the Beatles, who acquired their Minis through Brydor.

He also supplied the group with luxury cars as the band members showed an increasing interest in expensive automobiles.

These cars included a Ferrari, a Lamborghini, a Mercedes-Benz stretch limousine and a Rolls-Royce Phantom V, all for Lennon; a Jaguar E-Type for Harrison when he turned 21 in February 1964, followed by a white Aston Martin DB5; an Aston Martin DB6 for McCartney; and a Mercedes and a Facel Vega for Ringo Starr.

Epstein added to his own car collection with a customised Bentley S3 saloon.

Doran fulfilled this order by having the car delivered to Heathrow Airport as Epstein and the Beatles returned to England after the group's highly successful first American tour.

Lennon started buying cars from Brydor even though he did not possess a driving licence at first, while Starr only passed his driving test in October 1964.

Starr then spent a day selecting a car before settling on the Facel Vega, which he test-drove by taking it up the M1 motorway at 140 miles an hour.

Brydor's business thrived as English rock stars were drawn to Epstein's connection to the company.

Among Doran's other sportscar customers were Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones, Lionel Bart, and members of the Moody Blues and the Yardbirds.

When Andrew Loog Oldham, the Rolling Stones' manager, was undecided about the colour of a particular model he wanted, Doran had eight cars in different colours circle Berkeley Square so that Oldham could make his choice from his office window overlooking the square.

In 1967, he became the manager of Apple Publishing, the first appointment in the Beatles' Apple Corps business organisation.

He also managed the Apple artists Grapefruit and Mary Hopkin.

He was a personal assistant to John Lennon and then George Harrison.

He is often cited as the inspiration behind the line "Meeting a man from the motor trade" in the Beatles' 1967 song "She's Leaving Home", although Paul McCartney later denied the story.

Throughout the 1970s, he worked as Harrison's estate manager at Friar Park in Oxfordshire and assisted in restoring the property.

Doran first met the Beatles in Liverpool, through Epstein, and sold the band their first car, as well as the van in which they travelled to gigs around the North of England.

Doran died in 2020 of COVID-19, aged 80.