IN THE CELLAR The Early Beatles and Merseybeat 1961-1963

Where did all this music come from?

I was lucky enough to be in Liverpool along with a few thousand other teenagers when unforgettable things began to happen.

I grew up in a place called Bebington, which is close to Birkenhead , the town across the River Mersey from Liverpool. I was lucky enough to have a best buddy named Peter Wharton who played in groups in Bebington. I remember he owned a red Selmer Futurama electric guitar and sometimes he was the lead guitarist. He could play Chuck Berry numbers including the lead solo`s consequently I was very impressed. I could`nt play any instrument myself although I knew I could sing a bit but no-one ever asked me to so I remained a band follower, a “groupy”. On a Saturday afternoon in Bebington our gang which included Peter, Michael “Corbo” Corbishley, Roger Cheshire, “Yint” Grant ,Anthony Cross, Stephen and John Cochrane, would meet up at someones house for a game of three card Brag. These gambling sessions for huge stakes of piles of pennies, were smokey affairs and accompanied by the host`s record collection. I remember in 1960 , pre Mersybeat, we were listening to Buddy Holly, Elvis, the Everly Brothers, Brenda Lee, Chuck Berry, Eddie Cochrane, Carl Perkins,Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard. Birkenhead had its own pop idol at this time, a lad who had worked on tug boats in Birkenhead docks named Ronald Wycherley. His name was changed to “Billy Fury” and with a record deal he went on to to have a big British cover hit of a Goffin and King song “Halfway to Paradise”. A short while later the Twist craze hit us and Peter had joined a new Bebington band named “The Deerstalkers” whose singer Peter Minnis would do an amazing “Lets Twist Again”, jumping off stage into the audience at local dances. Dances in Bebington could be violent affairs if the leading “Ted” in the area, Evo, was present. Woe betide anyone that went near a girl Evo fancied.

In 1960 I was going to Carlett Park College of Further Education to do my “O” level General Certificate of Education. This course was intended for all us local thickies who had not been clever enough to get into Grammar School. My friend Peter was fourteen when he had passed nine “O” levels at a leading Birkenhead grammar school named St Anselms and there I was, aged seventeen with none. However thanks to a marvellous teacher named Mr Peegan I managed to pass six subjects in November 1960 and another five the following May. A talented young Bebington musician joined us for a short while. His name was David Percy and he soon after became the lead guitarist for “The Roadrunners”, a Wirral based rhythm and blues group. They went on to have a record deal in Germany and played the Star Club in Hamburg many times and were very popular on Merseyside by 1965.

With my eleven passes at “O” level I now felt I had to try to catch up clever Peter who was now about to obtain four “A” levels and go to University, as were most of my Bebington friends . My father wanted me to get a job but my Mum was quite a snob and wanted her son to be better educated so I was allowed to apply to Liverpool College of Commerce where I had learned they had a one year “A” level course. So this was how it came to be that I, a big follower of groups, came to be in Liverpool nearly every day in 1961, just as the Merseyside music explosion got underway. I was to stay in the city until June 1968.

From Bebington we teenagers had ventured across to Liverpool occasionally and we had visited the Cavern Club and Iron Door Club in the busy fruit market area behind the city Town Hall and the night clubs The Blue Angel and the Jacaranda in the city`s Seal Street area, but now I was able to be on the spot nearly every day. My daily budget from my father, always given reluctantly, was three shillings and sixpence, intended to be enough for my train fares and a modest lunch. Soon I devised an alternative budget for bus fare and 2 pence river ferry crossing of the Mersey (in all weathers) to Liverpool, a shilling admission to lunchtime sessions, at the Cavern, eight pence for a bowl of thin soup from the coffee bar inside the club and whatever was left on a pack of cheap cigarettes and a maybe a cup of frothy coffee. At college in Tithebarn Street or in one of the external class rooms in the Liver Building or in Chapel Street, one was just a few minutes swift walk from the Cavern in Mathew Street, which was a dark canyon side street between towering red bricked wharehouses. The entrance to the Cavern was most unimpressive, a small iron door led down a steep narrow stairway into darkness. It was difficult for anyone to pass on these stairs. The doorman always seemed to be a big burly man named “Paddy” who seemed to know everyone and who to exclude. At the bottom of the stairs was a big table where a man took your money. I soon decided to buy a “Cavern Card”. This was club membership and meant you could get into lunchtime sessions for a shilling (5 new pence) instead of the standard one and sixpence. The card cost two shillings and sixpence and lasted for the season. Later when the Beatles got popular lunchtimes sessions featuring them went up to one and sixpence ( seven and a half newpence). I remember being incensed at this.

I went to my first Cavern lunchtime session in early September 1961. I recall first seeing The Beatles in mid September that year . Appearances at all Liverpool music venues were advertised in a local newssheet named “Merseybeat” which cost threepence at newstands in the city. I had heard of the Beatles from my friends and Peter , now in “The Deerstalkers” , had played at a Wirral dance when The Beatles were top of the bill and told me they were very good. I paid my one shilling and sixpence and was down in the gloom of the Cavern. Lunchtime sessions began at 12 fifteen a.m and went on to two fifteen p.m. Groups did two 45 minute spots. Inside, the club was just a moderate sized wharehous cellar made up of three wide arched tunnels which were only about fifteen foot high . The stage was at the end of the middle tunnel , the band room was situated at the end of the left one, and there was appeared to be an emergency exit at the end of the right tunnel. As it was a cellar supporting a large building above us, the central tunnel had thick Norman like curved pillars on each side. Down the centre area small wooden seats were provided for the lucky hundred or so who got there first. The rest of us had to peer around the pillars at the bands. The maximum capacity of the little club was about four hundred and as Merseybeat progressed one learned to be queuing at the door early before Paddy opened up. If there had ever been a fire down there I don`t think many of us would have survived frankly. No-one could have got up that narrow entrance stairway in a panic situation and few of us ever noticed the other exit. It was a death trap no doubt and thankfully the worst never happened even though we all seemed to be smoking cigarettes down there and one struggled to breathe sometimes in the hot smoke filled atmosphere amid the press of young bodies struggling to lean around a pillar to watch the bands playing. (Eventually I believe Liverpool Corporation Health Department closed the Cavern for safety reasons in about 1965 and it was rebuilt are re-opened after extensive renovations in 1966-7.)

On this lunchtime I was down in good time and being a seasoned group follower looked over the bands equipment on stage. The bass player, by now Paul McCartney, who had replaced Stuart Sutcliffe who had remained in Hamburg to go to Art College there, had a big bass cab, with a Hofner Violin bass guitar propped upon it. There were two Vox AC 30 amplifiers, standard equipment for the best groups in Liverpool and a set of Premier drums for Peter Best, the Beatles drummer. All Liverpool and Wirral groups trouped to a music store named Hessy`s in the centre of the city for their guitars and amps. I never met anyone who did not shop at Hessy`s. But the one thing that really fascinated me on this day was the red coloured guitar on the right of the stage on its small stand. I craned forward to read the makers name on the tuning head. “Rickenbacker” it said. I had never seen this type of guitar before. It was John Lennon`s. It was American and I later learned he had purchased it from a seaman in Hamburg. Girls filled the first four rows of seats in front of the stage and always did when the “Fabs” appeared at the club, and on this day the club was crowded. As the group filed onto the stage everyone pressed forward to get a closer look. There were a few introductory words from resident DJ Bob Wooler and the band opened up with Chuck Berry`s “Sweet Little Sixteen” with John taking lead vocal. They were tremendous. I realised I was hearing something special immediately. This band were playing covers but the covers were sounding better than the original recordings. The vocals were often three part harmonies from the three guitarists. They were tight together and somehow, in the days before mixing desks , the sound balance seemed to be perfect or maybe this was just my euphoria. Between numbers the group chatted and joked with us in the audience. They recieved and read our requests from the girl fans in the front and larked about on stage, particularly John. The three guitarists by this stage had their hair combed forward but the drummer still had a “Tony Curtis” and appeared to stand out a little from the others. One could not help noticing he appeared to be quieter than the others and more popular with the girl fans. He had a sort of moody, loner persona. The Beatles mainly played covers. It appeared they possessed an enormous repertoire which had been built up while having to play long sessions in Hamburg. When I first saw them they had just returned from their second stint their. However there were some original numbers and “I saw her standing there” was a particular stand out favourite with us all.

And so my Cavern days began. Resident DJ Bob Wooler would greet us as “Cave dwellers” and that was what I became, at least three times a week I used my Cavern Card and paid my shilling. And gradually I came to see all the best bands in Liverpool not once but repeatedly . At the time we had so many good groups in the area, some of them splitting up and then reforming, it was hard to keep track. Anyone who lived through those days could tell you we had at least forty popular bands on the scene. A poll at the time in “Merseybeat” gave the top ten bands voted for as

1.The Beatles
2 Gerry and the Pacemakers
3.The Remo Four
4. Rory Storm and the Hurricanes
5. Johnny Sandon and the Searchers ( JS left them and joined the Remo`s)
6.Kingsize Taylor and the Dominoes
7.The Big Three
8. The Strangers
9.Faron and the Flamingoes
10.The Four Jays (later called The Fourmost)

I eventually decided upon my own favourites although new faces would appear and change your mind. But The Beatles were a long way my number one favourites. And I eventually began to stay on in town until the evenings and come down in the cave to see them at nightime sessions. My other favourites eventually were “The Searchers”, “The Big Three”, “Rory Storm and The Hurricanes” (but only for amusement value) and “The Merseybeats” , who came along in 1962. We cave dwellers seemed to have a culture of our own. We dressed in narrow dark trousers, wore “winkle picker” Chelsea boots, lots of guys were beginning to copy the Beatles and comb their hair forward. We had our own dance in “ the cave” called the “Cavern Stomp”. One faced the girl directly ,held her left hand and swung it back and forth though sixty degrees all the time while stomping ones feet quite hard into the floor , hardly moving from the same spot. The club was so crowded most of the time and it was so dark down there you could not have moved about in any case. Our music in the Cavern was we thought quite “cutting edge”. Bob Wooler played us Motown Tamla artistes quite a lot, Chuck Berry, lots of mainly American artists.

My A level course continued into1962 , my exams were in June that year at Strawberry Fields Technical College. Meanwhile down in the Cavern I and my fellow “cave dwellers” were the unwitting witnesses to the Merseybeat boom led by The Beatles who were the first to become managed and eventually the first to be signed up by a recording company. Down those narrow stairs in the smoky gloom we witnessed various chapters of these historical events. Always compered by the camp Bob Wooler, we were told one lunchtime that Mr Brian Epstein was amongst us from Nems music shop in the city. This is where we all purchased our 45 rpm singles for two and threepence each. Soon we were reading in “Mersybeat” that he was the Beatles manager. My exams came and went and amazingly, even though I had been forced to skip a lot of lectures to make my twelve fifteen a.m deadline with my favourite groups, I had passed and got three A levels. One subject behind clever Peter! But I was always behind him and some of my Bebington friends had done a lot worse than me. Now a confirmed College of Commerce student I elected to carry on and do more A levels and try for University. Any excuse to stay watching The Beatles and Co !

In early 1963 we had the enormous news of the Beatles signing to Parlophone Records. Next there was an even greater story and real drama. Peter Best their drummer had been sacked just as the group were becoming nationally known. Ringo, the drummer from Rory Storm and The Hurricanes had joined them. Coming into the club just after, George Harrison was attacked by girl fans of Peter Best and given a black eye. Drama indeed. Then the huge excitement and Cavern filling days of the release of the Beatles first single “Love Me Do”, for which we all rushed to Nems in Whitechapel around the corner and bought. I remember the lunchtime gigs with the boys on stage, two of them now sporting new Gibson jumbo electric- acoustic guitars and John playing the mouth organ expertly.

Other groups were also having success. The popular group “Gerry and The Pacemakers” were the next to get a deal. And from Manchester, down the East Lancashire Road, bands began appearing attracted by the boom in the Merseyside scene. One memorable 1963 lunchtime I saw “The Hollies” for the first time. Here I thought was a band vocally as good as The Beatles. I was straight away a big fan. They became my second favourite group. We also saw Wayne Fontana and The Mindbenders and Freddie and the Dreamers, who were really a comedy act like a Liverpool group named Freddie Star and the Midnighters.

By February 1963 the big news was that the Beatles were number one in the charts with their second single “Please Please Me” and while they were still appearing at the Cavern, the entrance fee had gone up to two shillings and sixpence and they were with us less and less often. As 1963 progressed we became Television and Radio Beatle fans rather than a live audience. But other leading Liverpool bands were still around for a while, until they too got themselves signed up. The wonderful Hollies came and went. The next time I saw them was at Liverpool University Students Union in 1966. The Searchers, Merseybeats, Swinging Blues Jeans were all to become chart successes and leave us. By the end of 1963 if you wanted to hear The Beatles live you tuned into BBC radio`s “Saturday Club” on a Saturday morning where they frequently appeared and if you wanted to see them you waited until their concert visit to Liverpool Empire Theatre, queuing for hours for a four and sixpence ticket.

But by the end of 1963 at parties and card sessions in Bebington we had a new long player album to play. The Beatles first album was played all night long everywhere one went. Mine was soon looking very worn out. Lunchtime sessions into 1964 now featured what one might call the second rank bands, Johnny Sandon with the Remo Four, The Mojo`s, The Undertakers and Merseybeat magazine was mainly writing about Beatle mania and “Yeah,Yeah,Yeah” were the headlines in the national newspapers ; the scene was still going on but outside of Liverpool.

IN ANOTHER CELLAR. After The Beatles and Merseybeat- the Liverpool Music Scene 1965-1967

My great pal Peter, now at Liverpool University studying Chemistry, announced one day in the summer of 1965 that he`d seen an advert for a Birkenhead group named “The Prowlers” who were looking for a guitarist. Next thing I knew he had joined them. I knew about “The Prowlers” only by reputation, there were a R&B/Blues group and had had a big following around Birkenhead . I remember one night trying to see them with my friends the Cochrane brothers, Steve and Eddie, and the Church Hall in which the group were playing , at the top of Grange Road, Birkenhead, was packed and we could` nt gain admission and had been disappointed. (Later I learned that this line up that we had been unable to see was the best the group ever were in the opinion of the surviving members. They had all turned professional and had an agent who had sent them all over Scotland and England for a time for moderately attractive sums, £10-15 a gig. And they had been to Hamburg and played in clubs there. Big stuff! )

In 1965 I elected to join an external London University B.Sc(Econ) degree course at Liverpool College of Commerce (these days called John Moores University), it was the best course I could get on, so I continued to be a full time student in Liverpool although still living at my parents home in Bebington.

By 1965 the Merseybeat boom in Liverpool was over. Soon even The Cavern was closed. All the groups that had made the big time were gigging away from the city. Also there had been a change in public taste in favour of rhythm and blues and blues bands. The Rolling Stones now vied with The Beatles for our hearts and new sometimes quite rocky bands had appeared, The Kinks, Manfred Mann, The Zombies, The Animals. In Liverpool, if they were not over in Germany, The Roadrunners had become the local premier band for a while, with my College acquaintance Dave Percy still playing great lead guitar. So the story goes, when George Harrison first heard the Stones, he said “they are quite good, almost as good as The Roadrunners”.

When as usual Peter offered to take me along to a practice , I avidly accepted the offer. A blues group in Bikenhead! We drove in his Morris Minor to Grange Road, the main shopping centre and turned down a side street named St.John Street . The group met in a small pub named The Garrick Snug and in we trouped and I met the group. They were friendly enough and seemed to appreciate anyone being interested. After a half of bitter we strode down the street a few yards into the drummers, MALCOLM CORAM, Grandmother`s house and down the steps into her coal cellar. In this small space there was just about room for the set of Ludwig drums and amplifiers and a P.A for the singer. All the group except Peter and me had long hair and a sort of arrogant nonchalance about them. I had learned from Peter that the band had recently lost two of its original members and now had a new singer, PHIL MUNRO, whose father was a uniformed sergeant in Birkenhead police force and now Peter on second guitar. I sat down in a corner as the group opened up with a warm up blues jam. They were the loudest band I`d ever heard. Upstairs the floor of his grandmothers living room must have been moving and her telly shaking. My ears were soon bleeding! Then into some covers of The Kinks, the Stones, and some material I had never heard before that was real Blues music. Phil Munro was not technically a good singer but his gravely voice was ideal for the material and he looked a great front man. He even tried to dance around in the little cellar. For the next couple of hours I was transported. They were the best band I`d ever heard Peter play in and he was enjoying himself, taking the occasional solo from spottily hansome lead guitarist PHILLIP NORMAN , who was playing a large bodied Burns guitar that I`d not seen before. The bass player was a grinning and often sarcastic blonde haired guy named IAN MACDONALD.

I could not stay away from Prowler practices and soon became the groups number one groupie. The Prowlers just about tolerated me, pulling my leg about my relatively straight appearance compared with them and bumming cigarettes of me. At first they had a roadie named Dave who owned a van and came from Knowsley, north east of Liverpool, where Mally, the drummer now lived. Later Mally found an introverted Cockney named Keith Coules also from Knowlsey who owned a new van and this guy ,with his strong estuary accent, was the groups roadie for the next three years. The band only had a few bookings so I had to wait a while to see them play “live”. Well, of course, they were fantastic. I thought they were far better than the Stones. Lead singer Phil Munro (nicknamed “Poxy”- because , it was whisphered to me, he had been obliged to attend a Birkenhead STD clinic). Apparently this fact was widely known locally and eighteen year old “Poxy” seemed to rejoice in his notoriety and introduced himself a lot of the time by his nickname (and still does!)

The band`s not having many bookings seemed such a shame to me and for the first time ever with any of Peter`s bands, I independently stepped forward to promote them. I got some names of Wirral venues from the guys and then went home to find old issues of Meseybeat with venue names in it, and hit the telephone when my parents were`nt around. Their phone bill must have soared because in late 1965 and into1966 I began to have the band booked out every weekend. Just around Merseyside, New Brighton, Warrington, Ellesmere Port, Chester . The centre of Liverpool was a challenge. Around this time my home from home, The Cavern had been closed down that summer,1965, according to the Liverpool Echo, Ray McFall, the owner was bankrupt. Later the news was that a wealthy Liverpool butcher named Alf Georghegen had purchased it. Inside it was going to have to be rebuilt in any case due to its risky emergency exit situation and poor ventilation.

The band appeared pleased with me and I seemed to become accepted as “a Prowler” tribal member although my hair only got slightly longer. But in Liverpool across the water The Prowlers were still unknown. Then the local papers printed the news that prime minister Harold Wilson would be at new rebuilt Cavern Club when it re-opened. I learned that Bob Wooler, the previous master of ceremonies and D.J at the old Cavern, would be running the reopening so I went off in search of him to get my group some gigs. I found him working at the Silver Blades ice rink near Everton in Liverpool. He was friendly and listened to me, and much later I learned that upon first acquaintance he thought I reminded him of Brian Epstein, the gay Beatles manager! Bob agreed to have “Birkenheads top group” at the re-opening gig of the Cavern . Free of course! I had been well conned. However everyone was pleased. On the day we trooped over to the club to find we were to be 11th on the playing list, a good three hours after the initial opening ceremony I managed to get us up the list by collaring Bob and pleading with him and when the boys eventually went on at around midnight the club was still full. Moreover the audience had just been treated to two hours or more of boring not very good local ”pop cover” bands . Then the “The Prowlers” hit the stage. They opened up with “Cadillac” and blew everyone away. Phil “Poxy” Munro was on top form. I made sure Wooler saw them and he was impressed. By the end of the hour the guys had Liverpool rocking. The audience screamed for more when Wooler stepped in to introduce the next band, no doubt another bunch of locals that he`d got free. He asked me to come and see him and meet him at a pub called “The Grapes”. Unknown to many there was a small side street at the top of Mathew Street down which was tucked this tiny, mirror lined bar. When I met Bob Wooler there a few days later,I learned that The Beatles used to pop in there even while playing lunchtime sessions at the Cavern. It was John Lennon`s boozer! After getting several scotches from me, Bob Wooler gave me a weekly residency at the Cavern, on weekend evenings. After much haggling we agreed £7 for two 45 minute spots. He`d started at £3. And so in 1965 and into 1966 The Prowlers began to make their mark in post Merseybeat Liverpool. They would blow away nearly every other band that appeared on the same bill with them. Bob Wooler began to promote Phil Munro as “Phil The Thrill and the Prowlers”, which went down like a lead balloon with the three original members, Phillip, Ian and Mally, each of whom leaned towards being a diva. I privately called them “the three stars” . Really these three were the band and the source of its tight playing sound and style. Just like the Beatles, there was an inner circle, and if you were a Peter Wharton, or a Pete Best, or even the Manager, you had not made it onto the tribal council. Eventually I was getting £10 out of Bob. We had made it!

Relations between the three Prowlers and my friend Peter had begun to decline. My friend Peter, not only had taken me with him to band gigs but also his steady girl friend, and the group disliked her. When Peter announced he was going on holiday for two weeks and could not honour even Cavern bookings, a three star deputation asked the manager to find them another second guitarist. I was asked to sack my friend. This was like a making a pact with the devil. And I had become such a fan of theirs and such a dedicated manager that I agreed to be ruthless. Peter was best away from them I thought. I quickly advertised and found someone as a temporary replacement, a small dark haired scouser named Robbie, (who was to last six months ). When Peter came back off holiday I had to tell him. It was awful. Also managing The Prowlers was taking up most of my time and my studies were suffering, I was getting behind with my course. As 1967 came along and the band were now playing Jimmy Hendrix and Cream covers, I did not turn up for my final examinations. My parents were mad with me and even I was scared of what lay in store for me. A letter arrived from Cheshire Education Department asking me to pay back my grant as I had not taken the exams they had paid for. I told them I would re-sit the following summer at my own expense. They replied if I failed to re-sit I owed them!

Meanwhile I was becoming Mr Trendy in Liverpool. I had taken the group into a small Wallasey recording studio named Lynsound and we had recorded some of the groups repertoire. We had made a single of “Cadillac” coupled with a song I had written with Peter called “Motor Car”, whose dreadful lyric went “don’t think you can get her without a motor car” . Out in the Irish Sea off Liverpool was moored at this time Radio Caroline North, the sister pirate radio ship of the one in the channel that had as crew all our future famous U.K D.J`s. In the Liverpool night club The Blue Angel I had networked with Radio Carolines Liverpool sales manager, a nice guy named Terry MacGuire, who was a Prowler fan. He agreed to play our single each time the Cavern`s programmes mentioned the group was gigging at the club, which was by now once a week. What I did not know was that Alf Georghegan, the Caverns new owner, would be billed for its playing time. Eventually a livid Alf collared me in the club and threatened to withhold all our fees until he was paid back. Terry also sent a copy of our single to Decca Records in London, with whom all indie radio stations had good relations. Unknown to me or the group at the time, the record was played at the companies weekly A&R meeting, which reviewed new product. They decided against it because the boys had used a riff in their arrangement of “Cadillac” that was from a recent hit record “Theme From Peter Gunn”. I had not realised this at all. And I am sure the terrible B side by myself and Peter had not helped.

CADILLAC / PETER GUNN recorded by THE PROWLERS 1966:

Listen here! An MP3 version of the record.

At the modern tarted up Cavern Club there is a brick to commemorate their old 1966 resident band The Prowlers. Nowaydays the only Prowlers is a an Italian band that took up the name, no doubt wanting to have an anglicised name and image for the international market

Mr Trendy manager was invited aboard the “Royal Iris” ferry boat by Radio Caroline one dasy in summer 1967 for a river cruise party which featured The Roadrunners. On board I met Terry Maguire, my host and also Paul McCartneys brother, Mike McGear, who was in the Liverpool comedy group The Scaffold. They had been enjoying a series of top ten hits that year. Imagine my pleasure and surprise when Mike McGear said he liked The Prowlers and asked me if the band would like to back them on some future gigs. A Beatles brother being friendly and wanting my band ! I was on a high that day. Reporting back to my “stars”, the proposition was greeted with derision. A backing band was not their idea of making it and “they” after all, were the local hot rock band, now playing at Liverpool University Students Union parties and going down a storm with the student audiences. I never had the courage to contact Mike McGear and thank him for his enquiry. Meanwhile Robbie the guitarist had arrived one day for his amplifier left in St.John Street and announced “I`m spewing de group”. Luckily for his amplifier his timing was perfect otherwise it would have been dismembered by prowlers. Just before he left the band I had been approached by the manager of the big Liverpool department store Lewis`s for the group to appear to launch a new range of young mens clothing. They were to play each lunchtime in the clothes department upstairs all that week. I negotiated a small fee plus a choice of jacket and pants for each group member. The store manager agreed. Robbie had left his jacket in the band van and , he, not being a tribal “Prowler” member (not unlike my friend Peter) had his jacket hi-jacked by our singer one night when we dropped him off at his home after a gig. Phil Munro aka “Poxy” , threw the coat down in the road in front of the van and ceremoniously urinated over it to the uproarious amusement of all on board, including the shocked manager. I was obviously part of the tribe that night. The coat was dried out and handed to Robbie who wore it at the next gig to the grimly silent amusement of all. No wonder he “spewed de group”! In late 1967 we parted with Phil Munro. He had been displaying a tendency to be moody and sometimes at gigs he was apt to be withdrawn and not put over his songs in his usual “Phil The Thrill” style, throwing the mike stand around and covering all the stage. On this particular night though , in Ellesmere Port , he was almost manic and at the end of the gig impulsively decided to climb the curtain at the side of the stage as the group rocked away behind him. The whole procenium arch gave way under his weight and came crashing down. That was the end of the night and nearly the end of The Prowlers. The “three stars” were livid with him and no longer wished to play with him and meanwhile the agent was mad with me and threatened to send the group a big bill and cancelled all further bookings. Years later I learned that sadly “Poxy” soon got himself into serious trouble. Years later he told me he had been sent to prison. One can only imagine how terrible this must have been for his father, Police Sergeant Munro.

In late1967 I had to announce that my time as manager was up because I had to go and sit in Liverpool public libraries and revise all my notes for my degree finals that I had not taken. It was almost a compliment when the guys trouped around to my parents home one evening to plead with me to carry on. Phil Munro was with them and he took a swing at me which I managed to dodge. I passed my exams that June in the hall of Liverpool College of Commerce. No more Bob Wooler or Cavern, or bands , I was away to live in London wiith some friends from College.

FORTY YEARS ON

Sadly I never formed a band with the “three stars”, the brilliant musicians I heard in the St.John Street cellar, ( losing some of my hearing ability while doing it.) Sadly it appears none of them ever tried to sing or write songs. This was to be what I began to attempt to do!

During the 1970`s and 80`s I remained good friends with lead guitarist PHILLIP NORMAN and he helped me record dozens of my songs, doing a lot of really good playing on them. In 1988 a London music publisher wanted some of the songs but not we two as artistes and Phil felt hurt when I signed just the song contracts. Phillip these days can be heard sometimes on Merseyside local radio, DJ BULLY BUTLER`S programmes, playing country music.

In 2001, PHIL MUNRO came to visit me in Ross-on-Wye from Birkenhead for “a week- end” and stayed for six weeks, leaving his old banger car in my garage. Eventually I had to insist that he leave. This time he did not take a swing at me! . It appears he decided to settle in Ross and is, I am told, still in the district. Once he formed a blues band and played in a Ross pub I am told.

In 2002 IAN MACDONALD appeared from Bebington and incredibly generously helped build our present recording studio, fitting all the interior double skin wood work, all for free. Subsequently in 2007 he listened to my song “Typhoon” and told me he thought it was good and that I should write some more. Which is what I did next. Hence MTTE. I begged Ian to play bass guitar with us and he appeared one weekend with a musician buddy, Bebington drummer BLING RYAN and recorded “Fallen On My Feet” with us in the studio but sadly he could not make our sessions all the way from Bebington due to his “social commitments”.

In 2007 MALCOLM ”MALLY” CORAM died shortly after emigrating from New Brighton, Wallasey, to Australia with his wife. “Mally”. He was a great musician and a devoted family man and his sudden passing was a shock to us all. Hear him in 1966 aged 18 on Cadillac/Peter Gunn above.