Gerry Marsden – Tribute to a Liverpool Legend

Jamie Bowman pays tribute to the much-loved Merseybeat star who sadly passed away earlier this year at the age of 78.

IT WAS ONE OF THE CRUEL IRONIES of Gerry Marsden’s death that it happened when football stadiums across the country stood empty of the fans who turned one of his recordings into an anthem for the ages.

Instead of hearing Liverpool FC’s famous rallying cry sung by the Kop at full volume, those watching the Liverpool v Manchester United game had to settle for a minute’s applause and You’ll Never Walk Alone played over the Tannoy. We all deserved better.

Gerry and the Pacemakers’ version of this Rodgers and Hammerstein tune from the musical Carousel was at number one in the UK charts when President Kennedy was assassinated and was the third instalment of an extraordinary assault on the nation’s record buying public which saw Gerry and his bandmates briefly eclipse their friends and rivals The Beatles as the “toppermost of the poppermost” to quote John Lennon.

Like his lifelong pal, Ringo Starr, Gerry was born in the Dingle on 24 September, 1942. With its sloping streets and dockland view, life could be tough and Gerry was a decent boxer who got a job on the railways before forming a beat group in 1959 called Gerry and The Mars Bars. The legend goes that the lads thought the chocolate’s makers would sponsor them but they instead forced them to change their name and The Pacemakers were born.

With Gerry’s evident star quality shining through, the band stood out and they became Beatles manager Brian Epstein’s third signing in June 1962.

Paul McCartney had long worried that the Pacemakers would eclipse his own group as Liverpool’s most popular and it didn’t help that Gerry had pinched George Harrison’s girlfriend, Pauline Behan, off him while The Beatles were in Hamburg. Gerry would marry Pauline in 1965.

Epstein took George Martin to see the Pacemakers in Birkenhead and he liked what he saw, signing them to Columbia and presenting them with a song The Beatles had rejected. How Do You Do It? sped to number one in April 1963, becoming the first Merseybeat chart topper and beating the Fab Four to the top by a month.

I Like It followed suit in June, with You’ll Never Walk Alone completing the record breaking hat-trick that October. All three of these songs had been covers. But Gerry proved his songwriting talent with Ferry Cross The Mersey and arguably their finest song, the beautiful, Don’t Let The Sun Catch You Crying.

But while The Beatles grew their hair and took the drugs, there was always something more Mathew Street than Haight-Ashbury about Gerry, who split the Pacemakers in 1967, just as psychedelia was making his own brand of light-ish entertainment seem obsolete.

A long career in cabaret, panto and children’s TV would follow but it’s through those early hits that Gerry will be best remembered by a city that loved him.

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