VETERAN Merseybeat rockers The Searchers will be playing at Frome Memorial Theatre this Saturday, 3rd March.
With classic hits such as Sweets For My Sweet; Needles and Pins and Sugar and Spice, The Searchers will be playing numerous well-known favourites and reminiscing about their decades-long career, which bloomed in Liverpool alongside The Beatles in the 1960s.
After 55 years of non-stop touring, you would imagine that a group like the Searchers would be either ready to finally hang up their high button black stage suits, or at least severely trim their punishing schedule. In fact the last year’s datesheet of 150 shows is already a cut back on their regular run of 200-plus concerts a year. And stop? Looking at the dates ahead of them, there is precious little chance of that in the near future.
And if they did, it would not be due to a dip in their popularity. The last months of 2017 saw them closing the show as a headline act on an all-star bill that also boasted Gerry & The Pacemakers, The Tremeloes, Love Affair vocalist Steve Ellis and Vanity Fare and which sold out almost every one of the performances.
Far from losing any of their following, it proved to be the most successful sixties package of the last two decades with the vast Royal Concert Hall in Glasgow not only having to sell the orchestra seats set high up behind the performers, but also obtaining special permission to make standing room only spaces available, a first for this kind of show at that very prestigious venue.
Original Searcher John McNally (he formed the Liverpool-based band in the fifties) having been laid low by a stroke was forced to rest for that Sixties Gold Tour, but such a trifling problem was not going to have him sitting at home for long and by the end of the year and after only a three-month lay off for what could have been a life threatening situation, he was back on stage and pounding out the hits again, much to the relief of his devoted admirers.
There have been many highlights during their seemingly unending travels since being formed in the late 1950s. Tours of America saw them headlining over Motown legends such as Marvin Gaye, The Supremes, Smokey & The Miracles, The Temptations and many others.
Being presented to Queen Elizabeth 11 at The 1981 Royal Variety Performance was another highlight. Two sold-out shows at Wembley Stadium in 1989 with a total crowd of 160,000 as guests of their friend Cliff Richard, was also memorable.
Marky Ramone also sat in on drums for Needles & Pins at New York’s Cutting Room in 2008 because The Ramones were keen Searchers fans.
They have performed for the British forces in The Falklands, Belfast and Bosnia where 2,000 squaddies barely out of their teens honoured them with an emotional mass demonstration of the Wayne’s World bow while chanting “We are not worthy.”
They have fans in high places such as Bruce Springsteen and Tom Petty who, when he chose Walk In The Room as one of his favourite British Invasion hits, added that he had to stop himself picking a bunch of Searchers tracks. The Byrds have stated that they were influenced more by The Searchers than by The Beatles and that without The Searchers there would have been no Byrds. High praise indeed.
The lineup today consists of stalwarts John McNally and Frank Allen aided and abetted by Spencer James, now virtually an old timer of over 30 years’ service, and ‘new boy, Scott Ottaway on drums, with six years-plus behind the drum kit to date.
The Searchers have toured constantly throughout their five decades and continue to play between 150 and 200 concerts a year across the globe. And there seems to be no end in sight for an awful lot of ardent fans who are very grateful indeed. Tickets for the show this Saturday, 3rd March, can be booked at the theatre, via the box office on 01373 462795, or online at www.fmt.website
