Gerry Marsden, front man of Gerry and the Pacemakers, dies aged 78

When Gerry and the Pacemakers made the top of the charts with You’ll Never Walk Alone in 1963 they became the first band to reach No. 1 with their first three singles.

Gerry and the Pacemakers front man Gerry Marsden.

Gerry Marsden could make an almost unmatched claim to fame. There are just two songs Paul McCartney is on record as saying he wished he had written: The Beach Boys’ God Only Knows and Gerry Marsden’s Ferry Cross The Mersey.

While Marsden and his Merseybeat band The Pacemakers are most famous for having hits written by others, Marsden quickly evolved into an inventive songwriter.

Following Marsden’s death on Sunday, McCartney tweeted that “His unforgettable performances of ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ and ‘Ferry Cross the Mersey’ remain in many people’s hearts as reminders of a joyful time in British music”.

Marsden died in Liverpool’s Arrowe Park Hospital about five kilometres from the river he loved so much and which lent its name to the new sounds of the Sixties that became Merseybeat. Gerry’s band and The Beatles were its biggest stars.

Starting with his brother Freddie on drums, his first band was Gerry Marsden and the Mars Bars. But the chocolate maker let Gerry know they weren’t having a bar of that so the boys changed it to Gerry and the Pacemakers.

In 1962, The Beatles were encouraged by their new record producer, George Martin, to cover the song How Do You Do It? Lennon, particularly, didn’t like it, but they were new boys at EMI and, pleased just to have a contract, obliged Martin with a half-hearted rendition which he duly discarded.

By then Beatles manager Brian Epstein had also signed Gerry and the Pacemakers so the song fell to them and their robust, spirited version, overseen by Martin, debuted on the UK charts at 39, rose to 20, then 10 and then sat on top for three weeks straight.

They had beaten their friends to the No. 1 spot. But not for long. The Beatles’ From Me To You knocked The Pacemakers from top spot on week four. In turn, From Me To You’s time at the top – The Beatles first chart-topper stayed at No. 1 for seven weeks – was cut short by The Pacemakers’ second hit I Like It.

“Gerry was a mate from our early days in Liverpool. He and his group were our biggest rivals on the local scene,” McCartney tweeted on Monday.

Gerry was a mate from our early days in Liverpool. He and his group were our biggest rivals on the local scene. His unforgettable performances of You’ll Never Walk Alone and Ferry Cross the Mersey remain in many people’s hearts as reminders of a joyful time in British music... pic.twitter.com/t1COAIwZVM

— Paul McCartney (@PaulMcCartney) January 3, 2021

The Pacemakers’ most famous and best loved song followed. The show tune written by Rodgers and Hammerstein for the 1945 production Carousel, You’ll Never Walk Alone quickly became a popular, rousing ballad and has been widely covered including by Elvis, Barbra Streisand, Andy Williams, Doris Day, Jerry Lewis, Glen Campbell, Frank Sinatra, Olivia Newton-John, Roy Orbison, Johnny Cash, Andy Williams, Glen Campbell and The Three Tenors.

Most famously, it was covered by Liverpool fans on the terraces of Anfield who would sing it before matches. Soon the Pacemakers’ version was played over the Tannoy and faded out halfway through for the fans to complete. Other football teams to have adopted it include Germany’s Borussia Dortmund, Mainz and Munich, Scottish team Celtic, and Dutch teams Twente, Feyenoord and SC Cambuur, Japan’s FC Tokyo, Greece’s PAOK and even Indonesia’s Bali United.

More than 95,446 fans famously sang it in 2013 when Liverpool played at the MCG, an unforgettable event at a venue whose history is festooned with them. Anfield holds just 53,394.

But Marsden’s greatest moment, and the song for which he had most affection, was Ferry Cross The Mersey. It commonly appears on compilations of the era’s songs as Ferry ’Cross the Mersey or Ferry Across the Mersey. But although it may have been missing the comma, it was always meant to be an instruction: Ferry, Cross The Mersey.

It came about when Epstein asked Marsden to come up with some songs for a film being made by Tony Warren who had found fame writing the TV series Coronation Street. He drove his girlfriend, later wife, Pauline to the Liverpool docks to see if any of its images sparked an idea.

Over dinner in Melbourne in 2008, Marsden told me the story of how he almost lost his treasured melody.

“We went to see the ferries coming in to try to get some inspiration. But I couldn’t get an idea. Then one night Pauline and I were going for dinner and we are driving and suddenly in my head comes the melody (he hummed the gently unforgettable first notes while tapping the table).

“I pulled the car in by a phone box and called home. Me mum answered the phone and I said ‘mam, please don’t talk to me, just get my little tape recorder and press play, that’s the black button, and record, that’s the red button, coz I’ve an idea for a song’.

“She called out ‘Fred’ to me dad. He’s in the kitchen. ‘It’s Gerry, he’s got an idea for a song’.’’

His parents pressed the right buttons and their son, standing in a roadside phone booth hummed the notes the world knows so well.

“ ‘I said ‘thanks, dad’.

“ ‘He said ‘that’s not a song!’ ”

It was a top 10 hit around the world.

But it is nevertheless overshadowed by You’ll Never Walk alone.

I asked Marsden how it felt to have his version of the song mean so much to

others.

“I still get goose pimples, the hair stands up with the crowd singing.”

He was asked again about it not that long ago: “Some people say to me it’s like a prayer. That’s why they want me to go sing it at the funeral … every night on stage I sing a prayer, so I must be going to Heaven surely. I hope your listening God!”