Home › downthetubes News › Other Worlds › Books › Tim Quinn exposes Liverpool music scene secrets (well, sort of) in latest book, “Bigger Than The Beatles”

Tim Quinn exposes Liverpool music scene secrets (well, sort of) in latest book, “Bigger Than The Beatles”

By John Freeman on February 13, 2025

Impish comic creator Tim Quinn – also author, raconteur and ruthless promoter of putting comics in front of children as a welcome means of education – is back causing mischief with his latest book, Bigger Than The Beatles: The Authorised Biography of a Dream Daffodil.

Published by New Haven Publishing, who have an impressive catalogue of music-related titles, as well as publishing comic titles such as Only Death Can Save Us by Rik Hoskin and Russ Leach and The Fantastic 400 by Tim Quinn and Dicky Howett through their Viking Press Comics imprint, Bigger Than The Beatles is a fictional story about Mike Simon’s band, The Dream Daffodils.

What do you mean, you’ve never heard of them? This is a who have the distinction of having more statues and more museums in their name than fellow Liverpudlians The Beatles!

“Edited by Tim Quinn”, who bears absolutely no resemblance to the bouffant Mike on the book’s cover, we’re told this brand new autobiography “lifts the lid on the Pop and Rock world from 1957 to the present day.”

“Publishing event of the decade!”
Billy Butler, Liverpool Live Radio

“Can you imagine what it would be like for a Liverpool boy who hit the global heights with his guitar back in the Sixties to still be attempting to make sense of today’s music scene?

“Pulling on his diaries and journals from across those 68 years, Mike Simon tells all about that extraordinary journey with his band the Dream Daffodils.”

Needless to say, given Tim’s many real life musical connections – including curating the comics section of Liverpool Beatles Museum – we’re sure there will be plenty of swipes at the music world’s excesses in this tell-all tale!

*If you think the Avengers were in bad shape at the end of* Infinity Wars, you should have seen us at the end of the Lord Mayor’s Parade back in 1993! Chilly November winds that cut through capes and skintights like lasers., including **Tim Quinn**, seen here at the back, in his guise as Marvel UK’s real life Doctor Strange! “Thanos would have been a walk in the park compared to what we had to put up with,” Time recalls today. “And don’t get me started on the squally rain! Few stranger days than to be dressed as a super-hero stuck atop a float for five hours, waving at millions of people lining the rain drenched streets of old London.”

Tim Quinn was born in Liverpool in 1953, the very same year Beryl the Peril first appeared in The Topper. Coincidence? We think not! Educated by Irish Christian Brothers whose prospectus boasted, ‘We will instill a fear of God into your child’, it was little wonder Tim chose a life in entertainment.

Starting his career as a clown at Blackpool Tower Circus he then leapt back in time to work on BBC TV’s The Good Old Days music hall series where he started writing scripts for top comedians. It was a small jump into the world of comic books where he spent many happy years as scriptwriter, illustrator and editor on such noted titles as The Beano, The Dandy, Sparky, The Topper, Buster, Whoopee!, Bunty, Jackie, Doctor Who Magazine, and Whizzer & Chips, before heading Stateside to work for the mighty Marvel Comics Group on the world famous Spider-Man, X-Men and the Incredible Hulk.

*Tim Quinn, a random Cyberman, and cartoonist Dicky Howett, during their time as creators of the “Doctor Who?” Strip for Doctor Who Magazine*

*Road Best, Carmichael creator Nigel Parkinson and Tim Quinn at the Liverpool Beatles Museum in 2022*

Tim has also worked as a writer for The Guardian newspaper, editor for America’s oldest publication The Saturday Evening Post and producer for LWT’s The South Bank Show (amongst others producing a show on the history of Marvel Comics!).

Today he is on a lecture tour of the UK discussing the humour and nostalgia of comics, runs a management company for recording artists, conducts workshops on cartooning and literacy, creates way too many charitable projects, and dreams of the day he will be bitten by a radioactive giraffe so that he can finally take over the universe.

• Bigger Than The Beatles: The Authorised Biography of a Dream Daffodil edited by Tim Quinn is available to preorder from AmazonUK (Affiliate Link) | ISBN: 978-1915975157

About the Author
Latest Posts

John Freeman

John is the founder of downthetubes, launched in 1998. He is a comics and magazine editor, writer, and Press Officer for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He also runs Crucible Comic Press.

Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine and Overkill for Marvel UK, Babylon 5 Magazine, Star Trek Magazine, and its successor, Star Trek Explorer, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics; and has edited several comic collections and graphic novels, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”, and Hancock: The Lad Himself, by Stephen Walsh and Keith Page.

He’s the writer of comics such as Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies for B7 Comics; “Crucible”, a creator-owned project with 2000AD artist Smuzz; and “Death Duty” and “Skow Dogs”, with Dave Hailwood.