Gerry Marsden, whose band Gerry and the Pacemakers proved to be formidable rivals to the Beatles on the 1960s Liverpool rock scene, marking hits like “Ferry Cross the Mersey”, “Don’t Let the Sun Catch You Crying” and ” You will never walk alone ”, died Sunday in the Liverpool area. He was 78 years old.
His death at Arrowe Park Hospital in the Merseyside metropolitan area was confirmed by his family in a statement. British media said the cause was a heart infection.
Gerry and the Pacemakers were the second band hired by Beatles manager Brian Epstein, but they won first place on the official UK singles chart before the Beatles, accomplishing this feat in 1963 with their debut single, “How You Do It “He hit the first top of the Beatles’ charts,” From Me to You “, for three weeks.
Pacemakers’ next two singles, “I Like It” and “You Never Walk Alone,” followed suit, making them the first act to top the UK singles chart with their first three releases. They kept that record for two decades, until another Liverpool band, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, matched it.
Pacemakers did not write their first explosion of successes; the first two were by Mitch Murray, while the band kicked off the brave ballad “You Never Walk Alone” from the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical “Carousel”. (The Beatles recorded an earlier version of the effervescent “How Do You Do It” at the request of their producer George Martin, but they were not satisfied with the song, so it was not released at the time. Surface until three decades later, in the “Anthology collection 1 ”of the Beatles.)
Marsden’s talent as a composer emerged in 1964, first as a co-writer with his bandmates of “Don’t Let the Sun Catch You Crying”, then as the only writer for “Ferry Cross the Mersey”, baptized in tribute to the waterway that flows through Liverpool.
The melodies of these songs had a grandeur that exuded melancholy and ecstasy, enhanced by Marsden’s undulating voice. Although he could hit the bouncy talent of the band’s lightest singles and mirror it with his vigorous rhythm guitar work, his growing reach gave him the ability to turn songs like “Youll Never Walk Alone” into hymns. Their group’s version of “Walk Alone” became the main song of the Liverpool Football Club and was later adopted by sports teams around the world.
Pacemakers took off more slowly in the United States. Their first set of hits in the UK lost the American charts before “Don’t Let the Sun Catch You Crying” climbed to No. 4 on Billboard magazine and “Ferry Cross the Mersey” reached No. 6. The group had two more sheet music in the USA. , a reissue of “I Like It” and “I’ll Be There”, which reached the Billboard Top 20 in 1964.
After his death, Paul McCartney wrote on Twitter: “Gerry has been a friend since our early days in Liverpool. He and his group were our biggest rivals on the local scene. His unforgettable performances of ‘You Never Walk Alone’ and ‘Ferry Cross the Mersey’ remain in the hearts of many people as reminders of a joyous time in British music. “
Gerard Marsden was born on September 24, 1942, in the Toxteth section of Liverpool, the son of Fredrick and Mary (McAlindin) Marsden. Her father was a railroad worker who played the ukulele, wrote The Guardian. His parents encouraged Gerry and his older brother, Fred, to play instruments. Gerry chose the guitar; Fred, the battery.
The brothers’ first band, Gerry Marsden and the Mars Bars, played skiffle music, a British precursor to rock ‘n’ roll. After the Mars company opposed the band by appropriating the name of their chocolate candy, they became Gerry and the Pacemakers, completed by Les Chadwick on bass and Les Maguire on piano.
The quartet honed their skills at the same clubs in Liverpool and Hamburg, Germany, that created the Beatles. “In 1959, we started playing rock ‘n’ roll for the Germans,” Marsden told the New Zealand television program “The Beat Goes On” in 2009. “We used to play from 7 pm to 2 am, with a break 15 minutes every hour. It was a great musical learning experience. “
Mr. Epstein met the group at the record store he ran, NEMS Music. After watching them play, he signed them and signed a contract with Columbia Records. To Mr. Marsden’s delight, Mr. Martin produced his first recordings. “We had only heard our voices on bad recorders before,” he told The Beatles Bible. “We couldn’t believe we sounded so good.”
The group’s British number 1 series almost reached four, but their single “I’m the One”, written by Marsden, lost first place by one position, just behind “Needles and Pins” by another Liverpudlian band , The researchers. In 1965, the group performed in a musical film comedy, “Ferry Cross the Mersey”, but it was not popular and drew unfavorable comparisons to the Beatles’ “A Hard Day’s Night” a year earlier.
“It’s kind of funny,” wrote The New York Times. “But we’ve seen it all before.”
The group had its final score in the Top 40 in the United States in September 1966 with “Girl on a Swing”. A month later, they split up. After that, Marsden worked as a solo artist before reforming the Pacemakers in 1974, with no success on the charts.
In the 1980s, Mr. Marsden regained position number 1 twice in the UK, re-recording his 1960s successes for charitable causes. After a fire in 1985 at Bradford Football Stadium in Yorkshire that killed 56 people, he formed a group called The Crowd to record a new version of “You will never walk alone”.
Four years later, after a fatal human fall during a football match at Hillsborough Stadium in South Yorkshire, he teamed up with Paul McCartney, Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s Holly Johnson and other artists to re-record “Ferry Cross the Mersey” to benefit families of victims. Mr. Marsden continued to tour the circuit of the ancients until he retired in November 2018.
He married Pauline Behan in 1965, and she survived him, along with his daughters Yvette and Victoria. Her brother, Fred, died of cancer in 2006.
Even in his later years, the famous and humble Mr. Marsden remained surprised by his band’s international success.
“I used to believe that you had to be something special to have a successful album,” he said in “The Beat Goes On”. “We were just kids from Liverpool.”
He recalled that even when his band’s debut single, “How Did You Do It”, took off, his mother would not let it go to his head: “When I told my mom that the song would be number 1, she said: “That’s great. Now finish your fish and chips.”