Page 15 - February2021

wesalute... Gerry
& The Pacemakers
Gerry Marsden formed the group in 1959 with his brother Fred, Les Chadwick, and Arthur McMahon. They rivalled the Beatles early in their career, playing in the same areas of Hamburg and Liverpool. McMahon (known as Arthur Mack) was replaced on piano by Les Maguire around 1961.The group’s original name was Gerry Marsden and the Mars Bars, but they were forced to change this when the Mars Company, producers of the chocolate Mars Bar, complained.
The band was the second to sign with Brian Epstein, who later signed them to 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. The song was produced by George Martin and became a number one hit in the UK, the first by an Epstein- managed Liverpool group to achieve this on all charts. “How Do You Do It?” was also reluctantly recorded by the Beatles (they eventually convinced Martin to let them release their song “Love Me Do”as a single instead).
Gerry Marsden was quoted as saying:
The Beatles and ourselves (The Pacemakers) – we let go, when we get on-stage. I’m not being detrimental, but in the south, I think the groups have let themselves get a bit too formal. On Merseyside, it’s beat, beat, beat all the way. We go on and really have a ball.
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, the latter recorded instead of the Beatles’ “Hello Little Girl”. “You’ll Never Walk Alone” had been a favourite of Marsden’s since seeing Carousel when he was growing up. It quickly became the signature tune of Liverpool Football Club and, later, other sports teams around the world. The song remains a football anthem. The group narrowly missed a fourth consecutive number
one when “I’m the One” was kept off the top spot for two weeks in February 1964 by fellow Liverpudlians The Searchers’ “Needles and Pins”.
Despite this early success, Gerry and the Pacemakers never had another number one single in the UK. Marsden began writing most of their songs, including “I’m the One”, “It’s Gonna Be All Right” and “Ferry Cross the Mersey”, as well as their first and biggest US hit, “Don’t Let the Sun Catch You Crying” (Laurie 3251), which peaked at #4.
The band also starred in the early 1965 film, Ferry Cross the Mersey (sometimes referred to as “Gerry and the Pacemakers’ version of A Hard Day’s Night”), for which Marsden wrote much of the soundtrack.The title song was revived in 1989 as a charity single for an appeal in response to the Hillsborough football crowd disaster, giving Marsden – in association with other Liverpool stars, including Paul McCartney and Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s Holly Johnson – another British number one.
In the US, their recordings were released by the small New York City record label Laurie in 1963, with which they issued four singles without success. When the Beatles broke through in January 1964, Laurie’s next regular single release of “Don’t Let the Sun Catch You Crying” (Laurie 3284) 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 (On the Bayou)” (Laurie 3271), with some success.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerry_and_the_ Pacemakers
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