Leonard Charles Garry (6 January 1942 â 2 March 2026) was an English musician, best known for being a member of the Quarrymen, a band which later evolved into the Beatles.
Garry was born in Wavertree, Liverpool, on 6 January 1942. His father Henry worked as a compositor at the Liverpool Daily Post, and his mother Phyllis was a housewife. His older brother, Walter, was born three years earlier. Garry attended Mosspits Lane Primary School, which included future Quarrymen members Pete Shotton, Nigel Walley and, briefly, John Lennon. He learned how to play the piano as a child.
In 1953 Garry was a pupil at Liverpool Institute High School for Boys, where he met Ivan Vaughan, who later introduced him to Paul McCartney. The two knew each other briefly as they were in the same German class. Two years later, Garry met John Lennon and in 1956 the Quarrymen were formed. The Quarrymen's original tea-chest bassist, Bill Smith, stopped showing up for practice and Garry became the band's new tea-chest bassist. This group, consisting of John Lennon, Eric Griffiths, Pete Shotton, Garry, Colin Hanton, and Rod Davis, formed the first stable line-up.
Garry performed with the Quarrymen at two of their most historical performances, on Rosebery Street, on 22 June 1957, and at their first performance at The Cavern Club. Garry remained with the group for a few months, but had to drop out after falling severely ill with tubercular meningitis. He did not return to the group. He recalled:
A few months after Garry's departure, the Quarrymen recorded their first singles: "That'll Be the Day" and "In Spite of All the Danger". Garry was one of two members of the Quarrymen who did not attend Quarry Bank High School, after which the band was named after, the other being Nigel Walley. Garry was in the same room as John Lennon, when he and McCartney first met on 6 July 1957:
In 1997, Garry reunited with surviving members of the Quarrymen to perform a concert to commemorate 40 years since the group's formation. They embarked on a tour of the United Kingdom, United States, Germany, Japan, among others. Garry participated on all subsequent Quarrymen releases, including their three albums Get Back â Together (1997), Songs We Remember (2004), and Grey Album (2012). Their later material primarily consisted of rock and roll and skiffle songs from the 1950s. Garry was portrayed by actor Frazer Bird in the 2009 biopic Nowhere Boy. The Quarrymen performed in New York City, for what would have been Lennon's 70th birthday in 2010.
As a young adult, Garry worked as an architect in Liverpool and married. In 1971, he and his wife moved to Chard, Somerset. During his time in Somerset, he fronted a rock gospel group called Come Together, and both of his daughters were born there. In 1987, he and his family migrated to New Zealand; after a few months they returned to England and they moved back to Liverpool.
Garry died at home on 2 March 2026, aged 84, from pneumonia following a chest infection.