Hairy Bikers celebrate The Beatles and the Swinging '60s during Liverpool pub crawl
The Hairy Bikers ride into Liverpool this evening to enjoy a special pub crawl. Raising a glass to the city’s Swinging 60s legacy, Si King and Dave Myers will be seen visiting Mathew Street, joining a Beatles tour - and enjoying a drink with two of John Lennon’s old friends in Ye Cracke on Rice Street. The Hairy Bikers’ Pubs That Built Britain (BBC2, 6.30pm) will celebrate The Dissenters – John’s “other band (which never played a note)”.
Bill Harry, founder of the hugely popular and influential Mersey Beat newspaper, joined the bikers, alongside fellow former Dissenter Rod Murray. He told the ECHO: “The Dissenters were formed in June 1960 by John Lennon, Stuart Sutcliffe, Rod Murray and myself. We’d been to see Beat poet Royston Ellis at Liverpool University and later went to Ye Cracke to discuss it. We felt that the Beat poets were basically American and that we were literally swamped by American culture in films, music, comics and poetry.
“We believed Liverpool was bursting in talent and we all made a vow – to make Liverpool famous! John would do it with his music, Stuart and Rod with their painting and me with my writing. John surpassed any expectation with The Beatles, I created Mersey Beat – and wrote two dozen books on the Mersey scene – and I’m sure Stuart would have become a world famous painter if he had survived. Rod achieved fame at one of Britain’s major art colleges.”
By: Paddy Shennan
Source: The Liverpool Echo
