Beat City (cont.)
   

Faron’s Flamingos“As you can see, the big feature of the Liverpool scene is the group. The one you’ve just seen is Faron and his Flamingos, who recorded ‘Do You Love Me’ months before another group got it into the hit parade, but there are also some individual performers, people like Tommy Quickly and Billy J. Kramer, who used to be managed by Ted Knibbs, and Mr Knibbs now has a new discovery, 15-year-old Chick Graham.”

Chick is seen on stage saying, “Ta very much and now I’d like to do a number, it’s a request, it’s for three girls named Valerie, Ruth and Dulcie. It’s called ‘Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow.’

He begins to perform the number.

Farson continues, “And now we have one of the veterans of Liverpool beat, one of the first performers on the scene: Rory Storm & the Hurricanes, who started seven years ago.”

Rory and the group perform ‘I Can Tell.’

While Rory continues to perform, the camera moves into the audience and focuses on Pat Davies, who says, “This night Rory hit one of my fellow workers with a piece of toast, in the face, you know, because he didn’t want jam on it. He gets quite violent if his temper’s aroused…and so he said he’d give us a lift home, very friendly, considering, you know, so he left me in Walton Cemetery.”

The camera moves to Paddy Chambers, who says, “When I was 12 I wanted to be a priest. I tried that for about three years and then I discovered women.”

The camera pans back to Pat, who is asked “Do you know the Beatles?”

She replies, “We used to be big mates before they became famous. We still talk to them when we see them, but we don’t often see them now. They’re always away. But they’re great, you know. George is fabulous.”

Back on stage Ringo reaches the finale of ‘I Can Tell’ and Part One closes.

Part Two opens with views of city centre streets such as Lime Street and Duke Street and the sound of a female folk artist singing “When in Liverpool I just arrived, to seek a situation, I heard the people say, it was the pride of all the nation.”

Farson continues, “The main streets have an urgent movement to them which reminds me of the main cities of Australia. The back streets are how I imagine London looked a hundred years ago, drab, dirty, whose only colour lies in the people. If I was going to make a film on Jack the Ripper, this would be the setting.

“Because Liverpool grew up in a hurry and was virtually built in the last half of the last century, it has now grown old. There are reputedly 80,000 slum dwellings and 30,000 unemployed. This poverty is another reason for the Beat groups. Children have to make their own entertainment.

The camera then films in alleys, on desolate debris, the bleak urban landscapes in the slum areas with kids playing outside tenements, swinging on lamp posts, all to the sounds of a female folk singer performing ‘Liverpool Lullaby’, which begins ‘oh, you are a mucky kid.”

The vignettes of grim looking little kids playing, ends with a group of them on a small roundabout in the empty litter strewn stretches before the Anglican Cathedral.

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