With a Three cheers for Martin Creasy and his wonderful book: Legends
On Tour: The Pop Package Tours Of The 1960s. Shedding light on a subject
I often wondered about, this 130-plus page book is one hell of a soft cover,
full with pictures, interviews with bands and fans, and fact upon fact about
the early 60’s pop music ‘package tour’. Imagine being able
to see Roy Orbison and the Beatles on one bill! Or how about the combination
of the Walker Brothers, Jimi Hendrix, Engelbert Humperdinck and Cat Stevens
performing in your local cinema for two shows all in one night? Centered around
his home theater concert venue the ABC Cinema in Aldershot, England, Creasy
takes us back to the days when kids could pay a fair price and see one of these
amazing musical shows, well before the term ‘rock concert’ came
into being.
You might not have been there way back when, but this book is the next best
thing. The first chapter is devoted exclusively to the Beatles. You can see
by the list of places the ‘mop tops’ played in just one month of
1963 how hard they worked (and as to did the other bands of this era). But the
real treat is how Creasy manages to interview someone from the tour, having
them regale the reader with how they feel now about what it was like then. We
meet Helen Shapiro, a young girl at the time with a hit on the charts. She tells
how she toured with John, Paul, George and Ringo, becoming almost like a little
sister to them. Shapiro’s story is interesting in how she managed to balance
her school life with the road, all at a time when most girls were thinking of
how to get into these shows and across the lip of the stage — not standing
on it to perform.
Succeeding chapters tell of shows when Del Shannon toured with then newcomers
Herman’s Hermits and American all-girl group, the Shangri-Las (of “Leader
of The Pack” fame). There’s a ton of stuff on Roy Orbison (he seems
to have been touring the UK in the early to mid 60s more then anyone) and how
he was certainly seen as the ultimate showman of the day. There’s the
story of a famous feud between the Hollies and the Small Faces (again, on the
same tour!), and tales of a tour featuring the Kinks and the Yardbirds. Really,
these shows read like a who’s who of legends, and though the acts were
usually not heard that well with an inadequate cinema bad sound system drowned
out by all that screaming, it really was a magical time to be a young music
fan in England.
Somehow, Creasy managed to grab the most incredible pictures from the shows
too (the book focuses on seven pop tours that came through Aldershot and surrounding
cinemas and theaters of the day). We see Cat Stevens in holsters and guns playing
out high drama to a thrilled audience (quite different from the Yusuf Islam
we know today). There’s some great pictures of Jimi Hendrix, tons of backstage
photos of the then oh-so-young Small Faces and Hollies, and those many, many
thrilling, nearly iconic shots of girls jumping across the fronts of stages
throughout the English pop circuit.
“Cinema Guys,” the final chapter, tells the story of some of the
unsung workers who dealt with these crazy music shows. This chapter is a great
counter to those that came before as we learn about the underpaid, fully-stunned
theater ‘security’ young men who had never imagined they’d
be encountering anything like an onrush of teenagers when they first got their
jobs working at the local cinema!
Beyond the great pictures and amazing detail, what makes Legends ‘sing’
(if you’ll pardon the pun) are the fan interviews. Creasy located a group
of adults who were kids then, present at these great shows. They tell their
personal stories of trying to score tickets, sitting in the audience screaming,
even seeing Hendrix and his band walk down the street or seeing Peter Noon of
Herman’s Hermits lifting a few in the local pub! That’s really the
beauty as Creasy takes us right there with the audiences of the time, interjecting
detail, facts and backstage intrigue. But it’s the personal stories from
the fans that are at the heart of this book.
I can’t say enough good things about Legends on Tour: The Pop
Package Tours Of The 1960s. If you have even the mildest interest in
early rock and roll, you’ll love this book. If you are an ardent fan of
early British pop, whether the Beatles were (are) your fave or you’re
more a Hollies fan, this book is a must-have. Just trying to imagine even one
of these amazing shows that Creasy writes about makes you pine for a simpler
(cheaper) time.
~ Ralph Greco, Jr.
