Gerry and The Pacemakers

[yerblues1968]

GERRY AND THE PACEMAKERS


Gerry and The Pacemakers were a British rock and roll group during the 1960s. In common with The Beatles, they came from Liverpool and were managed by Brian Epstein.

Gerry Marsden formed the group in 1959 with his brother, Fred, Les Chadwick and Arthur McMahon. They rivaled the Beatles early in their career, playing in the same areas of Hamburg, Germany and Liverpool, England. McMahon (known as Arthur Mack) was replaced on piano by Les Maguire around 1961. They are known to have rehearsed at Camell Laird shipping yard at Birkenhead.

The band was the second to sign with Brian Epstein, who later signed them with Columbia Records (a sister label to The Beatles label Parlophone under EMI). They began recording in early 1963 with How Do You Do It?, a song written by Mitch Murray that Adam Faith had turned down and one that The Beatles chose not to release (they did record the song but chose to release their own song Please Please Me). The song was produced by George Martin and became a number one hit in the UK, until being replaced at the top by From Me to You, The Beatles' third single.




Gerry and The Pacemakers "How Do You Do It?" (1:52 minutes)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=UecrX8ZtF7s


Gerry and The Pacemakers' next two singles, Murray's I Like It and Rodgers and Hammerstein's You'll Never Walk Alone, both also reached number one in the UK Singles Chart. Never before had the first three singles by a performer all reached the top spot (the feat would not be duplicated until Frankie Goes to Hollywood did it in the 1980s). You'll Never Walk Alone had been a favourite of Gerry Marsden's since seeing Carousel growing up (he turned down the Beatles' Hello Little Girl for this slot, which then became the first hit for The Fourmost). It soon became the signature tune of Liverpool Football Club. To this day, the song remains a football anthem, there and elsewhere, a phenomenon due to Gerry Marsden, rather than its Broadway composers.




Gerry and The Pacemakers "I Like It." (2:11 minutes)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOYOJAczH0k




Gerry and The Pacemakers "I Like It" in a later video during the '80s. (1:21 minutes)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbq4Hz9SmFQ




Gerry and The Pacemakers "You'll Never Walk Alone." (2:41 minutes)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=8smO4VS9134




Gerry and The Pacemakers "You'll Never Walk Alone" 1965 live performance. (2:42 minutes)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7zWtQagdMY


Despite this early success, Gerry and The Pacemakers never had another number one single in the UK. Gerry Marsden began writing most of their own songs, including It's Gonna Be All Right, I'm the One, and Ferry Cross the Mersey, as well as their first and biggest U.S. hit, Don't Let the Sun Catch You Crying, which peaked at #4, and which Gerry Marsden initially gave to Decca recording artist Louise Cordet in 1963. She recorded the song (Decca F11824), but without commercial success. They also starred in an early 1965 film called Ferry Cross the Mersey (sometimes referred to as Gerry & The Pacemakers' version of A Hard Day's Night), for which Marsden wrote much of the soundtrack. The title song was revived in the 1980s as a charity single for a ferry disaster appeal, giving Gerry another British number one in association with other Liverpool stars, including Paul McCartney and Frankie Goes to Hollywood's Holly Johnson.



Gerry and The Pacemakers "It's Gonna Be All Right." The video
is from the 1965 movie "Ferry Cross The Mersey." (3:24 minutes)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_uiMq2W_jg




Gerry and The Pacemakers perform "I'm The One." (2:27 minutes)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aMipk1X-xU




Movie trailer for "Ferry Cross The Mersey" film presented by (manager) Brian Epstein.
Artists also included in the film are The Foremost and Cilla Black. (2:37 minutes)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-d0xUXdzoY




Gerry and The Pacemakers perform "Ferry Cross The Mersey"
from their 1965 hit movie of the same title. (3:44 minutes)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJcjrxp1XiM




Gerry and The Pacemakers "Don't Let The Sun Catch You Crying." (2:23 minutes)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fh8YudkZ1yQ


In the US, they were signed by the small New York independent Laurie Records in 1963 and Laurie issued four singles during 1963 without success.

* How Do You Do It? / Away From You (Laurie 3162)
* I Like It / It Happened To Me (Laurie 3196)
* You'll Never Walk Alone / It's Alright (Laurie 3218)
* I'm The One / How Do You Do It? (Laurie 3233)
* I'm The One / It's Alright (Laurie 3233)


When The Beatles broke through in January, 1964, Laurie's next regular single release of Don't Let The Sun Catch You Crying became a big hit and during 1964, Laurie coupled How Do You Do It? with You'll Never Walk Alone (Laurie 3261) and I Like It with Jambalaya (Laurie 3271) with great success.

By late 1965, their popularity was rapidly declining on both sides of the Atlantic. They disbanded in October 1966, with much of their latter recorded material never released in the UK.

Drummer Freddie Marsden died on 9 December 2006, age 66.


Gerry Marsden & The Pacemakers Official Site.
www.gerrymarsden.co.uk/

www.classicbands.com/pacemakers.html

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerry_and_the_Pacemakers

[yerblues1968]

Older brother Fred Marsden is on the far right.

I WENT FROM A ROCK STAR TO A £14-A-WEEK PHONE OPERATOR


David Charters, Daily Post


Apr 7 2003


THE father was a railway clerk who entertained his friends in the parlour of their terraced house by playing the ukulele in the style of George Formby.

The elder boy, who had his eyes set on a coveted place in grammar school, fancied that one day he might he a bit of a drummer, keeping up the rhythm for the dancers under the shimmering lights of the local halls.

So the father took the skin off one of his ukuleles and stretched it over a Quality Street chocolate tin. "There son," he said. "This is your first snare drum."

The younger son, though, who sang well and played the guitar, had higher ambitions beating in his heart. Music made stars, he said to anyone who would listen. You only had to look at Lonnie Donegan and Elvis Presley. They were fine examples for the new generation.

And so the young Gerry Marsden became the leader of the Pacemakers, while the older Freddie took his place on the drums at the back of the stage.

The demands of showbiz meant that Freddie was to neglect his studies at St Francis Xavier school, which he was to leave with just a maths O-level. Gerry, who was at Our Lady of Mount Carmel secondary modern school, never believed that his lessons would open the way to fame and fortune.

Well, that was all a long time ago. Now Freddie, 62, is recovering from a heart attack at his luxury bungalow in Formby, which he bought in the days of screams and big cheques.

He smiles now as he remembers the early years of the group, before they were international superstars, who notched three successive number ones in the British charts, a feat which even the Beatles, their great buddies and rivals, couldn't equal.

You have the feeling, talking at length to Freddie Marsden, that he had been much happier playing skiffle numbers in the small local venues in those innocent days, leading up to the crazy years of fame, which turned Gerry into a household name. Then his photograph, with a smile as broad as a cob of corn, was clasped in the lockets of thousands of pubescent girls.

Freddie had his share of admirers, too, but he says that his forehead was too high to carry the fashion for long hair. Of course, there is nothing wrong with a noble brow. But it must have been hard to live in the shadow of a young brother, who is still synonymous with the success of Liverpool in the 1960s.

Whenever the football anthem, You'll Never Walk Alone, or the yearning Ferry Cross the Mersey, are played on the radio, people think of Gerry, forgetting the big brother who played the drums with such dedication.

On the surface, Freddie doesn't seem to mind. But beneath his calm and charming manner, you sense a little resentment which he is too nice, too dignified, to express.

After the Pacemakers split up in 1968, freeing Gerry to star in the successful West End show Charlie Girl, Freddie became a telephone operator on £14 a week. That was a difficult time. But Freddie was a local boy, who still played right-half for the Royal Standard pub football team, Bootle.

He had remained loyal to his roots, remembering how when he was 12 and Gerry was 10, there had been the Gerry Marsden Trio. Together, they would pile onto the bus with all their instruments.

They were quite an accomplished little group, too, with Dixie Dean or Mick Taylor making up the numbers. Then they had the wheeze of calling themselves the Mars Bars. But permission was denied by the sweet manufacturer.

After some thought, they decided on the Pacemakers, which was probably a better name anyway as it explained their advance from the skiffle of Lonnie Donegan to rock 'n' roll. In this way, they were ahead of another local combo, which would later be known to the world as the Beatles.

But their histories ran along similar lines, both learning their trade in the local halls, the clubs of Hamburg and, of course, The Cavern. By that time, Freddie had abandoned the old Quality Street tin for a real snare drum and a cymbal.

"We were always very good," says Freddie. "We were always spot on with the chords and the right notes and the breaks. We always had to get those drum breaks and we would all stop together.

"We were good and tight, practising in the parlour of the family house in Menzies Street, Dingle. My mum and dad would be in the kitchen. The neighbours were brilliant considering what they had to put up with. We did have an electric guitar." In this little house, Freddie celebrated his 21st birthday with the Beatles.

Popularity polls of the time showed Gerry and the Pacemakers to be just a whisker behind the Beatles in the city. They were keen rivals. By then the Pacemakers had their famous line-up of Gerry (vocals, lead guitar), Les Chadwick (bass), Les Maguire (piano and saxophone) and Freddie (drums).

In 1963 the rivalry became even keener, when the Pacemakers became the first British group to achieve number ones with their first three singles How Do You Do It?, I Like It (both written by Mitch Murray) and You'll Never Walk Alone (from the Rogers and Hammerstein musical, Carousel).

But Gerry wanted to be a solo star. The end came. "I had no qualifications because all my after-school energy had gone into the group," Freddie says. "I hadn't much money, despite what people thought, and so I became a telephone operator on £14 a week."

Ironically his voice was heard more often then than it was in the glory days. But the people on the other end of the line didn't know that the soft Scouse accent belonged to a star. He stayed there until the early 1990s when he began the Pacemaker driving school, which he will run again when he is fit. But Freddie is happy with his lovely wife, Margaret, and their daughter and son, Sara Jane, 34, and Ashley, 15.

Does he still play the drums? "No, I got rid of my drums. They took up too much space in the garage."


icliverpool.icnetwork.co.uk/0100news/0100regionalnews/page.cfm?objectid=12818421&method=full&siteid=50061

[yerblues1968]

Fred Marsden is pictured
at the farthest right.


FRED MARSDEN, MERSEYBEAT DRUMMER, DIES


SFGate.com


Thursday, December 14, 2006


(12-14) 09:47 PST LONDON, United Kingdom (AP) --


Fred Marsden, the drummer in the Merseybeat band Gerry and the Pacemakers, has died at age 66, his family said.

Marsden died of cancer Saturday in Southport, England, according to a family death announcement published Tuesday in the Liverpool Echo newspaper.

The band, fronted by Marsden's brother, Gerry, was the second group signed by Brian Epstein, whose first band was The Beatles.

Gerry and the Pacemakers become the first from Liverpool to have a No. 1 single with How Do You Do It? in 1963, followed that year by another chart-topper, I Like It.

Later hits included You'll Never Walk Alone, Ferry Cross the Mersey, and Don't Let the Sun Catch You Crying, co-written by Fred.

The group disbanded in 1967. Gerry Marsden reformed the Pacemakers in 1973 but without Fred, who had given up the music business to be a telephone operator and later established the Pacemaker driving school.

Marsden is survived by his wife, Margaret, and two children. A funeral will be held Friday at Our Lady's Church in Formby.


www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2006/12/14/entertainment/e094711S93.DTL