Posts Tagged Ian Salmon

Shake It Up Baby! At the Epstein Theatre, Liverpool

Written by Ian Salmon

Directed by Stephen Fletcher

Starring Andrew Schofield

Reveiwed by Anthony C Green

Introduction

The reopening of the Epstein Theatre in September, following a two-year hiatus due to funding issues, is a cause for celebration. It’s a great little theatre, run by great people, and I hope its launch will prove to be a success.

The size of the audience on this night, with the theatre all but full, suggests it will be.

It was good to be back in one of my favourite places in Liverpool and, as a big Beatles buff, for my own return to be at the opening night and World Premier of a play based on the Beatles’ formative Hamburg period, 1960-62, was a bonus.

The play was written by Ian Salmon, who also wrote Girls Don’t Play Guitars, the story of Merseybeat all-girl group The Liverbirds. That was also promising, as I’d enjoyed that, as can be seen from my review from earlier this year Experience ‘Girls Don’t Play Guitars’ at Liverpool Royal Court | Counter Culture

As with his earlier work, the format of the play was of music performed live by local actor-musicians, interspersed with dramatised scenes, linked together by a narrative delivered by one of the central characters.

The decision to use former Beatles manager Allan Williams, played here by the excellent Ian Schofield, was a good one. Williams was an engaging local character who was never short of a witty line or anecdote or two, as can be seen in many YouTube interviews and clips.

He set the tone early, by introducing himself as ‘The man who will forever be known as The Man Who Gave Away the Beatles, which is my own fault, because that’s what I called my book’ (a very good book, which is sadly hard to find nowadays, unless you’re prepared to take out a bank loan).

Positives

That’s the first positive, excellent narration by Schofield in the voice of Williams, some fine dialogue, and the story of the period delivered more than adequately. At least, for non-Beatles buffs. Not quite so much for obsessives like me, who’ve read all the books and enjoy little more than picking up on inaccuracies. I’ll return to that later.

The music was also excellent. It can’t be east to find six young local lads who can not only act, but resemble the boys themselves (I’m counting Stuart Sutcliffe and Pete Best as Beatles here, because they were, in Stu’s case for a part of the period covered and in Pete’s for almost all of it) enough to at least get away with it, and who also have the musical and vocal chops to deliver excellent versions of the rock ‘n’ roll and standards covers that made up the vast majority of the band’s set at this time. But this was a task that the production team was able to deliver on.

The sparse set, a musical stage set up with suitably vintage instruments and microphones, with a small table and four chairs up centre, where non-musical scenes could be played out, worked well, as it had in Salmon’s earlier work.

Aside from Schofield, and bearing in mind that most of the cast took on multiple roles at different parts of the play, the standout performance, for me, came from Connor Simpkins as Sutcliffe.

Stu’, the talented painter and reluctant bassist who died of a brain haemorrhage aged only twenty-one in April 1962, has always fascinated me. I’ve visited his humble grave in Huyton, and even once started a Beatles Alternative History novel called Sutcliffe Remembers, based on the premise that he lived to a ripe old age, a project I hope to revisit.

It was through Stu’ that the two emotional high-points of the evening were delivered.

The first of these was when he serenaded new girlfriend, Astrid Kirchherr, with Love Me Tender.

Astrid was one of the three ‘Exis’ (short for Existentialists) along with Klaus Voorman and Jurgen Vollmer, who did so much to spread the Beatles’ appeal in Hamburg beyond that of drunken sailors and ‘women of the night’ towards a more art-school type crowd. It was Astrid who took the first iconic photographs of the Beatles, and eventually provided them with their iconic ‘Mop-Top’ hairstyle.

Love Me Tender was indeed the only Sutcliffe lead vocal (that we’re aware of) included in the band’s set. Sadly, no recording of this exists, despite his sister’s attempt to pass off a string-laden version that can still be found online as genuine. Her credibility was not exactly helped when, at the height of Britpop, she ‘discovered’ a cache of ‘lost’ Lennon-Sutcliffe lyrics which she attempted to sell to Noel Gallagher…

But the rendition here sounded much as I would have expected it to sound, and to see it sung as the two gazed lovingly into one another’s eyes, with the knowledge of the fate that awaited him, was genuinely touching.

Emotional punch number two was the moment, as the band returned once more to Hamburg, came when Astrid broke it to John (played by Michael Hawkins) that Stu’, arguably the first of three Lennon artistic soul mates, Stu, Paul and Yoko, was dead.

Arguably, dramatic power might have been added by seeing John’s reportedly hysterical reaction, which was so extreme that those present didn’t know whether he was laughing or crying, enacted on stage. But hearing Astrid’s words, a postscript from Williams and then a final song before the interval dedicated by John to his ‘best friend’ was powerful enough.

It was nice to see some rather neglected figures in early Beatles lore portrayed. This was especially true of Williams’ first wife, Chinese Beryl (‘Chinese’ because his second wife was also called Beryl – Allan seemed to have very niche requirements when it came to his spouses), because she did indeed play an important role in securing the Beatles work at this time, and was probably the level-headed sidekick that Scouse Del-Boy Williams required.

Beryl was well depicted by Jess Smith.

It would have been nice to see Mona Best, Pete’s mum, similarly portrayed, as she too was an important figure in this period. But so were a lot of people, and you can’t have everything.

Overall, both in terms of music and acting/dialogue, the play is a solid, enjoyable ensemble piece.

Negatives

I should preface this section by acknowledging that I’m not really the ideal audience for a show like this. If you’re a casual Beatles fan, and/or a fifties rock ‘n’ roll aficionado, then the likelihood is that you will leave the theatre happy and appreciative, and with substantially more knowledge about the Beatles in Hamburg than you did previously.

But we Beatles buffs are a pedantic bunch, and a lack of attention to detail can have a disproportionately negative effect on our enjoyment of any portrayal of the band.

I could cite numerous examples from the otherwise decent early Beatles movies Backbeat and Nowhere Boy, but I won’t, other than to say that they were good films which would have been better if they’d stuck to the facts as known at the time they were made.

For this play, local early Beatles historian David Bedford (not that one) acted as ‘Beatles historical advisor’, and, to his credit, out-and-out glaring errors were rare, though I’ll mention a couple that somehow slipped through shortly.

But my main problem with the play was that the story at the centre of the Hamburg period was lost, I suspect not through a lack of knowledge, but a lack of nerve, of a willingness to take chances.

The real story in a nutshell is that the Beatles were just one of many mediocre Liverpool bands who’d transitioned from skiffle to rock ‘n’ roll at the time of their first series of Hamburg engagements in August 1960. The anecdote that the leader of Derry and the Seniors, the first of the Merseybeat groups to make the trip, objected to the Beatles being sent out because they were ‘The worst band in Liverpool’ , and as such risked ruining the scene for everyone else, is well-worn, but almost certainly true.

But, through performing six to eight hours per night, night after night, for weeks on end, fuelled by booze and ‘Prellies’ (Preludin, a readily available amphetamine pill in Germany at the time), and the constant demands to ‘Mach Schau’ (Make Show) they got better and better, broadening their stage repertoire and their stage presence, progressing through the clubs, from the depressing Indra, to the slightly better Kaiserkeller to the Top Ten, to, in their final visit in December 1962, the prestigious Star Club with each visit and, as has been mentioned, also broadening their appeal beyond the usual rowdy Reeperbahn crowd.

In the play, however, the music was just as good at the beginning as it was at the end. Thus, hearing the famous remark by Derry out of Derry and the Seniors being made after a blistering performance of Johnny B Goode or whatever was incongruous.

I can certainly see the thinking behind this. Would a theatre audience want to sit through some raw, stumbling, sub-standard versions of songs before they reached an acceptable level?

Maybe some wouldn’t. But, for the story to work, I needed to see the improvement, the transition from the ‘worst’ to the best band in Liverpool, and I think it could have been done without testing the patience of the audience too much.

The sound of the band was augmented by a girl playing an electric keyboard. I don’t have a problem with this, but having her visible stage left, playing a very late-twentieth/early-twenty-first-century instrument was an error. Surely, the intent had to be to give the impression that we really were watching the formative Beatles in action? Her presence somewhat shattered the illusion, making the necessary suspension of disbelief impossible.

The decision to have the cast play multiple roles was also problematic at times. The same actor, Nick Sheedy, transforming himself from Pete Best to Ringo Starr was fine. A quick ruffle of the hair and a deepening of the voice, and job done.

And Andrew Cowpothwaite was fine as Lord Woodbine early on. But as a black Jurgen Vollmer, the third Exi? No, sorry.

The actor who played Klaus was also good in that initial role, but I wasn’t at all convinced by his later reappearance as George Martin.

When it comes to historical inaccuracies, I only spotted two.

The first of these concerned the first time that John, Paul, George and Ringo played together on record. This did indeed happen in Hamburg in 1960, two years before Ringo became a Beatle proper. It’s also true that a drunk Williams left his only copy of this record in the back of a Liverpool taxi. Neither this copy nor any of the other five acetates allegedly produced has ever resurfaced and would be worth a fortune today. The song in question was the old standard Summertime, though some also cite Fever and September Song as having also been recorded.

But they weren’t acting as the backing band for Rory Storm, the leader of Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, the band Ringo was a member of at this time. They were backing the bass player out of that band, Lu Waters, who Williams thought he could possibly promote as a solo crooner.

The other error concerned the famous last chance ‘audition’ they did for George Martin at EMI.

Old George trotted out this anecdote for so long that there’s little doubt that he really remembered it as an ‘audition.’

But Mark Lewisohn’s epic Tune In, volume one of his planned three-volume Beatles biography, 1700 pages, and only up to January 1963, proved beyond doubt, with primary documentation, that it wasn’t an audition at all. The Beatles had already been signed, on the strength of the publishing rights to John and Paul’s original material.

I suppose, such things don’t matter much in the scheme of things, and I get poetic licence and all that, but I don’t see much value in continuing to recycle old tales once they’ve been shown to be inaccurate. Even if only a tiny percentage of the audience is able to spot such things, the appreciation of that tiny percentage adds a depth to a work which is otherwise lacking.

 Conclusion

As far as I’m aware, all Beatles films, plays etc have concentrated on the early days, when they were mostly a covers band, because of the notorious difficulty in getting the necessary permission to feature original Beatles material. So, it was a nice surprise when, as an encore, we were treated to a medley of Beatlemania period hits, I Want To Hold Your Hand/From Me To You/Please, Please Me/I Saw Her Standing There.

I’m not sure how the producers swung this, but I’m glad they did. The Beatles in their first flush of British fame, was a good place to end, and the performance looked and sounded authentic, and had most of the audience on its feet.

I still wish we’d seen something of the process of how they got from Point A to Point B in a mere thirty months, but, as I’ve said, I suppose I’m not really the target audience.

A good night out.

The play concludes its run at the Epstein on 11th October, but will no doubt be appearing at a theatre near you soon.

Anthony C Green, October 2025

Book promotion for 'Better Than The Beatles!' by Anthony C. Green, featuring bold text and a blue sky design.

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Experience ‘Girls Don’t Play Guitars’ at Liverpool Royal Court

By Ian Salmon Directed by Bob Eaton

Liverpool Royal Court Theatre, till 26th of October 2024. Book tickets here: https://liverpoolsroyalcourt.com/main_stage/girls-dont-play-guitars/

2,925 words, 15 minutes read time.

The play tells the story, through words and music, mostly the latter, of Merseybeat band The Liverbirds from their inception in 1962 to their break-up in 1968, with a brief update on the girl’s life after the split and a nice surprise at the end of its two-hour running time.

I didn’t do any research before the play, though I had an awareness of the band and a vague outline of some of their history, so I was unaware that the play had enjoyed a successful run at the same venue, with the same lead players, back in 2019. From some of the reactions of the mainly ageing demographic at the almost packed theatre, I wouldn’t be surprised if many in the crowd were returning customers.

After a couple of false starts, beginning in 1962 as The Squaws and then as The Deputones, with the earliest incarnation including Mary’s sister Sheila and Irene Green as members (both of whom went on to play in other Liverpool bands), the established line-up of Valerie Gell on lead guitar, Pamela Birch on rhythm guitar, Mary McGlory on bass, and Sylvia Saunders on drums was in place by the following year, the year that, through the ascendency of the Beatles, and lesser Brian Epstein managed artists like Gerry and the Pacemakers and Cilla, established Merseybeat as a national rather than simply local phenomena.

Girl groups weren’t, of course, a new thing in 1963. American artists like the Ronettes, the Crystals, the Shangri-las and the Shirelles had all enjoyed great success and greatly influenced the Merseybeat sound. The latter’s song Boys was a staple of the Beatles’ live set from their early days and throughout their touring career, being used as a rare vocal showcase first for Pete Best and then for Ringo Starr. Ringo, I believe performs it live to this day, and we also get a rousing version during tonight’s play.

But these hit girl groups were vocal-only outfits. They didn’t play guitars or any other instruments, either in the studio or live, that being largely the job of men, including, on the records, some of the top session musicians of the day (an exception was the great female bassist Carole Kaye who, as part of the legendary Wrecking Crew graced many of the top hits of the sixties).  

The titular phrase ‘Girls don’t play guitars’ is attributed to John Lennon, and he’s depicted in the play as saying this when introduced to the Liverbirds at the Cavern.

That was what made this band different: they were an all-girl foursome who did play guitars, and drums, as well as them all being accomplished singers, both individually and in harmony.

In retrospect, it seems inevitable that there would be an all-girl vocal/instrumental group on the thriving Merseyside music scene. But, although the Liverbirds’ billing as ‘The world’s first all-girl Beat-group’, which is repeated several times during the play, might be a touch hyperbolic, I can’t recall any that came before, or even, now six decades later, a great many since.

Like their contemporaries Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, for whom Ringo played drums before becoming a Beatle, the Liverbirds did not achieve great commercial success, their best effort being a number five hit in Germany with a cover of Bo Diddley’s Diddley Daddy.

They released two albums on the Star Club Hamburg’s in-house record label in 1965, so we do have a fair idea of how they sounded, which is more than be said for Rory and his group, of whom only some very Lo-Fi live recordings exist.

Guitarist/vocalist Pamela Birch wrote three tracks spread across these albums, but they were essentially a covers band, as were the Hurricanes, and again, in common with them, it’s mostly as a hard-driving live act for which they are fondly remembered among the sadly dwindling number of those who can truthfully say ‘I was there’,  as a part of the scene in Liverpool and Hamburg in the early and mid-sixties.

It was therefore essential, if the play was to be a success, that the music was done justice, and that through that the audience could experience something of the vibe that those attending a performance by the Liverbirds might have felt.

On this criterion, I can happily say that the play was indeed a resounding success.

It’s obvious from the beginning that the four chief cast members are playing their own instruments and doing their own singing live, and they’re excellent, with great musicianship and superb vocal harmonies. Best of all musically was Mary Grace Cutler as Valerie Gell on lead guitar, even though she was responsible for the only musical fluff of the evening, on the intro to Roll Over Beethoven. But that made the music more real as, had you been there at the time you would have expected the occasional fluff from all of the local groups, including the Beatles.

I haven’t delved into the careers of any of these four actor/musician performers outside the confines of the show. But they sounded so tight together that it wouldn’t surprise me if they worked together on musical projects other than this, perhaps performing their own material.

The set for the play was designed as a standard stage set-up for a four-piece band, with amps, drums and microphones, all looking suitably period, from where the ‘Liverbirds’ performed their songs. At each side of the stage were two large, wavy cut-out guitars rising towards the ceiling, ending at a bank of small screens designed to look like retro 1960s T. V’s, upon which photographs and the small amount of footage that exists of the band, as well as topical signifiers that helped situate us in time were displayed.

At the rare, was a narrow raised area where the all-male supporting cast made their own musical contributions, with these supporting players also coming forwards in ones or twos to join the girls’ front-centre in the non-musical, dialogue-based sections of the play, playing multiple cameos, as the girl’s fathers, Mick Jagger, Ray and Dave Davis of the Kinks (the Liverbirds supported both the Stones and the Kinks on tour and Jagger and the Davis brothers also played with them on an unreleased, possibly lost, demo), Brian Epstein, Bob Wooler, a pivotal Merseybeat figure who is unfortunately best remembered for being beaten up by John Lennon at Paul McCartney’s twenty-first birthday party and, once we get to Hamburg, Klaus Voorman and others. These dialogue scenes tended towards the comedic, and were sometimes rather perfunctory, although they were well-performed and efficiently accomplished their role of relating the band’s story as a coherent narrative.

Less successful and the weakest element of the play in my view, was the narrative songs performed by the boys at the back in a sub-Merseybeat style, sometimes including little snatches of Beatles songs, such as the intro to I Feel Fine or a quick ‘Beep, Beep, Yeah’ and the like. They weren’t long enough to get the Beatles lawyers onto the productions back, but they were long enough to be annoying and, in my opinion, the cheesy lyrics of these original songs added nothing to the production, although they were played and sung well enough.

The acting itself was good all-around and did a decent job of giving us a sense of the environment in which the girls lived and played, partly through mentions of bygone Liverpool landmarks like Hessy’s music shop, and the Littlewoods Pools building, which once employed thousands of young women, and the dilapidated shell of which is still standing just down the road from me.

As we move through the Liverbirds story, the unchanging nature of the stage-set is perhaps another slight weakness of the production. We are told that we’re now in the Cavern or at the Star Club on the Reeperbahn in Hamburg, but with nothing visual, besides the contents of the faux-T. V screens, to reinforce these switches of location. The play is fast-paced enough for me to happily suspend belief, but I did feel that if cost or logistics meant that only one set was feasible, then something a little grittier may have been better. After all, the Cavern and the clubs on the Reeperbahn were noted for their grittiness and in the latter case for the ever-present hint of violence.

If the play is to be believed, the girls passed on the chance to be signed by Brian Epstein by agreeing to a residency, against his advice, at the Star Club in 1964. Liverpool bands had of course been making the trip to Hamburg for around six years by this point and it would still have been something of a right of passage, as well as an amazing adventure for four young working class girls, though with the Beatles having performed at the Star Club for the final time in December 1962, and even the likes of Gerry and the Pacemakers having moved on to much bigger things, the Hamburg scene was past its zenith by the time Liverbirds made the trip.

The story of how the girls raised the money for the fair to Hamburg led neatly to one of two moments of audience participatory hissing when the cast revealed that one Jimmy Saville helped them out by securing a little paid national exposure in the Sunday People. We were assured that he didn’t ask for anything in return from them, perhaps because, at between seventeen and twenty-one years old, they were a little above his preferred upper-age range.

The second well-deserved hiss of the night came when we were told that, towards the end of their time together, another regular performer in the Hamburg clubs was Paul Gadd, still two or three years away from becoming Gary Glitter.

What was unusual about the Liverbirds among the Liverpool bands, apart from the fact that they were girls who played guitars, was that, once they made it to Hamburg they never really left, though they did tour extensively elsewhere in Europe. Three of their members even continued to live Germany after the band split in 1968.

Girls Don’t…’ is more of a nice family night out than a work of social realism. It must have been hard to be female performers on the Reeperbahn scene, and this is indicated through some of the dialogue and straight narration, though not explored as deeply as it might have been.

It’s a positive play, and through the excellent chemistry between the cast we get something of the thrill it must have been to be four girls coming of age away from the restraints of family, enjoying the acclaim of audiences, drinking, partying, indulging their healthy sexual appetites, and discovering, as the Beatles and others had before them, that tiredness could be alleviated by a little yellow pill or two.

(The Catholic Church also has a cameo in the play, in the form of Mary’s Parish Priest. Mary was still considering becoming a nun when she set off for Hamburg, though this is another theme which could have been developed further)

By 1967, musically, the Liverbirds were in a musical time warp, still playing mostly American covers from the late fifties/early sixties. They were never going to be in the vanguard of the psychedelic revolution, nor, I suppose, did they want to be. But they did get stoned with Jimi Hendrix because he’d heard that Mary rolled the best joints in Hamburg, although she didn’t smoke them herself, we are told, and it’s a nice moment when this story is relayed to us, as suitably vivid colours swirl on screens above us.   

The play becomes more poignant after the interval and the closer we get towards the end, as the focus switches from the good times to the fragmentation and final dissolution of the band.

We learn that the first to leave was drummer Sylvia after she fell pregnant and did what most girls did in that situation at this time, she got married and swapped her ambitions for the role of housewife and mother.

That this decision had to be made on the eve of a Japanese tour, added an extra layer of resigned sadness to this part of the story.

The band continued, and the actors made it clear that the Liverbirds still had their moments, but that it could never be quite the same when the line-up had lost one of the original four.

In the most touching scene of the night, we discover that Valerie was the next to leave after her fiancé was paralysed from the neck down following an accident that happened while he was driving back from his eighteenth birthday party. The band was on stage at the Star Club at the time, extending their set as Valerie eagerly awaited the arrival of her boyfriend.

The remaining two originals, Sylvia and Pamela, carried on for a while with ‘whoever Manfred’ (their manager) could find, until finally calling it a day, and beginning their lives post-Liverbirds, with only Pamela continuing in music, still performing and working in other capacities in the Hamburg clubs. She also struggled greatly with addiction to alcohol and cocaine, though this isn’t mentioned in the play, contributory factors to her relatively early death, aged sixty-five in 2009.

Before the last song, regret is expressed that they never got the chance to perform together just one more time, announcing the song as the reunion the girls never had. Strangely, their Wikipedia entry mentions a brief reunion in 1998, though I’m not sure if this is an error or a rather unnecessary use of artistic licence by the writer.

As it turned out, this wasn’t the last song of the evening. At its conclusion, one of the players announces ‘two very special guests’ and the surviving Liverbirds, bassist Mary McGlory and drummer Sylvia Saunders arrive onstage to a fabulous reception, joining those who had so ably portrayed their younger selves for the truly final song of the night, a raucous rendition of Peanut Butter, obviously a favourite from their repertoire in their heyday.

If I had done any research before seeing the play, I would have known that Sylvia and Mary were still with us and that the two had performed this cameo throughout the 2019 run. Hopefully, they will do so throughout this new one-month run at the Royal Court. I suspect I would still have found their appearance moving if I had known it was coming, and I should add that the way Sylvia, a woman in her late seventies, pounded the drums was impressive.

After the song was over the lights went up and she, Mary and the cast received a well-deserved standing ovation.

The Liverbirds may only be a footnote in music history, but such footnotes deserve to be remembered and celebrated. Perhaps they were and perhaps they weren’t the ‘World’s first all-female Beat group.’ But they were indisputably four young working class girls trying to make it in a decidedly male environment, and as such they were trailblazers.

We should add that, for the time their image was also groundbreaking. It might have been expected that they would dress in the type of sexy, revealing outfits that was the norm among many female performers, and increasingly the fashion for young British women. But their choice of masculine shirts, trousers and thin ties (arrived at after some experimentation) was interesting, and something I would have liked to hear more about. It’s not a great surprise to learn that one of the band, Sylvia, after the failure of her marriage, should end up in a committed relationship with another woman, and though we get only a brief hint of it in the play, I’m guessing that they had a substantial following among gay women.

Omissions aside, Girls Don’t Play Guitars is a great night out with great music and solid acting with a special mention on the latter front to Alice McKenna as Mary McGory.

If the play is at all close to the truth, then those four young women had the time of their lives.

Girls Don’t Play Guitars can be seen at the Royal Court until October 26th. Hopefully, it will get the chance to tour outside of Liverpool.

Mary and Sylvia’s biography of the band, which is on my to-read list The Liverbirds: Our life in Britain’s first female rock ‘n’ roll band: Amazon.co.uk: McGlory, Mary, Saunders, Sylvia: 9780571377022: Books

Their two Hamburg albums combined in a single compilation. Many of these songs are performed in the play. The Liverbirds – Complete Recordings Star-Club Hamburg Sixties (Full Album 2009) (youtube.com)

Appearance on German TV, playing their No. Five-hit Diddley Daddy The Liverbirds – Diddley Daddy (Beat Club, 1965) (youtube.com)

Anthony C Green, October 2024

A short American documentary which fills out some of the gaps in the Liverbirds story, featuring contributions from Sylvia and Mary, and a brief clip of them performing with the cast during the 2019 run of the play  We’re Britain’s First Female Rock Band. This is Why You Don’t Know Us. | ‘Almost Famous’ by Op-Docs (youtube.com)

 A BBC Breakfast interview with Mary and Sylvia from March this year Sylvia Saunders, Mary McGlory (The Liverbirds Members) On BBC Breakfast [14.03.2024] (youtube.com)

And The Liverbirds own YouTube Channel (2043) The Liverbirds – YouTube

Anthony C Green, October 2024

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