THE MERSEYBEATS

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Recording years

Main genre

Music sample

1963–1966

Classic pop-rock

Don’t Turn Around (1964)

 


 

Page contents:

 

 

 


 

THE MERSEYBEATS

Album released:

1964

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Tracks: 1) Milkman; 2) Hello Young Lovers; 3) He Will Break Your Heart; 4) Funny Face; 5) Really Mystified; 6) The Girl That I Marry; 7) Fools Like Me; 8) My Heart And I; 9) Bring It On Home To Me; 10) Lavender Blue; 11) Jumping Jonah; 12) Don’t Turn Around; 13*) It’s Love That Really Counts; 14*) Fortune Teller; 15*) I Think Of You; 16*) Mr. Moonlight; 17*) Wishin’ And Hopin’; 18*) Send Me Back.

REVIEW

I ain’t superstitious, but a black cat... uh, I mean, but if I ever had a rock’n’roll band under my command, I would never, ever, dare to name it after a musical movement. It is simply too heavy a burden, too much of a responsibility. Could you see a band named «The CBGB Punk Rockers» becoming popular? «The Scottish Shoegazers»? «The Seattle Grunge Explosion»? Any such moniker would immediately give off the impression that those guys are trying to overcompensate for something. Even the Rolling Stones only began to be introduced on stage as «the greatest rock’n’roll band in the world» when they knew for sure they were the greatest rock’n’roll band in the world... although this is admittedly not quite the same thing.

Anyway, the Merseybeats used to be the Mavericks (1960), then they became the Pacifics (1961), and then they decided to follow the advice of Bob Wooler, the famous DJ at the Cavern Club, become Liverpool’s champions, and take on the honor of defending and promoting the name of the Liverpool music scene across the country. In their defense, they did adopt the name before the Beatles struck gold, at a time when there was absolutely no guarantee that the Mersey Beat would go on to conquer the UK and, later, the entire world, and at a time when the Beatles were just one of the many bands on the local scene. However, they did not manage to get a recording contract before the Beatles did — it was not until ‘Please Please Me’ hit the airwaves and placed Liverpool on the map as a nationally relevant pop music storehouse that they struck a deal with the Fontana Records label, well known for kickstarting and nurturing the early careers of a whole series of second-rate British bands (including a little-known outfit called the High Numbers, who later became... well, you know).

At the time of their first single, the group consisted of Tony Crane (lead guitar and vocals), Billy Kinsley (bass guitar and vocals), Aaron Williams (rhythm guitar) and John Banks (drums). That first single, rather tellingly, was not a rock’n’roll song, but a cover of Bacharach and David’s ‘It’s Love That Really Counts’, made famous by the Shirelles the previous year. Symbolically, the Merseybeats replaced the girls’ beautiful group harmonies with a (rather thin-sounding) electric guitar lead, but they were still unable to elevate the song in the same way the Beatles elevated the Shirelles’ ‘Baby It’s You’ — mainly because Tony Crane’s lead vocal is weaker and less expressive than Lennon’s, and just about everything else about the song, from backing vocals to rhythm section to production, sounds limp and dull compared to what their competitors were able to do with that girl group aesthetics. The B-side was a passable cover of ‘Fortune Teller’, which everyone did at the time — good song, bad vehicle for expressing any sort of personality because it locks anybody who’s playing it into its own formula (the Stones’ version, for instance, sounds almost identical; the Who tried to do something different with the song in their live shows, but I think they mostly just spoiled it).

The second single was far more successful, going all the way to #5 on the UK charts: ‘I Think Of You’, written by outside songwriter Peter Lee Stirling specially for the group, was a cute little soft-rock ditty with a deliciously serenading opening riff and a subtle reference to Ben E. King’s ‘Stand By Me’ in its opening line ("when the night is cold..."). Unfortunately, it does not go anywhere interesting after those pretty ten first seconds: Mr. Stirling was unable to come up with a properly affirmative and inspiring hook in the vein of "stand by me, stand by me". Furthermore, the song was even further from the ideal conception of a true Mersey Beat than ‘It’s Love That Really Counts’; and the fact that the B-side was ‘Mr. Moonlight’, which the band most likely pilfered from the Beatles’ set list at the Cavern and sneakily released a year earlier than the Fab Four themselves, certainly did not help — playing the Merseybeats’ and the Beatles’ versions back to back almost did the impossible in making me gain extra respect for the Beatles’ recording, which, to me, as well as to many other people, had always been a relative lowlight in the context of Beatles For Sale. In comparison, the Merseybeats’ take on the song is like an attempt to make a 100-yard dash immediately after completing a 20-mile hike, without a break.

Still, there is no arguing with the record-buying public, and for their third single, the Merseybeats readily turned to Peter Lee Stirling once again. The result was probably their best song, ‘Don’t Turn Around’, on which the intensity dial was very slightly pushed forward, the rhythm section remembered the meaning of the word «beat», and the vocal melody took a turn toward trying to ascend to epic-climactic heights — along the same lines as the Dave Clark Five’s ‘Because’, although ‘Don’t Turn Around’ cannot really compete with that mini-masterpiece in terms of melodic perfection.

The toughening up of the rhythm section also had to do with an important lineup change, with Kinsley temporarily out of the band, replaced by John Gustafson — probably the most famous member of the Merseybeats, since he would later go on to play with the Ian Gillan Band and, more importantly, with Roxy Music (yes, that is his bass you hear driving ‘Love Is The Drug’ a decade later). His presence also marks the first original songwriting credit for the band: the B-side ‘Really Mystified’ is credited to himself and Crane, and while the song does not quite approach the songwriting level of ‘Don’t Turn Around’, it is at least an upbeat pop rocker, with a ringing and energetic lead riff, a cymbal-thrashing percussion onslaught, and an overall heightened level of adrenaline that finally begins to justify the band’s name.

It is more or less at this point that Fontana executives, satisfied with the improving commercial status of their protegés, allow the band to put out a full-fledged LP — as fate would have it, the only one the Merseybeats would ever release under their questionable name. Curiously, the LP included both ‘Don’t Turn Around’ and ‘Really Mystified’, but not ‘I Think Of You’ (maybe because the latter had already been re-released once, on a 4-song EP of the same name). However, the only other truly original song, also credited to Gustafson and Crane, was ‘Milkman’, another loud pop-rocker clearly inspired by the spirit of ‘Please Mister Postman’, but nowhere near as good (once again, you get to learn all there is to the song in the first 10–15 seconds: lead riff, harmonic chorus, rinse and repeat).

All the other credits taken by the boys are rather embarrassing. Crane’s ‘Funny Face’ is basically Bo Diddley’s ‘Pretty Thing’, or any of the other Bo Diddley beat hits, with new lyrics — admittedly, hilarious ones, in the solid tradition of classic UK R&B «misogyny» ("Mama said you got a funny face / But even though you look a disgrace / Girl I love your funny face"), but Tony Crane is no Eric Burdon when it comes to justifying doing a Bo Diddley cover. ‘Jumpin’ Jonah’ is even weirder; credited to Gustafson, it is a straightahead Little Richard rip-off, putting together parts of ‘Ready Teddy’ and ‘Long Tall Sally’ for what is inarguably the single most kick-ass performance on the album — actually, though, the most interesting thing about it is how completely and totally Gustafson’s bass part swallows up both rhythm and lead guitars, which even makes it somewhat sonically unique among all the UK-based imitations of Little Richard I’ve ever heard. The playing itself isn’t exactly Entwistle-level, but it is an interesting early example of the «worship the bass, you fuckers!» attitude to come out of the first years of Beatlemania-era rock, so you might want to take a peek at that.

Unfortunately, most of the other inclusions are just embarrassing. Confessing one’s love for the Shirelles may be one thing, but stuffing your album with covers of Rodgers and Hammerstein (‘Hello Young Lovers’), Irving Berlin (‘The Girl That I Marry’), and old-fashioned nursery rhymes (‘Lavender Blue’) is quite another, particularly in 1964, when the signal that such a selection sent out to its audience simply couldn’t be more wrong: it showed quite transparently that not only were the Merseybeats unable to compete with their betters in the grand and noble rock’n’roll tournament — they were, in fact, just as keen, if not more so, to appeal to the older generation as well. These songs simply do not fit in well with imitations of Bo Diddley and Little Richard, or even with their by-the-book cover of Sam Cooke’s ‘Bring It On Home To Me’.

Somehow the record still managed to hit #12 on the UK charts, which gave the Merseybeats another year-long probation term — which they were unable to use to their advantage; allegedly, by the end of 1965 Gustafson was fired by the band’s management for expressing dissatisfaction with the handling of their financial affair, and Crane broke up the entire group in response. Out of the ashes of the Merseybeats then rose the Crane-Kinsley duet of the Merseys — but that is already a separate story.

Meanwhile, the poor Merseybeats largely remained in history for their name, which is so easy to remember: anybody who knows anything about the Mersey Beat probably also knows that there used to be a band called the Mersey­beats (I knew that there was a band called the Merseybeats literally decades before hearing a single song by them; so, upon second thought, maybe the name selection wasn’t really that dumb in the first place). The music, though... is the album, along with the accompanying singles, really worth checking out? Well, if you are seriously hungry for early UK pop-rock, I guess it’s at least more inspiring than, say, the Swinging Blue Jeans. But decidedly «third-rate», next to which even the earliest Hollies and Dave Clark Five records seem like masterpieces.

 

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