Gerry & the pacemakers

Hi Paul - sorry to hear of your loss, and thanks for posting that excellent write-up from the Echo.
Your Dad certainly sounds like a talented and versatile musician who loved his work. And anyone who was in the Fruit Eating Bears (best thing to shake up the 'Song For Europe' in the late 70s!) is alright by me!
Best wishes to you and yours.
John

 

Not too many Dave Clark Five LPs from the U.K. either.

 

Been a fan since the 60's. Still am.

 

I'm a fan of this band.

 

I have a 1997 CD reissue of "How Do You Like It?" (1963) with both mono and stereo versions of the album. It's not a record I've played regularly maybe but you gotta love beat music and Merseybeat when you hear it, it's a lot of fun and very insistent to stomp your feet to.

 

That is the third Rickenbacker 360/12 12-string ever made. Suzy Arden got the first, George Harrison got the second, and Gerry got the third.

 

Gerry's always seemed a nice man. But I was bemused when I saw him talking about The Beatles and he basically said they were great until about 1966 when they got duped by all kinds of nonsense and it spoiled their music. I guess from his point of view that strange argument makes sense, seeing as he must view the whole music scene as taking a turn for the worse at that stage!

 

Bit of a fan here. I have the CD mastered by our host.

He's clearly jealous.

 

It must have been weird for other Liverpool bands back then to watch The Beatles go from playing The Cavern like hundreds of other local bands to become Mozart and Beethoven geniuses of contemporary music.

 

My mum was a big Gerry fan, and met him backstage in 1963, when she was 15. She mentioned she had once driven past his house and he said "you should have popped in!". A very nice guy, by all accounts.

 

That's quite remarkable really. To have your first 3 singles go in at number 1 and then not release another album!!?

 

Finally got around to ordering a CD of theirs thanks to this thread. Arguably the best of the more pop-slanted British Invasion groups.

 

Anybody got the recent new japanese mastered cds mono /stereo of gerry and how they sound .

 

I have this:

and this:

Yet How Do You Do It and I Like It are not included on any of the six Gerry and the Pacemakers albums represented here.

Still, this is a cheap way to get all six albums and it is great stuff!

 

Me too. Although I've had these in my collection for a short while (I'd very likely have been unaware of them for some time to come):

The Best Of The EMI Years (31 tracks! A mixture of mono & stereo; some of the latter are remixes from 2002.)
The Original Album Series: Merseybeat (5CDs. All mono albums by all artists.)
Don't Let The Sun Catch You Crying/Second Album/I'll Be There/Girl On A Swing (BGO 2CD mono & stereo again; may have remixes..?)

I bought them in the order above and will sometime buy the box set You'll Never Walk Alone - The EMI Years 1963-1966, although I'm not exactly starved of G&TP's music. To have virtually everything in mono and stereo, plus those live tracks is a must. I think I've on old 45 or two of them - I'll check up on that and see what I do and don't have because I certainly want It's Gonna Be Alright; I can't believe that just a matter of weeks ago, I'd never heard the song at all because it's been an earworm like nothing I can think of for years and years. A big favourite, as is their treatment of Jambalaya and plenty of their hits and R'n'R covers that have pretty much always been 'standards.'

As I'm one who enjoys multi-artist compilation CDs (especially 60s ones) I had a few songs by them and had been curious about what their albums were like - it was such a shock when I looked into their discography and found only one full 60s album in the UK - and most of the 'Ferry' soundtrack. The others in the Merseybeat box I think are pretty good (the Billy J one, less so but still pleasant enough) and the Swinging Blue Jeans and Fourmost. I can understand that those two albums might not be all that attractive/disappointing to the curious but as always, YMMV. I was a bit skeptical about initially but have been rewarded by repeat playing them and will be getting compilations of them, also.

Lastly, I've found those Best Of The EMI Years CDs are nice things to have, for those of us into a nice chunk of sixties pop. There are so many used on Amazon.co.uk going for very, very cheap that I grabbed a Billy J Kramer (far better than the 'LP' in the OAS box - all those hits and one that is handy to find the Lennon/McCartney compositions on) plus Peter And Gordon (knew about half a dozen songs before) and there is some fun stuff on the Frank Ifield disc.


P.S. I won't disagree with your second sentence - as you can see... I've surprised myself with how much I'm playing them.

 

Sometimes I'm in the mood for Merseybeat, and though I'm probably more a fan of the Searchers, I still enjoy a couple of tunes that Gerry & the Pacemakers did. Ferry Cross the Mersey is a wonderful composition. There's a lot of clarity in Gerry's voice and the musicianship is very good, but it runs a bit dry at times. But they're pretty good when all's said and done. Girl on a Swing, even, is a great pop song. I wasn't surprised when I read that Gerry continued in musicals, variety and acting, his voice was made for it.

 

Not sure if the EMI 4 CD set is still in print, but it is fairly common and you should still be able to find it for a reasonable price. During the 1980s, Gerry entered the studio and re-recorded a number of their biggest hits. Although the later versions aren't bad and Gerry was still in great voice on those sessions, there's no substitute for the original recordings.

 

Get the Ron Furmanek mastered Cd...sound quality is fantastic and all the hits are there,

 

There were a lot of people who felt the Beatles "got weird" after 1966. They went from lovable, witty moptops to what seemed like drugged-up hippies and not everyone went along with it. I was too young to have an opinion but I remember my parents and Aunts and Uncles etc. reacted with disgust to the Beatles new image. I guess they expected them to stay like the "Hard Days Night" Beatles forever. But I remember it was a pretty big deal when they changed. Personally, I prefer the post-1966 music.

 

Which artists have those four-disc "EMI Years" sets? Besides The Pacemakers, I know Herman's Hermits and The Swinging Blue Jeans do.

 

Hi John, thanks for your message. The Fruit Eating Bears my dad was in was the backing band for The Merseys (the newest version of The Merseybeats, managed by The Who's management), not the punk band that took the same name. I know it's odd, the punk band even called a song The Cavern Stomp and other Liverpool related names just to confuse things. Discographies online seem to get them mixed up all the time!
The Fruit Eating Bears my Dad was in also had Joey Molland of Badfinger on guitar, is anyone aware of Badfinger? Great band,

Thanks again

Paul

 

Aside from the ones you mentioned, I'm aware of these:
Billy J. Kramer with the Dakotas - Do You Want to Know a Secret?: The EMI Years 1963-1983 4CD
Manfred Mann - Down the Road Apiece: Their EMI Recordings 1963-1966 4CD
The Hollies - Clarke, Hicks & Nash Years (The Complete Hollies April 1963 - October 1968) 6CD

 

Been trying to get into Gerry And The Pacemakers.
I thought it would be easy since I love Gary Lewis And The Playboys (who were popular around the same time), but it's not.
Why do we click with certain bands, but not others (even of the same general musical styles)?
I either like just a few hits by a group or their whole catalog).
If I can move beyond the hits and start really enjoying their other songs (album tracks), then it's time to add them to my music collection.
Just as I've done recently with Chuck Berry.

Darryl

 

Since he is one of the survivors, Gerry has become sort of a representative of the British Invasion period. It's surprising how many of those artists are still living and have remained active in music. Peter Noone and two other members of Herman's Hermits, Billy J. Kramer, Mike Pender and most of the longtime members of The Searchers are still around.

 

Very interesting (that they were not big in Britain). Way back then, I had one album by them, one by the Animals, even one by The Honeycombs. It never occurred to me back then that, after the Beatles took flight, they might be considered square.

A year or so ago I bought a 4 cd set of Gerry and the Pacemakers because it boasted having the Mono as well as the stereo versions. Haven't listened to it properly yet