 Gerry & The Pacemakers
 Managed, like the Fab Four, by Brian
Epstein, Gerry Marsden and the boys (who had been a popular
group on Merseyside for years) started life hitting the record
books with three consecutive number one records in the UK - How
Do You Do It?, I Like It and You'll Never Walk
Alone.
Never before had any act achieved such results with
its first three releases.
Further hits like I'm The One and Ferry Cross The
Mersey followed, and Gerry & The Pacemakers helped define
the form of Merseybeat as much (if
not more so) than The Beatles did.
Gerry disbanded the group in 1969 and headed for London's West
End where he played a handyman in a long-running romantic comedy, Charlie
Girl. He also regularly appeared in comedy sketches on
television variety shows.
In 1973 he left acting and hit the road again with a new set of
Pacemakers.
In 1983, an outrageous sex-and-glam quintet from Marsden's own
home town of Liverpool, put a campy rearrangement of Ferry
Cross The Mersey on the B-side of their debut single.
The group was Frankie Goes To Hollywood,
the single was Relax - and Marsden's bank balance
hasn't been the same since (it is rumoured he pulls in around
$250,000 a year in publishing royalties alone).
Gerry
and the Pacemakers hits still draw warm response in a club and
cabaret act which flourishes today, but it is for You'll
Never Walk Alone that Gerry is best remembered.
The
song was subsequently adopted by Liverpool Football Club fans and
is sung every year in football grounds across Britain.
It even
made a return to number one in 1985 when Gerry organised a
superstar recording of the song to benefit victims of the Bradford
football stadium fire.
Gerry Marsden received an MBE on 12 December 2003 for his
services to charity.
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