The only all-girl group to come out of the Merseybeat boom, the Liverbirds forged a successful career in Germany as a hard-playing crowd-pleasing rock’n’roll band during the 1960s. The two surviving members tell their story in this new biography.
Five years ago, a musical about the Liverbirds called Girls Don't Play Guitars opened at Liverpool’s Royal Court Theatre and was so popular that it’s coming back again later this year. The title was taken from a notorious throwaway remark by John Lennon on meeting the Liverbirds at the Cavern, but this isn’t about him. This is about four women who proved him wrong.
Drummer Sylvia Saunders and bassist Mary McGlory are the narrators, with help from writer Lucy O’Brien who has told the stories of many other women musicians. This one, though, is different: it’s about a girl gang. And although a large part of the story is set in Germany, the tale is Liverpool through and through.
The story starts in the post-war days of bombsites, sectarianism, poverty and full employment. Jobs in factories, shops or Littlewoods were not, though, what the future Liverbirds wanted.
The seeds are sown when Mary begins booking the Merseybeats for youth club dances and says to herself “I would love to do that”. Not long after, she’s watching the Beatles on stage at the Cavern with her friends and they decide they’ll be the first girls to emulate them.
With admirable cheek and punk attitude they find out where the boys buy their instruments and go and get their own. The newly-formed girl group even get a photo shoot and a feature in Merseybeat magazine before they can play a note.
A few line-up changes later (joined by singer Val Gell and guitarist Pam Birch), the band is getting serious – and getting taken seriously. Like many Liverpool groups of the time, they are offered a residency at the Star-Club in Hamburg. Unlike many, they stay there.
Their adventures in Germany between 1964 and 1968 form the core of the book. First impressions of the Star-Club are shock that it’s in the red-light district and relief that there’s a Catholic church next door (at this point, Mary still has an ambition to become a nun).
It doesn’t take long for them to feel at home in this hotbed of rock’n’roll (and yes, sex and drugs too). They are in at the deep end, and it’s good for them. As Sylvia puts it: “Performing at the Star-Club was like rehearsing for hours every day.” They soon become accomplished, crowd-pleasing rockers. There’s TV, tours, record releases and success around Europe and in Japan.
The young women seem to take it all in their stride, and it sounds like a great adventure. The people and places are described in fascinating detail, and with typically down-to-earth Scouse humour. This section of the book is action-packed and it’s surprising to discover how short-lived it all was. The girls were 16 when they formed the Liverbirds and only 22 and 23 when it ended.
Sylvia describes the Hamburg scene as “a crucible of creativity… and where each of us found love and grew up as women”. Inevitably for the times, marriage and motherhood break up the band.
Maybe it would have happened anyway. The Star-Club closed its doors in 1969, and music was changing as psychedelia took over from pills. The group had written only a few of their own songs (check out Why Do You Hang Around Me on YouTube). And at the time, as Mary points out, “No-one could imagine rock’n’roll musicians getting old.”
On the other hand, the Liverbirds, as rock’n’roll purists, had a sound remained timeless: they’ve since been called “proto-punk” and compared to the Velvet Underground. But, apart from the occasional reunion, that was the end of the band.
The final section of the book fills in what happened to each of the members after the band split up. Would things have been different if they’d been men? Possibly. Does it matter? Maybe not, because time can’t take away what they achieved as rock’n’roll pioneers.
This review originally appeared on Louder than War.
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