Liverpool, to my mind the strangest of all the cities
of the North, not the nicest – hardly a word one can apply to Liverpool, hard
drinking, hard living, hard fighting, violent, friendly and fiercely alive… if
one had to sum up the so-called Liverpool sound in one word… I chose the word
vitality.
This BFI Blu-ray collects together over a dozen
documentary films from the remarkable Daniel Farson, who after joining Associated-Rediffusion,
the first British commercial television company, in the mid-1950s went on to
take his art in directions the staid old BBC couldn’t follow even though, to
this day, these programmes inform, educate and entertain.
For me this set is worth getting for the film Beat
City (1963) alone and, of course, I would say that wouldn’t I as it’s all about
the music of Liverpool and not just the obvious mop tops. The Cavern in its pomp, a “cellarful of noise”
that, as William Fowler observes, has something of the energy of other joints
central to movements such as New York’s CBGB’s and, indeed, Eric’s club which emerged
in 1977 across the road in Mathew Street and where a young teenage me saw
Magazine, Adam and the Ants, the B52s, John Cooper Clarke, Jilted John, Ed
Banger and his Nosebleeds – possibly with a young Stephen Morrisey.
The introductory titles feature There’s a Place by
The Beatles, such a powerful song from Lennon with wistful harmonica and tight
harmonies from Paul, but that’s your lot when it comes to what we now know were
the definitive act of the Beat Boom. Then, after some establishing shots of
Liverpool, it’s straight to the graveyard of the city’s Anglican Cathedral
where Daniel Farson, sat on a bench with a local and his howling dog, tells us “…
this is not a film about The Beatles but the place they came from and the
people they left behind…”.
Down we go to the heat and passion of the old Cavern where’s
a roaring start with Faron's Flamingos singing their signature tune Do You
Love Me, which Brian Poole and the Tremeloes, who they toured with, had the
big hit with in 1963. A year earlier Decca executives had famously chosen Poole’s
band over The Beatles when both auditioned… ah well. Here Faron’s band are
performing live but a studio version is played over them as with most of the
others featured.
Fifteen-year-old Chick Graham follows with Will You Still
Love Me Tomorrow fronting The Coasters whose previous singer was Billy J Kramer.
There’s lots of energy and Decca, eager to make up for their Mersey Mistake,
signed them up soon after. Finally, we see one of Liverpool’s most established
acts, Rory Storm and the Hurricanes performing I Can Tell. The band, whose
former drummer was one Richard Starkey, were one of the first to play rock ‘n
roll at The Cavern but, impressive though they were, failed to match the
success of their sticks man.
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| Chick and the Coasters with the Cavern crowd |
The energy remains but the atmosphere shifts as we see
glimpses of the city behind the songs with documentary footage showing kids
playing with abandoned cars, and in bombed out areas of the city at nowhere
near the apex of its post war decline… There are some very interesting glimpses
of a multi-ethnic city soundtracked by the Liverpool Lullaby sung folk and not
Cilla-style over shots of King Billy graffiti and other reminders of the impact
of the first huge wave of immigration after the Irish famine in the 1840…
After a trip to the alehouse to hear a couple of pub
singers doing damage to Welcome to My World… we get to one of the era’s most successful
groups, folk ensemble The Spinners, singing Jenny Get Your Oatcakes Done
– absolute filth as Vic Pratt says in the commentary – the band were still
touring until 2021 and were one of the mainstays of the British Folk boom. The
MacDonald Sisters follow, Liverpool based teachers, originally from the Isle of
Lewis who were the first female folk duo of note in Britain who, like the
Spinners, had their own folk club.
We shift tone to the doo-wop stylings of The Chants, one
of the earliest black groups in the UK, and featuring Eddie Amoo who was part
of the trailblazing Toxteth band, the Real Thing including his younger brother
Chris (my mate Nick lived next door to him just off Lark Lane). Then purer
Merseybeat from the charismatic Earl Preston and the TTs and then Cy Tucker and
the Friars – see what he did there? So many of these bands did the rounds in
Hamburg as well as the ‘pool.
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| Gerry Marsden whose mum was very kind to my friend Irene when she bunked off school in search of George Harrison and/or a Pacemaker! |
Talking of which, things reach a peak with Gerry and the
Pacemakers, whom Squires thought would be the key act for the documentary,
singing I Like It one of their three number ones from their first three
releases – a record that lasted until Frankie Goes to Hollywood (I saw Holly
Johnson playing bass for Margie Clarke at Eric’s, in the mid-80s. I wiped
another tear as Gerry sings You’ll Never Walk Alone – a major song of
the era and of continuing importance to Liverpool FC, through the wind and
rain… and then a version of Nat King Cole’s Pretend which shows if nothing
else, how hot and sweaty things got singing in those shirts, suits and ties.
The filmmakers had to contend with Mr Brian Epstein
pushing his new act Cilla Black but they were more concerned with grabbing
Gerry and the Pacemakers
The Blue Angel Club is our penultimate stop where Farson
mentions that he met Paul and Ringo, who aren’t featured for Brian reasons,
followed by a steel drum band playing at the Jacaranda Club which was owned by
Pete Best’s mum if I remember correctly. As the Boys say, it’s almost criminal
that this slice of Liverpool life has been so hard to see over the years and,
as I said at the top, it is essential viewing for all beat fans and makes this
a must-buy with all the stars!
Props also to Vic Pratt for mentioning Arthur Askey in talking
about Liverpool’s sense of humour, sure there’s Ken Dodd and, some might say,
Jimmy Tarbuck and Freddie Starr – who was hilarious live when I saw him as a
kid – and who was also a Merseybeat singer and a decent actor in the intriguing
Liverpool-based crime drama Violent Playground (1958), but Arthur is
class and whilst my Mum disliked him intensely my Dad loved him. I thank you
playmates!
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| The Vines aka The Big House: the start of many an evening in town and still serving pints to this day! |
Is it wrong to be out of step? Dan Farson goes out to
challenge people who hold odd views about life. Are these people just cranks or
are they one step ahead of us?
Out of Step: Witchcraft (1957) as specialist in
fringe beliefs, Mark Pilkington, comments, self-identifying as a witch today is
by some margin more acceptable than back in the more ostensibly Christian
1950s. There’s a fascinating interview with Dr Margaret Murray, who was 92 at
the time, a former suffragette – marching on Parliament with Emmeline Pankhurst
in 1907 – later Egyptologist and anthropologist who branched out to the study
of pre-Christian religions, becoming a leading authority in witchcraft which,
after her time, underwent a revival in the 1960s. We see Gerald Brousseau
Gardner, the Godfather of British Witchcraft and an associate of The Beast, Aleister
Crowley, who put into practice much of Murray’s researched practices… Louis
Wilkinson a non-believing friend of Crowley’s is last up and it’s interesting
to hear a relatively dispassionate account of the Great Mage.
We all love a good conspiracy especially the people who
run social media companies, and the next episode is full of them. Out of
Step: Other Worlds Are Watching Us (1957) features footage from The Day
the Earth Stood Still and was made some ten years into the UFO Age as Mark
Pilkington points out in his expert Ufologist commentary. Pilkington also
remarks how little has changed in the 69 years since this programme was made: “…the
only thing that has changed is that UFOs now have the more serious sounding
UAPs making them an appropriate topic for discussion in the United States
Congress…”.
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| Daniel Farson posing a question... |
The freaks are, naturally, far more interesting than those Keeping in Step but The Wedding (1958) and Stock Exchange (1958) give Farson the chance to point out the quirks of normality… which is where his observations really come into their own as “each week, Dan Farson meets a conventional point of view.” Example: “The three most exciting words in the English language are probably ‘I Love You’ and the four most expensive ‘Will You Marry Me’…” he has great fun at his subject’s expense and who could deny this cultural outsider his observations – his autobiography was entitled Never a Normal Man after all and if you popped into The Colony Rooms in the 60s you probably would have seen him with Francis Bacon but not in The French, where he was barred.
He's on this home turf for This Week: Soho Striptease
(1958) which feels a lot sleazier than it looks as you’d expect given the
restrictions of TV but even then it’s shocking. As Vic Pratt says in the
commentary, the displays shown were pushing the bounds of decency as public
demand drove the censor’s rules further with private membership clubs were
decreed in 1957 as not subject to regulations limiting the movement of the
performers. Farson was a member of the Gargoyle Club – not to see the shows but
to enjoy the after-hours drinking.
This Week: Robert Graves (1957) is a fabulous compilation
of production materials featuring Farson interviewing of one of the literary
heroes of my youth, outsider, poet and writer of an essential memoir of the
Great War in Good-bye to All That, I Claudius and a biography of
his good friend TE Lawrence.
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| Studio setting for Mixed Marriages... no pressure. |
People in Trouble: Mixed Marriages (1958) is a
different matter entirely, dealing with a subject that was highly controversial
at the time, coming out just before the Notting Hill race riots. James
Wentworth-Day is the voice of establishment disdain who not only opposed mixed
marriages but also, in an unaired episode on transvestism, voiced the opinion
that all gay people should be hung. How representative of contemporary views he
is worthy of additional research but here, as there, Farson does not accept his
views – “I couldn’t disagree with you more but at least you do say what you
really feel…” – and he lets the audience make up their own mind. People in
Trouble… it’s sad then and it’s sad now and more so than one would have
hoped until relatively recently.
I think you’ve got to give your hero worship to
someone who deserves it. I’ve met a lot of the London smart set and they’re not
very smart…
There are three Success Story shorts covering playwright
Shelagh Delaney (1959) just 19 at the time and discussing her debut play, A
Taste of Honey, and we see a clip featuring Murray Melvyn, Avis Bunnage and
Frances Cuka, Shelagh is feisty and bats back all of the categories Farson
throws at her, “angry young woman”, writer of a “sordid” play and her
“overwhelming success” and so on. She’s something new, eloquent and Salford
smart! Quite a contrast to the next
subject, clairvoyant and astrologer Maurice Woodruff (1959), from the sublime
to the gorblimey! We start off with Mr Peter Sellars, then filming I’m Alright
Jack and a regular customer of Woodruff’s… has to be seen to be believed folks!
Mr Farson in his natural environment
Finally, there’s pulp fiction author Hank Janson (1959) a
pseudonym we now know was created by the English author Stephen Daniel Frances.
Our Dan interviews Janson’s publisher who was sent down for obscenity and spent
four months in prison for works of dubious art that he never read but were
selling in their thousands. Sadly, being a “paperback writer”, his publisher
says that Janson wasn’t a wealthy man although he wasn’t giving much away about
the mystery of who he was. We also get to meet the books’ printer – ah the days
of hot metal – who, Digital Kids, was key to the distribution of these works.
Farson gets to meet the author in the Panama Club off Piccadilly but, unlike
the dancers on stage, the author is overdressed to the extent to which he is
wearing a mask.
There’s far more candour in an interview with Harry Webb
from Cheshunt in Celebrity: Cliff Richard (1959). Cliff was still a teen
and only a year after his genuinely classic debut hit, Move It (1958)
and after featuring in the film Serious Charge (1959). He had just finished
filming Expresso Bongo and comes across as pretty levelheaded and connected
with Farson firing questions direct and quickly!
Pursuit of Happiness: People Apart (1960) is
another slice of life meeting the full and part-time inhabitants of the island
of Lundy a few dozen miles off the Southwest coast and a few miles long with no
roads and just one hotel with bar and shop attached. Farson talks to a former
TV executive who has moved there to find himself away from London and others
who find the satisfaction of a simpler life in which everything you do is
necessary, outweighs the inconvenience if isolation, lost friends and no
broadcast news.
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| Harry from Cheshunt |
Farson’s Guide to the British: Cats (1959)
features a challenging discussion of the nature of our feline friends as Farson
confronts the bizarre humans who find them loveable. Farson’s skills are to
make even the seemingly prosaic controversial and at least a source for a good
talk. There are some delightful shots of street cats in London where some
30,000 cats were being put down every year. Cats are for life not just for
television.
These programmes are completely addictive and I look
forward to Volume 2 in this rediscovery of this idiosyncratic tele visual
journalist and the characters and sub-cultures of the time which otherwise might
be drifting mistily into the past.
Special features
Newly remastered in 2K and presented in High Definition and Standard Definition
New audio commentaries on selected programmes by writer and publisher Mark Pilkington and the BFI’s Vic Pratt, Milo Holmes, Chantelle Boyea, Dick Fiddy, Dr Elinor Groom, Lisa Kerrigan and William Fowler
Beat City image gallery
Illustrated booklet - first pressing only - featuring new writing by the BFI’s William Fowler, Vic Pratt, Lisa Kerrigan and Milo Holmes, plus a new essay by Nic Wassell on the creation of the Associated-Rediffusion logo
You can and must order your copy from the usual online
sources or pop into the BFI shop now before the first pressing sells out. There
is so much here that describes its time perfectly and in the slightly quirky manner
of the quicksilver Daniel Farson!
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| A Liverpool Bobby, a colleague of my Dad's... |
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| As a child I thought that King Billy must have run a gang out of Walton... took me years to work it out! |
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