by Malcolm Pheby | Oct 3, 2018 | Hall Of Fame, Music
Anyone who turned up at Manchester Cathedral on the evening of Thursday November 15th 2012 could be forgiven for thinking they’d walked into the wrong place. For instead of the usual choir, the music was being provided by a Manchester supergroup to help the city’s...
by Malcolm Pheby | Sep 19, 2018 | Manchester, Music
Few would mention Manchester group Simply Red in the same breath as the Sex Pistols. One was renowned for polished, soulful vocals – the other for raw, rasping power. But the lineage of Simply Red, like so many Manchester bands of the 1970s, can be traced directly...
by Malcolm Pheby | Sep 13, 2018 | Hall Of Fame, Music
Life-long Manchester United supporter David Gray achieved world-wide fame when he released his smash-hit album White Ladder in 2000. It was actually the second time round for the LP as the Sale-born singer had originally released it in November 1998. It hardly scaled...
by Malcolm Pheby | Aug 25, 2018 | Liverpool, Music
Barbara Dickson has vivid memories about auditioning for Willy Russell’s musical John, Paul, George, Ringo and Bert at Liverpool’s Everyman Theatre. It was the early 1970s and she was a little-known folk singer at the time. How would she cope with belting out a string...
by Malcolm Pheby | Aug 22, 2018 | Music
It’s a commonly held belief that The Smiths started life when guitarist Johnny Marr knocked on singer Morrissey’s door in May 1982 and asked if he’d like to form a group. But there’s evidence that the two met well before then at a Patti Smith gig at Manchester’s...
by Malcolm Pheby | Aug 1, 2018 | 1960s, Manchester, Music
It had to be one of the oddest encounters of the 1960s… Wacky Manchester pop group Freddie and the Dreamers rolled up at Longleat House in August 1965 to a play a gig for the aristocratic Marquess of Bath. Lead singer Freddie Garrity, all five foot three of him, went...
