by Kevin Burton
I have read maybe two dozen books about the Beatles on talking book. But I didn’t know this.
In books by and about other contemporary artists, the Beatles emerge, as a yardstick, a cultural happening, a turning point. But not so much as a syllable about this.
Until very recently I never read a word, or saw anything on a You Tube video, about The Liverbirds, a group of female musicians who patterned themselves after the Fab Four.
I mean not so much as a snide aside.
The Liverbirds, named after the mythical liver bird, the iconic symbol of their native Liverpool, formed in 1963, just before Beatlemania conquered America. The very first snide aside about the band was provided by John Lennon, who said, “Girls with guitars? That won’t work,” upon seeing them play at the Cavern Club.
Well Lennon was wrong. It did work, sort of, for a while.
I mean, they played the Star Club in Hamburg and scored a number 5 hit in Germany with a cover of Bo Didley’s “Diddley Daddy.” The band toured with the likes of The Rolling Stones, Chuck Berry and the Kinks.
But if you stumble upon their music today and like it, it might be just because you have decided you want to like “the female Beatles” as they were called in their day. You can put me in that camp.
They were a reasonably good cover band. If they played your dance party you were going to have a rocking good time, but maybe you weren’t going to run to the record store the next day to buy their disc.
I hesitate to call them strictly a novelty act because their playing was too good for that. But the truth is, their measure of fame came off the coat tails of the Beatles. The Liverbirds dressed like the Fab Four even wearing the famous mop top haircut.
A female band without that Beatles tie would have to earn recognition through their music alone. That just wasn’t going to happen with the Liverbirds.
It’s unfair to compare any band male or female to the Beatles, but with the way they marketed themselves, they invited that comparison.
As long as fans said, “female Beatles? Cool!” and left it there, that was great. Digging deeper left one wanting.
In their “Talking About You” you hear more than a hint of a rocking riff from “I Saw Her Standing There.” In songs such as “Why Do You Hang Around Me?” and “Leave Your Old Loves in the Past” they have a go at Beatle-esque harmonies.
It’s OK that they borrowed Ray Charles’ “what’d I say” line in their “He’s About A Mover.” But their cover of Muddy Waters’ “Got My Mojo Working” left you thinking these white British women probably never came within a thousand miles of a mojo.
The Liverbirds are getting a second turn in the spotlight this year, as (according to my Amazon Echo device) their music was recently remastered. Also original band members Mary McGlory and Sylvia Saunders heave published a memoir, “The Other Fab Four: The Remarkable Story of the Liverbirds, Britain’s First Female Rock Band.”
“But the real story of The Other Fab Four isn’t really about fame and fortune, but rather, friendship,” writes Kenneth Womack on salon.com. “McGlory and Saunders’ book affords readers with a heartwarming story involving family, addiction and tragedy as the Liverbirds pursued their dreams in an era that largely wasn’t ready for them.”
The book sounds like it’s worth a look.
The other two original Liverbirds were guitarists Valerie Gell and Mary’s sister Sheila McGlory, I think. Sources differ on this. Pamela Birch was brought in as a replacement for Sheila McGlory and for Irene Green, who each spent part of 1963 with the band.
The Liverbirds, fueled by Lennon’s dismissal, “practiced every day until they were better than most of the local boy bands who were merely copycatting local heroes The Beatles,” according to an article on http://www.dangerousminds .net. That article called Lennon’s comment, “the kind of dumb prejudice these four faced every time they picked up their guitars and blasted an audience with their hard rockin’ R’n’B.”
The Liverbirds were cheated out of a lot of money. That’s a common rock and roll tale. They also lasted only six years, from 1963-68.
“Though pioneering and incredibly popular, the girls faced the everyday sexism from record industry supremos who thought young girls should be on the scene, but not heard. Not unless they were in the audience screaming. These men wanted girls who dressed to please, not girls who played instruments better than the boys,” according to dangerousminds.com.
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