Gerry and the Pacemakers: "I'll Be There"

January 18, 1965 (1 week)

Ever gentlemanly and modest, producer George Martin refuted claims on the part of critics that he did the bulk of the heavy lifting when it came to Beatles' recordings. He saw his role as that of a translator, a classically trained musician who took the Fab Four's creative ideas and helped mold them into some of the most extraordinary music ever committed to tape. He was there to assist these talented but unlettered individuals but the craft, Martin maintained, was all theirs.

The wags were wrong and, in truth, it didn't take the polite but firm voice of George Martin to disprove them. All one really had to do was to take a listen to the other groups that he produced to see that the magic was only coming from one corner. The Beatles had the curiosity, humour and talent to be a perfect fit for Martin; the rest of his charges were just there for him to make the best of what they had - and the bulk of them didn't have all that much.

Bobby Darin's "I'll Be There" is a composition that never really found a home — and, perhaps, deservedly so. The Latin Lover tossed it off as the B side to his Top 20 arrangement of the standard "(Won't You Come Home) Bill Bailey" and it languished there. Darin would have made a few extra bucks from having one of his compositions on the flip side of a stronger song but that was that.

Though Darin's "Bill Bailey" had been only a minor hit in the UK, there is another explanation as to how Gerry and the Pacemakers would have come across it in the early sixties. As many from Merseyside have told it over the years, Liverpool sailors and merchant seamen would return from the United States with bundles of records. For whatever reason, they refused to keep or sell the bulk of them and instead just handed them out to the local urchins. (I picture them descending the gangway and throwing these prized 7" and 12" items like frisbees to the youngsters who'd come to greet them) While a young John Lennon or Paul McCartney managed to get their hands on something like Larry Williams' "Bony Maronie" or Barrett Strong's "Money" by this (dubious) method, lovable lad Gerry Marsden had to make do with Bobby Darin — and not one of his good songs like "Mack the Knife".

The Pacemakers soon made it a part of their setlist, often closing out shows at the Cavern. Familiarity, however, did little to improve it. While Lennon and McCartney, as well as an emergent George Harrison, were keeping The Beatles afloat in originals, Marsden hadn't quite mastered the self-sufficiency route. They had already gone through those idiotic Mitch Murray numbers as well as their own spin on "You'll Never Walk Alone" (bloody hell, they couldn't have been a more cliched bunch of Scousers, could they?). "I'm the One" had been an acceptable Marsden-composed hit but the group still had to rely mainly on the work of others.

While I don't think much of "I'll Be There" as a composition, the Pacemakers only manage to make it worse — and, whatsmore, George Martin doesn't even do much to help matters. When Marsden yelped along with a frivolous little piece like "How Do You Do It" with plucky charm, he didn't possess the vocal chops for a lush ballad, even if it isn't an especially effective one. Perhaps due in part to the singer's lack of vocal prowess and warmth, Martin chose to swamp the recording with a sickly string arrangement. By this point in The Beatles' extraordinary run, he had given their roughhouse sound a professional sheen with contributions that accentuated with talents; with the Pacemakers it was more a case of a layering of gloop in order to cover up what a nondescript band he was working with.

The one bright side is that it is perhaps due to Gerry and the Pacemakers that someone was finally able to make the most out of a very average song a few years later. Tried out during the sessions for From Elvis in Memphis, it was kept off (in favour of, quite honestly, far better material) and kept on ice until budget release Let's Be Friends in '71. Like Bobby Darin (and unlike Gerry Marsden), Elvis Presley was an accomplished vocalist who had been on something of a creative hot streak ever since his 1968 Comeback Special so he was in a prime position to make something reasonable out of nothing special.

Score: 3

Gerry and the Pacemakers: "I'm the One"

May 25, 1964 (2 weeks)

It's likely that the late Gerry Marsden cared far more for Liverpool than any of The Beatles. He maintained a home in Merseyside, was an avid supporter of Liverpool FC (Paul McCartney has nominally been an Everton fan for most of his life but he later had a fence-sitting 'I support both sides' stance which I think we can infer that he doesn't really give a shit about football) and was involved in many local causes. It wouldn't surprise me to discover that your average Scouser — particularly those of a by-now advancing age — has a genuine fondness for him over the Fab Four, not unlike the Irish who have more of an attachment to the likes of Thin Lizzy's Phil Lynott or The Pogues' Shane MacGowan while regarding U2 as being for tourists.

Yet, there is one issue that I have with Marsden that is worth bringing up: he was as prone to myth making and revisionism as his Liverpool colleagues Lennon and McCartney. In the once definitive but still highly entertaining documentary The Compleat Beatles, the singer pumps up his hometownfolk as "nitty gritty" and "more real" than Londoners. As proof, Marsden takes the mickey out of Cliff Richard's million-selling smash "Living Doll", a single which, he implies, the young people around the Mersey would have sneered at. I have no doubt he was correct but it's still hard to swallow coming from the same person who sang lead on "How Do You Do It", a song The Beatles reluctantly tried out upon the cajoling of producer George Martin. It is even said they were so mortified by it that they would not have been able to "show their faces in Liverpool again" had it been released. But lifelong Liverpudlian Marsden and his fellow Pacemakers played on it with sufficient enthusiasm — which the Fab Four's earlier version noticeably lacks — that it even managed to go to number one in Britain. Not so "nitty gritty" and "real", eh Gerry?

Chartwise, Gerry and The Pacemakers rivaled The Beatles for a time. It's likely that the Fabs had laid the groundwork for them but there's no escaping the fact that they had three chart toppers on the bounce with their first three singles. They even managed to pull of getting to the top of the official charts before their chums. Yet, there's no escaping the fact that all three of their number ones — "How Do You Do It?", "I Like It" and future association football anthem "You'll Never Walk Alone" — had all been written by other people. It was only when their originals started coming out that their fortunes began to falter.

"I'm the One" isn't a disaster. It made it to number two in Britain and was a big enough hit in a number of territories (though, surprisingly not in the US). Whatsmore, while by no means a classic, it's an improvement on their run of British number ones. Marsden isn't an especially outstanding vocalist but he carries the tune well enough with a cocksure style he had patented. It also has a good beat and the piano part played by Les Maguire is ticklish fun. All that said,  the best things I can say for it is that it's respectable and that I don't mind having it on. "I'm the One" is good for what they were capable of but in the scheme of things, it's nothing special.

There's a chapter near the end of Craig Brown's book One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time (North American publishers gave it the very boring alternate title 150 Glimpses of The Beatles) describing a parallel universe in which Gerry and The Pacemakers ended up the pop music legends with local rivals The Beatles an also ran. The segment is good fun even if I don't buy them having many of the same experiences (would Gerry Marsden have been able to put up with the Maharishi and Yoko Ono — and, indeed, would they have been able to put up with him?; and with all due respect to the singer, I have trouble believing he'd ever be the victim of an assassin's bullet) even though they did have the same manager and producer. While I enjoy the thought experiment, it doesn't play out as realistic. Had The Beatles faltered somewhere along the way — say, by breaking up during their chaotic Hamburg residency — so, too, go the fortunes of The Searchers, Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas and Gerry and The Pacemakers. Had their chart fortunes evaporated after "Please Please Me", their Liverpool rivals would've had an even more uphill battle to make it. One group failing to make it doesn't necessarily result in someone else taking their place. Ian McCulloch of eighties' Merseyside indie rockers Echo and the Bunnymen once claimed that it could've easily been them who made it big rather than U2. It's more accurate, however, to say that U2 could have easily been Echo and the Bunnymen — and even more accurate to say that neither of them could have progressed beyond their respective hometowns. The same goes for The Beatles and The Pacemakers.

And in any case, Marsden was Mr. Nitty Gritty so he never needed to get out of Liverpool anyway. It's just as well he never bothered.

Score: 5

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Hey! Where's...

An old friend of mine once told me that when Louis Armstrong dislodged The Beatles from the number one spot on the Hot 100 that New York City's entire jazz community had a party to celebrate. I'm not sure of his source but I sure like to think that it's true. I have no idea who happened to be living in NYC at the time (some would've been living in other parts of the States, while others would've been touring; this was also right around the time that a number of jazz musicians like Ben Webster, Don Cherry and Dexter Gordon began relocating to Europe for better payouts and less racism) but I like to imagine everyone from Cab Calloway to Albert Ayler was in attendance. Oh to have been a fly on the wall at that get together. Satchmo was no longer physically able to blow minds on the trumpet but that voice is as strong as ever and he gets through it effortlessly. It's isn't quite "Tiger Rag" or "St. Louis Blues" but he was still near enough to the top of his game. No wonder he knocked The Beatles off the top — he was just about the only person who was in their league.