Review: Gerry and the Pacemakers - Ferry Cross The Mersey (1965)

Tracks: 1) It’s Gonna Be Alright; 2) Why Oh Why; 3) Fall In Love; 4) Think About Love; 5) (The Fourmost:) I Love You Too; 6) (The George Martin Orchestra:) All Quiet On The Mersey Front; 7) This Thing Called Love; 8) Baby You’re So Good To Me; 9) I’ll Wait For You; 10) She’s The Only Girl For Me; 11) (Cilla Black:) Is It Love; 12) Ferry Cross The Mersey.

REVIEW

In the spring of 1964, Gerry and the Pacemakers faced a tough challenge. The previous year, they had somehow managed to keep face in their native country by scoring three #1 singles — exactly as many as the Beatles, in fact — and while neither the screaming fans nor the stern critics would probably be as crazy as to regard them in the same league with the Fab Four, they could certainly build a respectable case for the art of riding the big guys’ coattails. But come 1964, the Beatles had moved on from the conquest of England to conquering the world — which pretty much meant conquering the US at the time — and with this kind of acceleration, it was far from obvious that poor Gerry Marsden and his pals would not fly off and bash their brains out against the nearest wall at the cross-Atlantic turn.

Fortunately for them, when the Beatles cracked open the American market, they generously did so for all their friends as well; and just as the British kids throughout the country were ready to embrace Gerry and the Pacemakers simply because they came from Liverpool as well, so were the American kids, desperately looking for more stylistically similar 45"s to put up next to their copies of ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’ and ‘She Loves You’. There was one catch, though: the band had to write its own songs — covering ‘Maybellene’ just wouldn’t do the trick. And, much to Gerry Marsden’s honor, he actually committed to the effort, sometimes on his own, sometimes aided by other guys in the band.

In fact, they scored big on their very first try, with ‘Don’t Let The Sun Catch You Crying’, a soulful ballad which was first donated to Louise Cordet, a small-scale pop singer who accompanied the Beatles and the Pacemakers on some of their UK tours. Cordet’s version, recorded on Decca, did not take off — she was hardly an expressive singer, and Decca’s production, with brass, strings, and piano all hitting on each other, was all over the place and simply too much — so the Pacemakers decided to take a stab at it themselves, and with George Martin keeping the brass section in strict check and taming the orchestration down to a more chamber-like sound, the result was far more palatable, giving the band not just another hit (though not another #1), but, most importantly, an American hit. Now they could officially join the Mop Tops in their looting and pillaging spree around the world, even while still clinging to the proverbial coattails.

Ironically, there is nothing particularly good about ‘Don’t Let The Sun Catch You Crying’. For all its popularity, it sounds just like another run-of-the-mill pop ballad from its time — no interesting chord changes, no particularly gripping twists in the slightly bluesy vocal melody, and a rather clumsy bridge section with corny lines like "we know that crying’s not a bad thing". But Marsden and Co. did hit upon an important vibe there which the kids could not at all experience from the Beatles: a note of friendly, intimate, caressing compassion. It was arguably one of the first, and one of the very few, British Invasion hits targeted — perhaps unintentionally — at the sensitive spots of the female audience. Like a friendly consolation for the poor, broken-hearted girl who has just fainted at a Beatles show while realizing that she can never, ever take a place in the heart of Ringo Starr — let alone John Lennon — and is in desperate need of at least a friendly hug. ‘Don’t Let The Sun Catch You Crying’ is precisely that kind of hug; and, for the record, the Beatles pretty much never gave a proper hug to the kids — heck, I think Paul McCartney gave a bigger hug to the parents (with ‘She’s Leaving Home’), and his first heartfelt inclusion of the female perspective did not arrive until ‘Another Day’.

That said, for a bona fide Merseybeat pop-rock band to make headlines with slow sentimental ballads was not the cool thing to do in 1964, even if it did temporarily secure the Pacemakers’ position in the brand new order of young British Knights of the Rock’n’Roll Table. So for their next single the band properly picked up the pace. ‘It’s Gonna Be Alright’, with its frenetic tempo, could be seen as their response to ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’, but the actual vibe, generated by its repetitive chorus, is a bit closer to ‘It Won’t Be Long’ — and, perhaps, the most unusual thing about this speedy rocker is that it is fully acoustic, which, once again, agrees well with the soft consolation message of the song. It is essentially like a sequel to ‘Don’t Let The Sun’, with the suave and courteous gentleman daring to make a more active move on his passion while still concentrating on her psychological comfort... and this time, there are actual hooks in the song! Repetitive or not, the "it’s gonna be alright, alright, alright" chorus sounds extremely natural — she’s in hysterics, he’s matching her perturbed emotional state, and together, of course, they’ll sort it out. It’s a damn good song this time around, finding interesting musical moves to match the message. And, just for the record because I’m a sucker for musical quotations, that line about "never thought I’d find a girl like you" in the bridge section would stick around long enough to be almost directly quoted, melody and all, as "know I’ll never find a girl like you" in ‘She’s The One’ by the Ramones — clearly not a coincidence. Now we know what inspired Mr. Jeffrey Hyman to take up the drum kit in 1964.

Now that they had followed the Beatles across the Atlantic, and now that they could successfully shadow them with inferior but working hits of their own, what was the next logical step? Right-o. I have never seen anything other than a short trailer for Ferry Cross The Mersey, a movie which, unlike A Hard Day’s Night, is hardly likely to get its own Criterion Collection release any time soon, but even the trailer is enough to see that the proportional relation between the two movies is pretty adequate to the proportional relation between the two bands in general (and pardon me for sounding «lookist», but there is something distinctly disquieting about watching Gerry and the Pacemakers as objects of sex appeal; I could probably see myself as a girl hunting for a lock of Ringo Starr’s hair, but come on, Freddie Marsden? he looks like a goddamn member of Parliament!). As hungry as I can be for that time period, I do believe that one can safely draw the line here and assume that a movie clone of A Hard Day’s Night will probably add very little to the general perspective.

The soundtrack, however, is a whole other matter: it is almost unquestionably the single best album that Gerry and the Pacemakers ever put out — which, come to think of it, is not surprising at all, as it is now a matter of general consensus that the soundtrack for A Hard Day’s Night, held in far stronger respect than the corresponding movie, was the pinnacle of the Beatles’ early period, so it would be unwise to expect anything other from Gerry and the Pacemakers; and given that they would not really go on to have a successful anything-other-than-early period, this automatically makes Ferry Cross The Mersey their one and only LP worth listening to from top to bottom... well, mostly.

The record comes in two amusingly different versions: both the US and UK variants feature nine original compositions written and recorded by the Pacemakers, but the remaining three songs, all performed by different artists who appear in the movie, stylistically vary across the two releases — the US version presents three rock’n’roll performances by little-known one-hit or no-hit wonders (‘I Gotta Woman’ by the Black Knights, ‘Shake A Tail Feather’ by Earl Royce, ‘Why Don’t You Love Me’ by the Blackwells), while the UK version selects the softer alternatives, giving us the folk-pop serenade ‘I Love You Too’ by the Fourmost; the latest sentimental hit from Cilla Black, ‘Is It Love’; and a wittily titled instrumental called ‘All Quiet On The Mersey Front’ and credited to The George Martin Orchestra — I was afraid it was going to be something completely mushy, but you can at least tap your toe to this thing... and it would probably make a great accompaniment to a silent weather channel (unless it already has, because why the hell did this association spring into my mind in the first place? Must be all these damn echoey «Eurostrings»).

Anyway, we’re not here to talk about that, we’re here to see the progression made by Gerry and the Pacemakers. And there it is! The album is bookmarked with two of their best songs — ‘It’s Gonna Be Alright’, which was used in the movie, and the title track, a slow, meditative, heartfelt anthem to the band’s natural habitat. Lyrically, it probably paints a somewhat exaggerated portrait of Liverpool ("people around every corner / they seem to smile and say / we don’t care what your name is boy / we’ll never turn you away" — well, maybe if you are Gerry Marsden they won’t), but musically, it goes for an epic feel at a time when few Merseybeat bands, certainly not the Beatles, dared to go for an epic feel, possibly at the risk of coming across as too corny. It’s a genuine risk, of course, but with this particular track, the Marsdens get it right, and Martin’s slightly oscillating strings and woodwinds even give it a bit of a mystical feel.

Most of the other stuff is not as memorable, but generally fun. ‘Why Oh Why’ is a punchy and catchy pop-rocker (finally, with a good scream and electric guitar solo and shit! and Les Maguire even quotes ‘What’d I Say’ on the piano! fun!); ‘Fall In Love’ is a cute old-fashioned skiffle tune on which Maguire substitutes the required banjo for fast-’n’-furious piano rolls to cool effect; ‘Think About Love’ is... uh, another pop-rocker with the word "love" in the title; ‘She’s The Only Girl For Me’ is the band’s moody-melancholic answer to ‘Things We Said Today’ which could have benefited from a proper piano solo, rather than just the enticing minor chords at the beginning and end; and there is no need to list all the other songs, because I feel like I’ve pretty much run out of things to say.

Positive reactions aside, Ferry Cross The Mersey is still best used as a punching bag for A Hard Day’s Night, just to visualize clearly and transparently what it is that separates the mediocre pop sound of 1964 from the great pop sound of 1964 — but if, for instance, one thing that worries you about the early Beatles is their lack of vulnerability and overflow of cocky self-confidence (which can be a problem, especially in our deeply sensitive times), Ferry Cross The Mersey could be just the very antidote you need. In each and every one of these songs, Gerry Marsden pushes his «I’m really a nice guy» agenda over and over and over, which, in my (and probably most of Gerry’s contemporaries’) opinion, usually works against the songs’ atmospheric appeal — but he is a nice guy, actually capable of taking into consideration the feelings of the girls he is falling for, not all that "if I give my heart to you, I must be sure from the very start that you would love me more than her" bullshit (because you do have to prove your qualifications, little girl, before Mr. John Lennon is ready to sign that lease on his heart). Life’s tough, though — great music tends to be written by assholes, not nice guys. So give the nice guys a chance, spin this record once or twice, and then plunge back into the emotional hell of the bad boys.