Editor’s Notes: Virginia and I were closely involved with the production and accompanied the team to all the locations and filming. Socially we became friends and established a close relationship with the team.

When we were having a drink in the White Star pub I accepted a challenge. Charlie Squires and other members of the team said they would blindfold me and put drinks before me which I had to identify. This was something they’d tried on several occasions and no one had succeeded in identifying every drink. The blindfold was put on. The table was then filled with glasses of every kind of beer – mild, bitter, Guinness, Mackeson’s, numerous different brands. I identified every one, which amazed them.

Sadly, Charlie, a brilliant and much respected director, died a few years after ‘Beat City’ was completed.

Daniel Farson was one of Britain’s major television interviewers. On Virginia’s birthday he surprised us by ordering a bottle of champagne to celebrate. We went around the city with him where he was amazed at the ornate decorations of pubs, their etched windows, the carved woodwork. Many of the pubs were being knocked down and their wonderful fittings discarded. Dan wanted to buy some for a pub he had on the Isle of Dogs.

He was so amazed at the scene he asked me to have a meeting with him. He said he’d been onto his lawyer David Jacobs and had prepared a contract for me to co-manage artists with him. He had sent his resignation to Associated Rediffusion and wanted to concentrate on discovering and nurturing new talent with me. He then took me to a meeting in the Lord Nelson Hotel to introduce me to a male singing duo he wanted to sign up. Unfortunately, Associated-Rediffusion refused to accept his to resignation as he was under contract to them, so his dreams of co-managing artists with me ended.

Sadly, Daniel has also passed away in November 1997.

Jim Couton was a performer from Liverpool’s clubland, a world of hundreds of small clubs in every part of Merseyside which featured comedians, ventriloquists, singers, groups and variety acts of every persuasion. There were well in excess of 300 clubs affiliated to the Merseyside Clubs Association, social clubs for workers in factories, stores and Unions, ranging from clubs for the NUR (National Union of Railwaymen) to Jacobs Cracker Factory.

After Faron’s performance of ‘Do You Love Me’ we see the late Paddy Chambers, who was a member of the group. The other person with an anecdote in Pat Davies, Cilla Black’s friend who was once Ringo Starr’s girlfriend and is now married to an American television executive and living in New York.

At the Majestic Ballroom we see Ida Holly, one of John Lennon’s girlfriends, who I helped to become a local commere. She then left for London to become a model and changed her name to Stevie Holly.

At Gregson Wells we see the Spinners, who were to become Britain’s leading folk artists for the next few decades.

Jackie and Bridie were two Liverpool schoolteachers who have enjoyed a relatively successful musical career over the decades, with numerous appearances at folk festivals and on concert, several singles and a number of albums including ‘Come Day Go Day’, ‘How Can You Keep From Singing’, ‘On Stage’ and ‘Our Language,’ in addition to two volumes of their song books ‘Songs For Singing Folk.’

Daniel’s reference to ‘coloured’ may seem a bit archaic now as it has been superseded by the more positive ‘black.’ However, that is how black people were referred to in the early Sixties, a similar situation to homosexuals who were also to receive a more positive reference when later referred to as being ‘gay.’

Ken Dodd’s quote is appropriate. Liverpool was noted for its comedians – Ted Ray, Arthur Askey, Jimmy Tarbuck, Johnny Hackett, Norman Vaughan and many others.

Although the documentary attempted to give a wider view of the music – taking in the folk acts and steel bands, no reference was made to the healthy Country Music scene on Merseyside.

Farson’s quote about Liverpool and Jack the Ripper is interesting, because it has been suggested that the Ripper was actually a Liverpool man called Maybrick.

Although I helped to advise, the vision is all Charlie’s. It’s not one I’d entirely agree with as he painted a one-sided picture of squalor, slums, seediness. It is a glum, grey portrait, filmed in alleys and bombed sites and on desolate areas of the city. It gives an impression of a poverty-stricken, broken-down city of desolate people, whose only outlet is in music. Yet I remember it as vibrant, colourful, with beautiful landscapes and parks, green areas around Queens Drive, Penny Lane, Strawberry Fields, Sefton Park, Princes Park, Otterspool Promenade.

I do admit, though, that it is full of atmosphere and has some wonderful visual images, impressively composed.

But ‘Beat City’ it is the one documentary of Liverpool filmed at the time of the renaissance of music, which does give an insightful look at the city, the people and the music. The one other major documentary of the year was Don Howarth’s ‘the Mersey Scene’, although that BBC documentary concentrated on the Beatles (although a scene was filmed inside the Mersey Beat office).

It’s ironic that the documentary is now owned by Dave Clark, who the British national papers believed his ‘Tottenham Sound’ would wipe out the ‘Mersey Sound’, yet who was advertised in America as having ‘the Liverpool Sound’ and whose photograph with the Supremes in the Motown Museum is captioned :’Liverpool Meets Detroit.’

My thanks to Chazz, one of our photo researchers, for the publicity pic of members of the ‘Beat City’ cast and for the Coasters photo from the series. All other illustrations are from Mersey Beat.

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