Laurence Maurice Parnes (3 September 1929 – 4 August 1989) was an English pop manager and impresario.
He was the first major British rock manager, and his stable of singers included many of the most successful British rock singers of the late 1950s and early 1960s.Parnes' reputation has been damaged in recent years by testimony from many of the artists he managed in the late fifties and early sixties who were ruthlessly exploited, often worked to exhaustion on pay which was a tiny fraction of the profit he made from their talent.
Shortly before his death, Parnes told an interviewer that his one regret was 'not to have looked after his bank balance better'.
By this time Billy Fury had died in poverty having made Parnes a fortune.