The Jerusalem Post reports: Liverpool didn’t produce its disproportionate share of successful rock groups by chance back in the 1960s.
The blue-collar port city that spawned The Beatles, Gerry & the Pacemakers, The Searchers and dozens of other British Invasion pop acts who had a hand in revolutionizing modern music played an instrumental role, no pun intended.
According to John McNally, a founding member of chiming guitar pioneers The Searchers, the workingclass homes of Liverpool were full of new, adventurous music from the US brought back by returning seamen as gifts for their kids.
“We were fortunate to have a great seaport, and our family members were seamen in the merchant Navy,” said the 74-year-old McNally who, along with fellow founding Searcher Frank Allen, is bringing the classic band to Israel next week.
“So they would bring all this great music back with them from America – early Motown, blues and country and western like Hank Williams. All the young lads picked up on that, and the skiffle craze developed in the mid- 1950s,” he added, referring to the distinctive British blend of upbeat shuffle music that John Lennon and Paul McCartney’s first band, The Quarrymen, tried their hand at.
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