‘Waterloo Sunset’ is now regarded as the greatest song about London. It comes as a shock, then, to discover it was originally about another city altogether. Watching acts who had been huge stars just three years earlier but now couldn’t buy a hit – The Searchers, Billy J Kramer, Gerry and the Pacemakers – the Kinks’ Ray Davies wrote ‘Liverpool Sunset’ in sympathy.
Compiled by Saint Etienne’s Bob Stanley, with comprehensive sleevenotes, “Liverpool Sunset” investigates a thrilling but overlooked era in the city’s musical history, covering soul, R&B, psychedelia and freakbeat.
As this collection makes clear, the city was still producing new acts in the late 60s, and still making great records, it was just that the world had started looking elsewhere for its musical fix.
By 1965 the Iron Door club, once the Searchers’ Merseybeat home, was beginning to host soul all-nighters where local band the Chants were often on the bill. The Cavern was by now hosting the likes of Solomon Burke, Stevie Wonder and Ben E King.
All of this music was an inspiration to the next wave of Liverpool acts like Just Four Men, Tiffany’s Thoughts and the Clayton Squares. The latter were so highly regarded that breaking out nationally seemed a formality: they had two singles released on Decca, a six-week stint in Hamburg, a Ready Steady Go performance, and management by both the Cavern’s owner Bob Wooler and London tough-nut Don Arden.
“Liverpool Sunset” also includes overlooked tracks by some of the original Merseybeat stars, Billy J Kramer’s soulful ‘We’re Doing Fine’ deserves to be better known, and Cilla Black’s wildly odd ‘Abyssinian Secret’ in 1968 was considered too outré by Parlophone and ended up buried on an EP. Adventurousness wasn’t an issue. Joe Meek produced both the Cryin’ Shames and Billy Fury’s brother Jason Eddie, while McGough and McGear had Jimi Hendrix helping out on the terrific psych-pop So ‘Much In Love’.
Here are two dozen lost gems; 60s Liverpool classics once hidden now uncovered…
