Really Big Shows

A Minus 65 Post

Historic Events

There’s a story of a legendary show played by The Sex Pistols in Manchester on the 4^th of June, 1976. There were only forty people in the audience, but those forty included (among others) Ian Curtis, Bernard Sumner, and Peter Hook, who would form Joy Division (and then New Order after Curtis’ death); Pete Shelley and Howard Devoto, who would form The Buzzcocks; Morrissey; Mark E. Smith, who would form The Fall; producer Martin Hannett; and Tony Wilson, who would start Factory Records. I mention that show because some of those artists who were inspired on that day were some of the ones who inspired me when I was in college. So I’d like to think that I have some idea of what it must have been like to have been at the Empire Theatre in Liverpool between the 14^th and 19^th of March 1960. Okay, well maybe just a little…

Gene Vincent, Eddie Cochran, Billy Fury, Tony Sheridan, and others played, but perhaps more interesting, as with the 1976 Manchester show, was the list of people who were there to witness the events. It seems certain that John and Stu were there. Stu’s girlfriend at the time, Veronica Johnson, remembered that John yelled at some girls who were screaming for Eddie Cochran because they were keeping him from hearing the music. According to Mark Lewisohn, Paul has said at different times both that he was and was not there. And we also know that Pete Best and Neil Aspinall were there. George had the time of his life! This is what he had to say: “Eddie blew me away!”¹ Ringo, who played that night with Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, said, “It was great. All the Teds were throwing pennies.”² Ha! Most important to this particular story, though, is that Allan Williams was there.

The Williams Plan

Around the 20^th of March, 1960, Williams called promoter Larry Parnes to see if there were any open dates when the tour could come back to Liverpool. Parnes told him that Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochran were available on the 3^rd of May. Williams set up a show at Liverpool Stadium, the boxing arena that had been run by Pete Best’s grandfather, Johnny Best. Parnes would provide his two headliners along with eight other acts, and Williams could add local talent as he saw fit. Williams wanted to put on the biggest show that Liverpool had ever seen.

Then tragedy struck. On the 16^th of April, Vincent and Cochran were on their way to London to fly home to America for a two-week rest before resuming their tour. On the way there, their driver (coincidentally named George Martin) lost control of the car and crashed into a lamp post. Vincent received fairly minor injuries, but Eddie Cochran suffered severe head injuries to which he succumbed the following day. Allan Williams thought that would be the end of his big show, but Parnes told him to go ahead with it if he wanted to, and that Gene Vincent was still willing to do it.

So the task began of adding several local acts to the show. Those acts were Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, Gerry and the Pacemakers, Cass and the Cassanovas, Mal Perry, Ricky Lea, Johnny and His Jets, the Connaughts with Nicky Cuff, and Derry and the Seniors. They would all play the first half of the show, while the national/international talent would play the second, with Gene Vincent at the top of the bill.

The show went ahead as planned on Tuesday, the 3^rd of May 1960. It didn’t sell out, so Williams didn’t really make any money. But that didn’t mean that it wasn’t worth it, for a couple of reasons. First, the show really established that there was a Liverpool music scene. In the words of Adrian Barber, guitarist with Cass and the Cassanovas: “None of us knew of any other groups until Allan Williams’ gig at The Stadium. I’m sure we were vaguely aware there was something going on, but we weren’t a community by any means. At that Stadium show we became aware of all the other bands in Liverpool…”³ Well, all of the others not including The Beatles, but that would come soon.

Second, in terms of our boys, the most important thing to come out of this show was this. Larry Parnes was very happy with the results. He was always looking for bands to back up his stable of singers, and clearly the ones from Liverpool would cost less than the ones from London. At this show he had seen four bands that he thought he could work with: Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, Cass and the Cassanovas, Derry and the Seniors, and Gerry and the Pacemakers. Three of Parnes’ stable, Billy Fury, Duffy Power, and Johnny Gentle, would need backing bands almost immediately.

Parnes and Williams arranged an audition with all four of the bands he was looking at for the following Tuesday, the 10^th of May. We’ll be talking more about the auditions and who got added to the list next week, but at the risk of getting too far ahead of myself, I will say that on around the 6^th or 7^th of May, John Lennon sat listening to Stu and Allan Williams discuss art work for The Jacaranda when young Mr. Lennon asked Williams the question that would change the fate of The Beatles forever: “Allan, why don’t you do something for us?”⁴

As always, thanks for being here and reading. I really do appreciate it. Please leave comments to let me know what you think and to add any relevant information to the discussion. Please follow or subscribe to

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Next up: The Parnes Audition. Looking forward to that!

- Adamson

Photo: Empire Theatre, Liverpool, 2017, by Roger Cornfoot. Creative Commons Attribute-Share Alike 2.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Empire_Theatre,_Liverpool_-_geograph.org.uk_-_5519384.jpg

Quotes:

1) Interview by B.P. Fallon for RTE2, Ireland, October 1987.

2) Interview with Alan Smith, NME, 23rd of March 1968.

3) Interview by Spencer Leigh.

4) All These Years, Vol. 1: Tune In (Extended Special Edition), by Mark Lewisohn (Little Brown, London. 2013), p. 613.