This is fun – a 1973 ‘Midnight Special’ episode just posted that features Gezza & the Pacemakers, Billy J. Kramer (who is recording a comeback album even as we speak), the Hollies, the Searchers, Wayne Fontana, Peter Noone and, er, the Bee Gees singing the Beatles. From a time when 60s acts still had most of their original members and Gerry could afford a guitar strap of normal length.
Flared trousers, bouffant hair-dos, Gibson SGs… Merseybeat titans ten years after (in 1973)
Well that was a fab bit of oddness, a bit like Wheeltappers and Shunters club crossed the Atlantic. Must have been strange for the fresher members of some of these groups to go from years of chicken in a basket clubs to one of the biggest shows in the US. For ONE night only. Then straight back again to chicken in a basket clubs. Gerry and the Pacemaker’s bass player looks familiar- Billy Kinsley of Merseybeats/Liverpool Express?
Looks like it’s just us Colin. The new members of these groups are fairly obvious. Later there was a show in the 80s called “Unforgettable” featuring many and more of these groups. By then the lineups usually contained just one grizzled member with a bunch of mulleted, bored club musos.
I enjoyed this “Life in a Tin Can” era of the Bee Gees, although Maurice in this clip is annoying.
Indeed. I watched ‘Unforgettable’. Cheesy as it was, it was still a bit of gold dust for a 13/14 year old fascinated with the musical past. We forget how little there was in the way of musical retro coverage in that era (print, reissues, TV…). There was a terrific Nordoff-Robbins music therapy charity live LP released at the same time with many of the same acts (Troggs, Nashville Teens, etc.) – sounding a lot grittier than they were allowed to on ‘Unforgettable’. It’s not on CD, alas.
Here are the Teens on the show. They do manage to rock, though the bass player looks the very definition of cabaret. They released a terrific live mini-LP ‘Live at the Red House’ around that time. I tried to create a situation to have it reissued on CD a while back, licensing from the band, but received a bizarre legalese email saying ‘no thanks’.
And the Teens are still going…
That’s fab. I think I remember my neighbour Jack Monck telling me he was a Teen for a couple of dates. Unforgettable was also gold dust for me, as was the Basil Brush show a decade earlier as occasionally there’d be a pop group. In fact I’d watch anything where there was a chance you’d see an electric guitar like Nationwide