“They could have been bigger than The Beatles!”
Aside from providing the title for a typically skewhiff Television Personalities compilation, this assertion is one of the industry’s most-abused clichés, yet where THE SEARCHERS are concerned, it rings with an element of truth.
History has dealt these Merseybeat boomers a rotten hand. Often vilified for their lost years on the ‘chicken in a basket’ cabaret circuit during the 1970s and their place on the oldies package tours that earn ‘em a crust these days (well, John McNally and Frank Allen at least), they have often conveniently been airbrushed out of rock’n’roll history; consigned to Merseybeat also-ran status like Billy J. Kramer, The Swingin’ Blue Jeans and Gerry & The Pacemakers, none of whom made it past 1965 with their credibility intact.
Happily, though, the re-appraisal starts here with this lavish, 4-CD set which collects a whopping 120 tracks and presents ‘em in chronological order along with detailed contextual essays from respected rock scribes Jon Savage and Bob Stanley. Also included is memorabilia galore and reminiscences from surviving Searchers Mike Pender, John McNally and Frank Allen and it adds to up something that anyone with more than merely a passing interest in this much-maligned band will find highly desirable, not to mention frequently revelatory.
Many of the factors which helped break The Beatles played a similar role for this equally fab four. Not only did The Searchers slog relentlessly around the early ‘60s Merseyside dancehall circuit, but they too cut their teeth with a gruelling season at Hamburg’s Star-Club in the summer of ’62 and found a steadfast Liverpool venue (The Iron Door in Temple Street rather than The Cavern in Mathew Street) to help build a sizeable local following. Indeed, one can only speculate what might have happened should The Searchers have been taken under Brian Epstein’s managerial wing rather than the slave-driving, cash-cow milking methods of the ruthless Tito Burns.
CDs 1 and 2 nonetheless present the band’s stellar Merseybeat years 1963-65 in all their glory. The semi-legendary Iron Door demo/acetate from early ’63 grabbed them their contract with the Pye imprint and it kicks us off in style, revealing that The Searchers were already fully-formed and fabulous. ‘Sweets For My Sweet’ especially fizzes with the same starry-eyed energy of the smash hit single version while ‘Rosalie’ shows they rocked harder than most have ever given them credit for.
With a strike rate that would be unthinkable now, The Searchers first three albums were released within a staggering ten-month period. Like ‘Please Please Me’, their first two (‘Meet The Searchers’ and ‘Sugar & Spice’) were recorded in breakneck 24 hour spells and capture the itchy, amphetamine rush of the Merseybeat explosion. The pace rarely lets up and belting R&B outings (‘Love Potion No.9’, ‘Farmer John’, the inevitable ‘Money’) are primarily the order of the day, though the patented dulcet Searchers harmonies come to the fore on their dreamy cover of Pete Seeger’s ‘Where Have All The Flowers Gone?’ and the very seeds of folk-rock are sewn by the melting jangle of ‘Needles And Pins.’
Keeping pace with The Beatles, the massive-selling third Searchers LP ‘It’s The Searchers’ found them sizing America up in the spring of 1964, though their popular bassist (and vocalist on ‘Sweets For My Sweet’ and ‘Sugar & Spice’) Tony Jackson acrimoniously departed in the summer of the same year. With a new bassist (and the first non-Scouser) on board in the shape of Frank Allen, the band appeared not to miss a beat, delivering the sublime No. 3 hit ‘When You Walk In The Room’ and pretty much inventing The Byrds’ chiming folk-rock sound around nine months ahead of ‘Mr. Tambourine Man.’
Jackson, meanwhile, formed a new band, The Vibrations, and briefly threatened to return to the charts with a tough cover of Mary Wells’ ‘Bye Bye Baby.’ Success wouldn’t return to him, though before he was dropped by Pye in 1966, he bequeathed a couple of further beauties, not least a viciously beefy freakbeat version of Benny Spellman’s ‘Fortune Teller’ and a poignant take of Goffin and King’s ‘Stage Door.’
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Though the hits continued on into 1965 (the nagging ‘He’s Got No Love’ could almost be the melancholic downside of The Rolling Stones’ ‘The Last Time’) The Searchers commercial descent began in earnest in 1966. Pye would bankroll no new studio albums following December ‘65’s ‘Take Me For What I’m Worth’ (despite the Top 20 success of the outsider anthem title track) and The Searchers never fully recovered from influential drummer/ leader Chris Curtis’ departure after a rollercoaster Australian tour in March 1966 with The Rolling Stones. Despite some production work and assisting in forming an embryonic early line-up of Deep Purple, Curtis would never record again.
Bizarrely, despite the fact The Searchers’ commercial freefall was underway by this stage, they recorded several of their best singles before Pye pulled the plug. Later covered by The Fall (!), ‘Popcorn Double Feature’ showed they weren’t fazed by strident protest pop; the Morse code riffs of ‘Western Union’ remain highly arresting and their self-penned final Pye pairing ‘Second Hand Dealer’ and ‘Crazy Dreams’ is a lost gem. The former is a seedy vignette Ray Davies would be proud of and the freakbeat genius of ‘Crazy Dreams’ is up there with The Creation at their best.
Post-Pye, The Searchers struggled. An unhappy deal with Liberty bequeathed the handclap-tastic ‘Umbrella Man’ and McNally’s fine, Scott Walker-ish ballad ‘Suzanna’, but also the execrable likes of ‘Kinky Kathy Abernathy’ (one star gained for excluding it here), while the early to mid ‘70s found the band ignominiously slugging it out on the cabaret circuit.
The material they did record during this period (especially an edgy version of David Gates’ pointed Don’t Shut Me Out) suggests that whatever was missing, it wasn’t ability, and The Searchers did finally get a deserved second bite of the cherry courtesy of the two albums they recorded for Sire between 1979-81. That these LPS didn’t bring a return to commercial fortune is more down to the vagaries of fashion than the songs themselves. Forming the backbone of CD4, the likes of ‘Changing’, ‘Silver’ and the swoonsome jangle of ‘Hearts In Their Eyes’ are a keen reminder that these guys had laid the foundations for chiming power pop long before the likes of Big Star and Tom Petty came along.
It’s harder to be charitable about the band’s mid-80s spell working with Pete Waterman or the post-Pender LP ‘Hungry Hearts’ from the late 1980s, but then production and stupid haircuts strangled the life out of so much music at the time and The Searchers certainly weren’t the only ones swimming against the technological tide.
Besides, by the time ‘Hearts In Their Eyes’ hits the mid-80s, you’re already at track 117 out of 120, so who cares? Ultimately, if you’ve any interest at all in the evolution of pop from the raw Merseybeat explosion through elegant folk-rock, psych-pop, power pop and new wave you’ll be in absolute clover celebrating The Searchers’ 50 years of harmony and jangle here. Even if they weren’t as big as the bunch who played across town from ‘em, they’ve brought us a lifetime of wonders to savour here. Respect, however belated, is most certainly due.
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