The Sound Of Music Test # 1

THE SOUND OF MUSIC HAPPENING THING # 357: The Merseys- Sorrow.

in my liverpool home, in my liverpool home….they have been very lucky in this city. such has been the welter of talent on offer that the angels of good fortune have visited the city time and time again looking for the elusive next big thing. it started almost a million years ago, when the very determined brian epstein made good on his promise to four local musicians that he would get them a record deal and orchestrate a way out of the city. in its wake, a whole genre of implausible music was thrown up, drawing attention to this de-industrialised wasteland that had once been one of the second cities of empire. in the 1960’s, young white lads -and one young white woman- with impenetrable accents became the new sound of tomorrow, dominating the pop charts and selling millions of records. for every chart stomping beatles and the searchers, there were lesser groups that made that enormous leap from the caven and the iron door onto the national and international arena. one such group were the merseybeats, a group of teenagers not old enough to be on licensed premises. the core of the group were billy kinsley and tony crane and hit at the height of the boom that gave then their name, with the million selling ‘i think of you.’ at the peak of their success in 1964, kinsley left to form his own band, imaginatively titled the kinsleys, only to return later that year. during his hiatus he was replaced on bass by former big three and future roxy music colossus, johnny gustafsson and bob garner, who would rock up a couple of years later in the creation. they were a reasonably successful act, between 63 nand 65 they released a flurry of singles, nearly all of which made the uk top forty. when the band split in 1966, kinsley and crane repackaged themselves as the merseys, a two man vocal group, managed by the kit lambert and chris stamp who had recently guided the who to huge success. their first release was ‘sorrow’, produced by lambert and previously a single for american outfit the mccoys. unlike the original, which was a slower folk-rock number laced with harmonica, the merseys version was an uptempo, swinging london belter underpinned by some mammoth drums by session legend clem cattini and a stinging brass solo. in the annals of liverpool records it really is one of the very, very best, of all the home grown hits of that period. it is the one that pulses with originality and an oomf that most of the mersey sound seemed incapable of. it was an enormous hit on the pirate stations, propelling it into the uk top five in the spring of 66. it gave kinsley and crane a second bite of the apple, which sadly only ammounted to one mouthful. they followed it up with a blinding cover of the who’s ‘so sad about us’ before it was released by the band themselves. one of their last releases was ‘penny in my pocket’ in 1968, written by local forgotten hero, jimmy campbell. times change, tatses change, people look in diffrent directions for the things they need. the progressive late sixties laid waste to many great pop acts, the merseys were just one. in a very unlikely scenario, kinsley got a third bite at the apple in the seventies, resurfacing as liverpool express, probably their most commercially successful act. their debut hit, ‘you are my love’ like ‘sorrow’ is one of the great liverpool records, reimagining what the beatles may have sounded like in 1976. ‘sorrow’ didn’t die or disappear once its chart run was over. it was one of those pirate radio records that david bowie chose to pay homage to on his 1973 covers album pin-ups. it was released as the single from it at the height of bowiemania and sold even more than the merseys version, seven years previous. i love ‘sorrow’, i love the merseys more than david’s, it reminds me of being a little boy and is supercharged, diamond tipped pop music to pierce the hardest of hearts. the lyrics are incredible stuff, too. george harrison borrowed the opening line for use in the beatles’ ‘it’s all too much’ in 1967. and what greater endorsement can a record possibly have. enjoy. x