gerry and the pacemakers

Today’s Top 10 – November 26th, 1963

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The two earlier ‘Today’s Top 10’s I’ve done were pretty succesful. Thanks to all who had a look, liked and commented. I was wondering what to do with the feature going forward, and I think I’ll use it to take a deeper look at interesting periods in chart history. What can the Top 10 tell us about where pop music was at a particular time and place?

So, we’ve done the death of the ’60s, and we’ve done the Summer of Love. Now we turn to perhaps one of the most exciting times in modern popular music: late-1963. The moment when the sixties finally started to swing. Thanks, mainly, to the Beatles. But not, as this chart will hopefully prove, solely because of them. For those interested in significant world events, this was also the Top 10 on the week that JFK was assassinated.

10. Let It Rock / Memphis, Tennessee, by Chuck Berry – down 4 (7 weeks on chart)

But what’s this…? Two rock ‘n’ roll tunes first released in 1959. How the charts like to mess with us… The reason is tied to the times, though. The Godfathers of rock, Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Chuck Berry, had inspired the new Beat groups that we’ll be meeting further up this chart. The Beatles early albums were full of Berry songs, while the Stones’ first hit had been a cover of ‘Come On’ earlier in 1963. Pye Records saw an opportunity, and released some of these influential tunes for the first time in the UK. Amazingly, this was Berry’s first ever visit to the UK Top 10. A runaway train might not be the most obvious topic for a rock ‘n’ roll tune, but this wasn’t Berry’s first time singing about a railroad. And the way he makes his guitar sound like a train horn is iconic.

It was paired with the more laidback ‘Memphis, Tennessee’, which had also been a hit in a version by Dave Berry & the Cruisers around the same time. It pulls the same trick as such classics as Gilbert O’ Sullivan’s ‘Clair’, and Brotherhood of Man’s ‘Save Your Kisses for Me’, by tricking the listener into thinking that the singer is singing about a girlfriend, when he is actually singing about a small child. Berry, though, consumate storyteller that he was, manages to do it in a far less creepy manner, making the song more about the messy break-up, and the father’s regret, than about dodgy double entendres.

9. I’ll Keep You Satisfied, by Billy J. Kramer & The Dakotas – up 2 (3 weeks on chart)

This one’s much more 1963. One of the big beat combos that had broken through earlier in the year (with another three to come higher up), and who had been at #1 just a few weeks earlier with the Lennon-McCartney tune ‘Bad to Me’. ‘I’ll Keep You Satisfied’ is another L&M composition and, while it would peak decently at #4, it isn’t quite as good. Still, it’s better than the Dakota’s next hit, the dubious ‘Little Children’. Watching the video above, the music may be (slightly) rocking, but Billy J. is giving good crooner energy. Nothing to worry grandma… yet.

8. I (Who Have Nothing), by Shirley Bassey – up 1 (9 weeks on chart)

A constant presence on the charts of the ’50s and ’60s: a bit of Bassey. This is three minutes of pure melodrama, as Shirley watches an old-flame woo his new girl. ‘I (Who Have Nothing)’ was adapted from an Italian hit, which was something of a theme in the early sixties. It’s a classic of its genre: an intro of swirling strings, quiet bits, and bits where she lets loose, belting out high notes like nobody else can. I always find Shirley Bassey somewhat lacking in subtlety, but then again – if you’ve got it flaunt it. If I could sing like her then I’d be belting out my Starbucks orders.

7. Blue Bayou / Mean Woman Blues, by Roy Orbison – down 3 (10 weeks on chart)

Another double-‘A’ side from an American rocker, who had been around since the ’50s. Unlike the Chuck Berry record, though, this was a new hit. ‘Blue Bayou’ is one of Orbison’s gentler numbers – for the Big ‘O’ could of course give Shirley Bassey a run for her money in the belting stakes – but it’s always been one of my favourites. Even as a young ‘un who had no idea what the hell a ‘bayou’ was. Linda Rondstadt recorded a famous cover in 1977, though that didn’t make the UK Top 10.

On the flipside of this disc was a cover of ‘Mean Woman Blues’, an Elvis track from 1957. Personally, while they are both fine singers, I prefer Elvis’s version. I prefer bombastic, overblown Orbison to rocking Orbison. On this record he tries out the famous Grrrrrr, which he’d use to great effect on his chart-topping ‘Oh, Pretty Woman’ the following year.

6. Secret Love, by Kathy Kirby – up 6 (3 weeks on chart)

We’re keeping an eye out for the bands that came along in 1963 and changed popular music forever. But for every beat combo that made it big, there were plenty of British women who were just as instrumental in making the sixties swing. Kathy Kirby’s name hasn’t lasted alongside the likes of Cilla, Dusty, Lulu or Sandie Shaw, but here she is, enjoying her biggest hit. Her take on ‘Secret Love’ starts off very bombastically, much like Doris Day’s chart-topping original from a decade earlier, but soon a groovy guitars-and-backing-singers beat takes over, nicely updating the song for a new era. Plus, she has a great voice, with a bit of bite to it. Kirby may have retired from showbusiness in the early eighties and died in relative obscurity, but for a while she was a huge name: representing the UK at Eurovision in 1965 (finishing as runner-up) and hosting her own television programme.

5. Don’t Talk to Him, by Cliff Richard & The Shadows – up 2 (3 weeks on chart)

Common knowledge would have it that with the arrival of the Beatles et al the career of Cliff Richard – the hottest star in the land just a year or so earlier – fell off a, well, cliff. But glance at any Top 40 from any random moment post-1962, and it quickly becomes clear that Cliff went nowhere. Okay, he didn’t hit #1 as regularly, but ‘Don’t Talk to Him’ was one of an astounding 33 Top 10 hits he achieved across the sixties. I’d never heard this before, but it’s actually a really good song, combining a latin rhythm with some very current, beat guitars. This could easily have been written and recorded by one of the acts a couple of places up this chart, proving that Cliff gave those young whippersnappers a stronger run for their money than the history books suggest. *Some sources disagree as to whether this was Cliff solo, or Cliff with the Shadows, but I’ve gone with the latter*

4. Be My Baby, by the Ronettes – up 1 (6 weeks on chart)

The first of two all-time great, hall of fame pop songs in this week’s Top 4. The fact that this never made it higher than number four is a shock, and I’ve already done a post on how this really Should Have Been a #1. Even on this chart, in the year that it was recorded, where girl groups like the Ronettes were common, ‘Be My Baby’ stands out as special. It would stand out as special on any chart, in any era, simply because it is better than 99.95% of anything else in the history of pop.

3. Sugar and Spice, by the Searchers – down 1 (5 weeks on chart)

Here we are then, a purely Liverpudlian Top 3. The Searchers had been the 3rd Merseybeat band to make number one that year, after the two acts ahead of them in this chart, with their cover of The Drifters’ ‘Sweets for My Sweet’. Although still on the candy theme, ‘Sugar and Spice’ was an original, written by producer Tony Hatch. The chiming guitars and harmonies, as well the almost skiffle rhythm section, are pleasant, almost proto jangle-pop. But within a year, once the Stones, Kinks and Animals started making the upper reaches of the charts, it would start to sound a bit safe. The Searchers had two much better hits to come: their majestic second #1 ‘Needles and Pins’, and their cover of ‘When You Walk in the Room’. Like so many Beat bands that didn’t, or couldn’t, write their own material, the Searchers’ chart shelf-life was limited.

2. She Loves You, by The Beatles – up 1 (13 weeks on chart)

The song that officially kicked off the swinging sixties? The way that ‘She Loves You’ barrels in, chorus-first, on a wave of tight guitars and precision drumming, and yeah yeah yeahs. In France, this style of Beat music literally became known as ‘Yé-yé’ (and surely everyone knows by now how Mr McCartney Senior thought ‘yes, yes, yes’ would have sounded much more proper…) It is utterly perfect pop, to rank alongside the Ronettes a couple of places below it on this week’s chart. Although they developed their sound so far beyond this, I would still rank ‘She Loves You’ in my personal Beatles Top 3. You can read my original post on it, as a number one, here. On this week in November 1963, it was on its way back to number one, having already spent a month there that autumn, and on its way to becoming the biggest-selling single ever, at that point, in the UK (where it remains the Fab Four’s highest seller). Also, the seven-week gap between its two runs at the top remains a record to this day.

1. You’ll Never Walk Alone, by Gerry & the Pacemakers – non-mover (7 weeks on chart)

The 4th Beat group in the Top 10 on this day sixty-one years ago, Gerry & the Pacemakers had made history by being the first act to make #1 with their first three singles. This was the final week of a month-long run for ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’, and it would also be The Pacemakers final week on top of the charts. (You can read my original post on it here.) The fact that for only their 3rd single the band had turned to a cover of a song from a 1945 musical is telling. While the Beatles were just warming up, their contemporaries were often relying on covers (or on handouts from Lennon & McCartney). Plus there was the fact that for record labels and producers, rock and roll was still a very new thing, one that many were convinced wouldn’t last. It was seen as essential for bands to branch out, and to nurture a wider appeal.

Of course we know now that rock ‘n’ roll was here to stay, even if Gerry & The Pacemakers weren’t. ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ was also here to stay, and by the end of its initial chart run it had already been adopted by the crowd at Anfield as Liverpool FC’s unofficial anthem, to be belted out pre-match from here to eternity. The song returned to number one in a charity version by The Crowd, following the Bradford City fire, while it also made top spot for a third time in 2020 in a version featuring Michael Ball and the 100-year-old Captain Tom Moore, a phenomenon that can only be explained by how crazy we all went during lockdown. It is nothing short of a modern-day hymn, given the song’s role in the current British psyche.

I hope you enjoyed this flashback to Today’s Top 10 in 1963. What a snapshot of popular music that was, as Britain finally cast off the shadow of the War and started to get a little groovy. Up next we’ll return to 1999, and to a country just a few months away from the terrifying uncertainty of a new millenium. Would all the computers crash? Would planes start dropping from the sky…? Nobody knew, so confused and distracted were people that they kept buying Ronan Keating records in large quantities. Stress will do that to you…

628. ‘Ferry ‘Cross the Mersey’, by The Christians, Holly Johnson, Paul McCartney, Gerry Marsden & Stock Aitken Waterman

/ UK #1s blog / 8 Comments

Of all the charity chart-toppers we’ve met in recent years – and we’ve met a fair few since Band Aid kicked it all off at Xmas 1984 – I’m most uncomfortable approaching this next one with anything like my usual light-hearted tone…

Ferry ‘Cross the Mersey, by The Christians (their only #1), Holly Johnson (his only solo #1), Paul McCartney (his 3rd and final solo #1), Gerry Marsden (his only solo #1) & Stock Aitken Waterman

3 weeks, from 14th May – 4th June 1989

We’ve had records raising money for famine in Africa, children’s charities, and a ferry disaster. We’ve already had one charity single for a disaster in a football stadium, when I was able to comment blithely on the fact that the Nolans and Lemmy from Motorhead were singing along together happily. But this one somehow hits deeper.

Three weeks before this record was released, Liverpool and Nottingham Forest were due to contest an FA Cup semi-final at Hillsborough stadium, in Sheffield. One of the stadium concourses, next to a stand housing the Liverpool supporters, had become dangerously overcrowded. To alleviate crowds outside the ground, with kick-off fast approaching, an exit gate was opened, which meant that people could enter the stand more quickly. This created an even bigger crush inside the stadium, from which there was no escape. The match was abandoned after five minutes, but by the end of the day ninety-four Liverpool supporters had been crushed to death. That number would rise in the coming months and years to ninety-seven. A further three hundred were hospitalised.

So far, so tragic. Of course what makes it worse, and what makes Hillsborough resonate to this day, was that South Yorkshire Police blamed the disaster on drunken hooligans rather than police mismanagement and incompetence, aided by sensationalism from various newspapers. Subsequent reports and inquests over the years uncovered that the crush wasn’t down to hooliganism, and that the police, the ambulance services and the stadium design were the main factors. It took almost thirty years for criminal charges to be brought against those responsible.

I’m not sure why this tragedy hits deeper, and I’m not sure if this is the place to ponder that question. Perhaps it’s because I’m a football fan, have been to many football stadiums, though usually in a seat (following the Hillsborough disaster, football stadiums used in the upper tiers of British football were required to transition from standing to seating). Then there’s the fact that it took so long for justice to be served. And the fact that crushes like this still happen at football matches (see last year’s Champions League final) and elsewhere (in Seoul, last Halloween). They tend to happen at what should be fun occasions – sporting events, concerts, nights out – and the people who die what must be excruciating deaths are never the ones to blame.

Musically this song is as you’d expect of a hastily-assembled charity single in 1989. It’s an interesting chart moment: a group of the biggest Liverpudlian pop stars claiming their only ‘solo’ #1s (Holly Johnson of Frankie Goes to Hollywood and Gerry & The Pacemakers’ Gerry Marsden) as well as the biggest songwriting team of the day (Stock Aitken Waterman) getting a rare credit. Oh, and an ex-Beatle scoring his last (officially credited) #1. Unlike previous charity singles the video doesn’t feature the stars – instead it features old footage of Liverpool, of the football team, of Hillsborough flooded with flowers in the aftermath of the disaster, with the name of each victim running by at the bottom of the screen.

‘Ferry Cross the Mersey’ had originally been a #8 hit for The Pacemakers in early 1965, their final Top 10 record after a burst of success at the start of the Merseybeat boom. It’s a nice enough song, though you’d assume that had ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ not been used by The Crowd then it would have been the chosen song, given its association with Liverpool FC. Anyway, here ends this sombre interlude, both in terms of the charts and this blog. Jason Donovan will be keeping things light and fluffy next, so until then…

551. ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’, by The Crowd

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It’s our third charity chart-topper in six months, after over thirty years of managing quite happily without them, and so I’m introducing a new template. For every charity single that features henceforth, I’ll first spend a paragraph detailing how terrible the tragedy that inspired it was. I’ll then spend several more paragraphs detailing how terrible the ensuing record is… Sounds good?

You’ll Never Walk Alone, by The Crowd

2 weeks, from 9th – 23rd June 1985

The serious bit, then. On 11th May 1985, at a Third Division match between Bradford City and Lincoln City, a fire broke out in the main stand of the home side’s Valley Parade stadium. A fan had dropped a cigarette butt through a hole in the floor, where it landed on a pile of litter. On a dry and windy day, the stand was engulfed with flames inside five minutes. Fifty-six people died, many horrifically burnt alive, while another two hundred and sixty five were injured.

Gerry Marsden, of Gerry & the Pacemakers fame, decided to make a record to raise money for the victims and their families, and settled on a cover of his band’s 1963 #1, ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’, which was already a popular terrace song. He assembled a cast drawn from all corners of the British popular entertainment scene…

And the record sounds exactly as you’d expect. It is a large group of people singing along to ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’. It’s not awful; it’s far from being particularly good. It’s karaoke, recorded solely to make money for a good cause. I’m sure Marsden’s heart was in the right place (and he wasn’t just bandwagon jumping his way back to relevance). The most interesting thing about it, by far, are the people involved. Band Aid was full of bright young things; USA for Africa was a ‘Who’s Who’ of American pop. The Crowd are, well, a crowd.

Let’s start with the musicians. There’s Gerry Marsden (becoming the first person to top the charts with the same song), there’s Jim Diamond, Kiki Dee, Denny Laine, Tony Christie and Rick Wakeman. There’s Rolf Harris… There’s Motorhead and The Nolans! (Any record that manages to feature both Motorhead and The Nolans cannot simply be dismissed…) There’s Phil Lynott of Thin Lizzy, John Entwhistle of The Who, and Frank Allen of The Searchers. There’s Black Lace!! And then there are the non-musicians… The DJ Dave Lee Travis, the boxer John Conteh, the comedian Keith Chegwin, certified national treasure Bruce Forsyth…

Frankly, there are too many to list properly. It is a mind-bender of a lineup, a walking pub quiz question of a number one… Some bloke called Paul McCartney is relegated to a spoken-word ‘B’-side (completely understandable when you’ve already booked Rolf Harris and Cheggers…)

The fact that this record gave a #1 single to so many different people makes me think it should be better remembered. Except, then I press play one more time and realise why this has been quietly forgotten. It’s neither good enough, nor bad enough, to linger very long. And, sadly, the Valley Parade fire would also be overshadowed by another disaster in a British football stadium before the decade was out… ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’, meanwhile, has been back atop the charts fairly recently, still raising money for charity.

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Recap: #150 – #180

/ UK #1s blog / 4 Comments

And so we pause…

These latest thirty #1 records represent perhaps the richest vein of pop music ever to have been hit upon in this country. Much of 1961 and ’62 was spent drilling different holes – occasionally coming up with a beauty (The Tornados); largely hitting a lot of bland MOR (Cliff, Frank Ifield.) But one day, in April 1963, the motherlode was discovered. Merseybeat.

This is the Merseybeat recap. The most homogenous sounding bunch of chart-toppers we are ever likely to meet. Young guys with guitars singing perky songs about falling in love, holding hands and getting into something good. It started with a triple whammy – a call to kids across the land – as Gerry & The Pacemakers and The Beatles arrived at the top of the charts. The Searchers, Billy J. Kramer, The Tremeloes and The Dave Clark Five all soon followed. That stretch, from April ’63 through to the summer of ’64 is probably the most consistent sounding year in UK chart history, one beat-pop number followed by another, with few exceptions and very few duds.

It’s definitely the strongest bunch of #1s yet, and it’s been very hard to pick which ones are merely great and which ones are utterly transcendent. Classics like ‘From Me to You’, ‘I Like It’, ‘Glad All Over’, ‘Do Wah Diddy Diddy’, ‘Have I the Right?’ and ‘I’m Into Something Good’ – which might have made the ‘Best Of’ at any other time – will have to just get left by the wayside. Whole chart-topping careers, those of Billy J., The Searchers, The Pacemakers and Cilla Black, have come and gone in a blink of an eye. For so long we plodded through mediocrity; now we wish things could slow down a little.

Of course, nothing that good can last forever, but I was surprised by how quickly the Merseybeat wave came, conquered and then receded. By July 1964, a harder sound had arrived at the top courtesy of The Animals and The Rolling Stones (Yes, we met the Stones for the first time! What should have been a headline becomes a footnote thanks to the brilliance of those around them.) Beat pop has slowly started to fragment in recent months, into full on rock (‘You Really Got Me’), rhythm and blues (‘It’s All Over Now’), experimental electro pop (‘Have I the Right?’) and easy-listening with a hint-of-Beat (‘(There’s) Always Something There to Remind Me’.)

Out of the last thirty-one #1s, I can count only seven outliers. Seven discs that haven’t fit the Beat-pop/rock bill. Cilla’s two proto-power ballads, the best of which was ‘You’re My World’, The Pacemaker’s weird showtune swansong ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’, a couple of leftovers from the previous era in Elvis’s ‘(You’re the) Devil in Disguise’ and Frank Ifield’s final, and most pleasing, #1 ‘Confessin’ (That I Love You)’. And, of course, the return of Roy Orbison. The Roynaissance. ‘Oh, Pretty Woman’ was the sound of him meeting the Beat-revolution halfway; but his earlier comeback #1, the dramatic and operatic ‘It’s Over’, sounded completely out of place, and all the better for it.

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Which leads me to the latest ‘WTAF’ Award, and a truly tough decision. Do I award it to The Big O, for ‘It’s Over’, or to Gerry & The Pacemakers for the bizarre, and perhaps fatal, decision to record a version of ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’? I’m going to edge towards The Pacemakers – ‘It’s Over’ merely sounds out of place thanks to its surroundings; in the career of Roy Orbison it makes complete sense. Whereas I’m not sure anyone saw ‘YNWA’ coming. Still, it probably gets played ten times more these days than ‘I Like It’, and it means Gerry and the lads get a nice windfall any time Liverpool win a big match.

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Choosing a record to crown as both ‘Meh’ and the Very Worst Chart-Topper is also a tough decision. There simply haven’t been enough terrible records to go around. It’s basically a straight shootout between The Bachelors ‘Diane’ and The Four Pennies ‘Juliet’. Two landfill Merseybeat records, cashing in on the day’s signature sound to make bland MOR; two records named after girls. I’ll give the ‘Meh’ Award to ‘Juliet’ and the Very Worst Chart-Topper to ‘Diane’, as The Four Pennies were merely boring, while I feel there was something sinister in The Bachelors perverting Merseybeat into a record for grannies. Like when Pat Boone released his metal-covers record, or when Tom Jones did Prince…

Before we settle what was the best of the best, one thing that did surprise me as I covered the past thirty-one chart-topping discs was that only three of them were recorded by Americans. Roy Orbison, of course, and one Elvis Presley, who you may remember from previous recaps. Back in my first recap, during the pre-rock days, I commented on how few British acts there seemed to be, and how the big US stars of the day – Kay Starr, Perry Como, Eddie Fisher et al – were bringing the glamour to bombed-out, over-rationed Blighty. Well, ten years on and much has changed. The Brits are the cool ones – it was they who were invading the Billboard Hot 100 across the Atlantic. Except, they were doing so with American-written songs. All The Searchers’ #1s were originally recorded by US vocal groups. Cilla and Sandie Shaw hit big with Bacharach and David numbers. ‘Do You Love Me?’ was a Motown number, while ‘I’m Into Something Good’ was written by Goffin and King. An interesting footnote to the British Invasion.

To the crème de la crème, then… The 6th Very Best Chart-Topper award. I’ve narrowed it down to a top five. ‘How Do You Do It?’, by Gerry and the P’s, for kicking this whole shebang off. Then The Animals, for announcing the end of Merseybeat a year later with the deep-throated, bluesy ‘The House of the Rising Sun’. They’re joint fourth. 3rd place goes to ‘You Really Got Me’ – in which the Kinks invented garage rock, power-pop and, oh yes, heavy metal – and generally grabbed us all by the bollocks and kicked us up the arse. Runner-up goes to the sublime ‘Needles and Pins’ by The Searchers – a moment of sad-pop melancholy in amongst the frenzy. I really wish I could argue a case for this being the very best but… I can’t. Not when The Fab Four are looking on.

Yes, five of the past bunch of chart-toppers were by The Beatles, with a further two written and donated to other acts by Lennon & McCartney. All of which were good-to-great #1s. (Sorry to disappoint, but I won’t have too many bad words to say about any of their seventeen chart-toppers.) One though, stands out above the rest. The one hundred and fifty seventh UK chart-topper, and the moment the world realised that they were in on something spectacular: ‘She Loves You’. Yeah, yeah… Yeah!

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To recap the recaps, then:

The ‘Meh’ Award for Forgettability: 1. ‘Hold My Hand’, by Don Cornell. 2. ‘It’s Almost Tomorrow’, by The Dream Weavers. 3. ‘On the Street Where You Live’, by Vic Damone. 4. ‘Why’, by Anthony Newley. 5. ‘The Next Time’ / ‘Bachelor Boy’, by Cliff Richard & The Shadows. 6. ‘Juliet’, by The Four Pennies.

The ‘WTAF’ Award for Being Interesting if Nothing Else: 1. ‘I See the Moon’, by The Stargazers. 2. ‘Lay Down Your Arms’, by Anne Shelton. 3. ‘Hoots Mon’, by Lord Rockingham’s XI. 4. ‘You’re Driving Me Crazy’, by The Temperance Seven. 5. ‘Nut Rocker’, by B. Bumble & The Stingers. 6. ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’, by Gerry & The Pacemakers.

The Very Worst Chart-Toppers: 1. ‘Cara Mia’, by David Whitfield with Mantovani & His Orchestra. 2. ‘The Man From Laramie’, by Jimmy Young. 3. ‘Roulette’, by Russ Conway. 4. ‘Wooden Heart’, by Elvis Presley. 5. ‘Lovesick Blues’, by Frank Ifield. 6. ‘Diane’, by The Bachelors.

The Very Best Chart-Toppers: 1. ‘Such a Night’, by Johnnie Ray. 2. ‘Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White’, by Perez ‘Prez’ Prado & His Orchestra. 3. ‘Great Balls of Fire’, by Jerry Lee Lewis. 4. ‘Cathy’s Clown’, by The Everly Brothers. 5. ‘Telstar’, by The Tornadoes. 6. ‘She Loves You’ by The Beatles.

The next thirty will take us from the tail-end of 1964 through to early ’66, and I doubt there will be anything like as clear and definable a ‘sound’ to the coming months. Popular music will continue to fragment. Starting with a brand new first at the top of the UK charts. It’s Motown, baby!

159. ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’, by Gerry & The Pacemakers

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Gerry and his gang make it three number ones in a year – three in ‘63. A feat that not many acts manage. But this is a disc light-years away from their first two chart-toppers.

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You’ll Never Walk Alone, by Gerry & The Pacemakers (their 3rd and final #1)

4 weeks, from 31st October – 28th November 1963

It starts very simply. When you walk… A voice, a piano, a sparse drumbeat, and a bass… Through a storm, Hold your head up high, And don’t be afraid, Of the dark… Yup, we are definitely a long way from ‘I Like It’.

It’s a motivational song – a ‘never-give-up’ number about holding onto your dreams, even in your darkest hour. And Gerry Marsden certainly sells it here, building in confidence as the song progresses with his slightly rough-round-the-edges scouse crooning, and an affecting tremble in his voice. Walk on, Through the rain, Though your dreams be tossed, And blown…

Then the violins kick in, and the band and George Martin pull out all the stops to make sure there isn’t a spine left untingled. Walk on… Walk on… With hope in your heart, And you’ll never walk alone…. It’s a classic, an anthem. There’s a quick drop following the first chorus and then BOOM – we’re back for a big ol’ finish.

What on earth, though, were Gerry and The Pacemakers doing recording a version of ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ in the first place? It’s such a weird trio of chart-toppers: ‘How Do You Do It?’ – perky Beat-pop, ‘I Like It’ – perky Beat-pop, ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ – umm… It’s from a Rodger’s & Hammerstein musical, ‘Carousel’, first performed in 1945 as their follow-up to ‘Oklahoma!’ In the show, the song is sung by the lead-female character’s sister to comfort her following her death of her husband.

However, in the UK, and much of Europe, ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ has become completely disassociated from the original musical, and even from Gerry & The Pacemakers. Ask your average youngster in the street today if they know the song and they’ll probably say ‘yes – it’s the Liverpool Football Club song.’ It’s a record – more so than any of the other chart-toppers that we’ve covered so far – that has, for better or worse, taken on a completely new role in the decades since its release. At every Liverpool home game, just as the players run out onto the pitch, you’ll hear that piano and Gerry Marsden’s husky tones. Then, just as it arrives at the big finish, the P.A system will cut out and the crowd will take it home.

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Legend has it that in the early sixties the P.A. would play the Top 10 ahead of each match at Anfield. For four weeks in November 1963, ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ was the last song played due to it being atop the charts. But even after it was knocked off the top and dropped out the charts, the crowd kept singing it. The Pacemakers were hometown lads, after all, and the lyrics and melody of the song do lend themselves to being sung en-masse at a football match. So it stuck. ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ is the Liverpool FC song now. It’s sung at every game. It’s carved above the gates at Anfield. Liverpool supporters sign off from message boards and forums with ‘YNWA’.

But… Football being a tribal game, this means that any supporter of a club that isn’t LFC has to, basically, hate this song. Especially those who grew up in the seventies and eighties, when the buggers were winning everything. I would never particularly choose to listen to this song, as I’m not a Liverpool fan. It’s left ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ in a very weird position in British popular culture – a song that everybody knows; but one that only a select portion of the population will actively enjoy. And, amazingly, I’ve only just scratched the surface here. The song will top the charts again, and will become indelibly connected to two of the biggest tragedies in recent British history. All that for another day…

Away from football, ‘YNWA’ (those Liverpool fans might be on to something here) has been recorded by everyone who’s everyone: Elvis, through Roy Orbison, to Susan Boyle. It would literally take half an hour for me to type out all the artists who’ve done their take in the song. Gerry and The Pacemaker’s version remains, in the UK at least, the definitive one. But I’ve not answered my initial question from several paragraphs back… Why on earth did they take such a big step away from their Merseybeat roots, and so early in their careers? Could it have, perhaps, been their downfall? You can’t imagine The Beatles ever recording a showtune, can you? It was the band’s last #1, and they would only have three further Top 10s. By 1965 their chart-careers would be over. It’s a huge collapse (similar to the way Liverpool threw away the league title at Crystal Palace a few seasons ago… I couldn’t resist…)

Still, three #1s from their first three singles was an unprecedented achievement at the time, and one that wouldn’t be matched for over twenty years. They split up in 1966, with Gerry going into cabaret and children’s entertainment.

Before we finish, I have one big problem with this record (and it’s nothing to do with football). I’ve mentioned ‘The big finish’ a couple of times now; but the song doesn’t actually have one. The song build and builds, and builds, for two minutes and twenty seconds, and is crying out for a huge, epic, grandiose finish. But they bottle it. In the middle of the last ‘never’, Gerry pauses, the soaring violins fall away, and the song ends with a bit of an anti-climax. It’s a strange decision. I don’t know if it was Marsden’s, another band member’s, George Martin’s or maybe even Rodger’s or Hammerstein’s back in the forties. But for me it doesn’t work. It leaves me feeling a little flat. I’ll leave it to the crowd at Anfield to give this song the big finish that it deserves.

152. ‘I Like It’, by Gerry & The Pacemakers

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Act III of the Merseybeat spring offensive sees Gerry and the lads score a quick return to the top. ‘How Do You Do It?’ and ‘I Like It’ acting as the bread; The Beatles’ ‘From Me to You’ as the filling. A sandwich to change pop music as we know it.

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I Like It, by Gerry & The Pacemakers (their 2nd of three #1s)

4 weeks, from 20th June – 18th July 1963

The previous two songs were super perky, ultra-upbeat, and positively dripping in youthful enthusiasm, and the formula isn’t altered very much here. We get a swingin’ little intro, and then: I liiike it, I liiike it…! If you didn’t know that Gerry & The Pacemakers were Liverpudlian, then you do know. This is a great record, but Gerry Marsden’s scouse rasp is possibly the highlight of the whole shebang.

I liiike it…. I liiike it… I like the way you run your fingers through my hair… And I like the way you tiddle my chin… I docked ‘From Me to You’ a couple of points for being a little simple, a little gauche. And I suppose I’ll have to do the same thing here… Except. The charm of this song – of this whole embryonic musical movement – is its down-to-earth charm. These are regular blokes singing a regular, catchy song about love; there are no flowery romantic declarations from note-perfect crooners (see: Frank Ifield) or glossy-teethed American superstars (see: Elvis) here.

Look, for example, at the line: And I like the way you straighten my tie, And I like the way you’re winkin’ your eye, And I know I like you…! Or the And I like the way you let me come in, When your mama ain’t there…. (wink wink) It could have been written by a fourteen-year-old, and that’s all part of the allure. I suppose all the big British pop movements had their roots with kids on the streets: punk, Britpop, garage… and Merseybeat is no different. Music for kids; by kids.

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Just like its immediate predecessors, ‘I Like It’ is another short, sharp pop song; another two minute wonder. And like all the best pop songs there’s nothing too sophisticated going on here. In fact, I’ve covered many better-sung and better-performed songs on this countdown. But… this is the glorious sound of four boys jamming away in their garage, and it presses all my buttons. And ‘boys’ they truly were – Gerry, his brother Fred, Les and Arthur were all aged around twenty when their careers went stratospheric. For a while, in the summer of ’63, the smart money might have been on this four-piece going on to be the biggest band on the planet…

But, of course, that didn’t happen. Perhaps the reason I was a bit harsh on ‘From Me to You’ in my last write-up is that it comes loaded with the knowledge of what The Beatles would go on to do. It’s a perfectly decent pop song but, in my opinion, wouldn’t come near a Beatles Top 20. Whereas, ditties like ‘How Do You Do It?’ and ‘I Like It’ were as good as it got for Gerry and the gang. This is all we know them for; and that’s fine.

Before we finish, I’d like to indulge in a bit of a metaphor. Bear with me, and picture if you can these three Merseybeat chart-toppers from April-July 1963 as a huge meteor killing off hundreds of dinosaurs. These dinosaurs being… *clears throat* … Adam Faith, Anthony Newley, Michael Holliday, Frankie Vaughan, Alma Cogan, Helen Shapiro, The Everly Brothers, Tommy Steele and countless other artists who never topped the UK charts and who I can’t therefore link to… Their careers were all pretty much obliterated (or, at least, heavily affected by) this unstoppable Merseybeat fireball. May they rest in peace. Vive la revolution!

150. ‘How Do You Do It?’, by Gerry & The Pacemakers

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It comes on like some kind of whirlwind, this new sound. A whip-snapping intro with a jabbing piano riff, tight guitars and machine-gun drums. The revolution is here.

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How Do You Do It?, by Gerry & The Pacemakers (their 1st of three #1s)

3 weeks, from 11th April – 2nd May 1963

It’s kind of like rock ‘n’ roll music has undergone a software update – the way that your laptop updates, say, Skype without you knowing and now it’s still Skype but with new colours and maybe rounded corners… This is clearly rock ‘n’ roll – we’ve got guitars and drums and perky lyrics about being in love – but it sounds so fresh, so new. Same same; but different.

How do you do what you do to me, I wish I knew, If I knew how you do it to me, I’d do it to you… These are pretty relatable lyrics – no flowery pretence here. In fact, they could be interpreted as pretty raunchy: When I do it to you… Do what, sir! And to whom!?

The bridge is my favourite bit here – the Like an arrow, passin’ through it… line really works. And then he yelps the song’s title – desperate and frenzied – How do you do it!? As a song it’s very short, and to the point. Four verse-choruses, two bridges and a solo rattle by in one minute fifty-five. Then it’s done; but pop music has changed.

I think it might all be in the voice. Bear with me. Gerry Marsden has an accent – a scouse, Irish accent – that makes him sound like a bloke from down the pub. All the British singers to have topped the chart, with the exception perhaps of Lonnie Donegan, have sounded ‘proper’. Or, in the case of Tommy Steele, they were putting on an accent. But here, Marsden is just singing like he speaks, with a rasp in his vowels, squeezing ‘suppose’ into ‘spose.

I can think of only one record that we’ve heard so far, that’s sounded like such a leap forward, and that was ‘Rock Around the Clock’. I’ve said it before, but hearing these #1s in context, in the order that they topped the charts, really makes the truly special ones stand out. Listening to ‘How Do You Do It?’ barging in after so much Cliff, mid-career Elvis, and Frank Ifield, really does make it sound like a shot of adrenalin, rather than the mid-level Merseybeat pop that it might come across as on a compilation album. And, to me, the fact that this was Gerry & The Pacemakers debut chart hit makes it all the better – they really are arriving out of nowhere to shake up the charts.

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Of course, it might have been even better if The Beatles had been the first ever Merseybeat #1. They came close (there’s a lot of controversy about ‘Please Please Me’ topping various charts in early-1963, but not the ‘official’ ‘Record Retailer’ chart) but it wasn’t to be. In truth, Gerry and the Pacemakers were The Beatles Mk II. They were from Liverpool, cut their teeth in the same clubs and bars, were discovered by Brian Epstein and produced by George Martin. The Beatles did record ‘How Do You Do It?’, but rejected it as a single. Things might have been so different…

But The Fab Four didn’t have long to wait for their own chart-topping run to begin, and within a year they had surpassed their local rivals, conquered Britain, then the US, then the world. But for most of 1963, Gerry and the gang were every bit as big as John, Paul and co. We’ll be hearing from them again very soon, with what I’d class as an ever better song that this.

When I was eleven or twelve, I started making mix-tapes based on hits from particular decades. Nineties, seventies – I wasn’t big on the eighties back then – and sixties. But my ‘sixties mixes’ always started in 1963, with Merseybeat. Everything before that just sounded really old – very misty and a little bit scary… Like I was listening to ghosts. Then, eventually, I discovered Elvis, then Chuck and Buddy, and realised that this wasn’t true. But, there’s still a feeling – shared by many – that modern pop music started in the spring of ’63. That this is Pop Year Zero. And I can see why. Listen to ‘The Wayward Wind’, by Frank Ifield. That’s an old-fashioned, easy-listening track that could have been a hit ten years back. ‘How Do You Do It?’ sounds so fresh that it mightn’t have been a hit ten weeks back.

It’s been fun, writing about the previous hundred and forty-nine UK number one singles. I’ve discovered some great new songs, and found unexpected layers to what I’d previously thought of as simply ‘Pre-Rock’ and ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll’. But with this latest chart-topper, we’ve well and truly opened a new chapter… Onwards!