Bruce Springsteen Releases Live Concert Film Online: Watch “London Calling: Live In Hyde Park” and Practice Self Distancing

in Music | March 18th, 2020

A mes­sage from Bruce: “Prac­tice social dis­tanc­ing & stream ‘Lon­don Call­ing: Live In Hyde Park’ from the com­fort of your own home, now on YouTube & Apple Music in its entire­ty for the 1st time!” Watch it all above.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

via Con­se­quence of Sound

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Live Performers Now Streaming Shows, from their Homes to Yours: Neil Young, Coldplay, Broadway Stars, Metropolitan Operas & More

in Music, Theatre | March 18th, 2020

You’ve always read books in the com­fort of your own home. Though it may not be the full cin­e­mat­ic expe­ri­ence, you can also watch films there, in a pinch. Now that such a pinch has come, in the form of coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic-relat­ed quar­an­tines and oth­er forms of iso­la­tion, few art forms must be feel­ing it more than live music and the­atre. Though we’ve all watched record­ed per­for­mances now and again, we know full well that noth­ing can quite repli­cate the felt ener­gy of the live expe­ri­ence. Until we can get out and enjoy it once and again, a vari­ety of per­form­ers and venues — from rock stars and Broad­way lumi­nar­ies to inde­pen­dent the­atre com­pa­nies and the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Opera — have stepped up to pro­vide as much as they can of it online.

“The live music indus­try has seen an unprece­dent­ed fall­out in the wake of the coro­n­avirus out­break,” writes Con­se­quence of Sound’s Lake Schatz. “High­ly antic­i­pat­ed tours from Foo Fight­ers, Bil­lie Eil­ish, Thom Yorke, and Elton John have all been post­poned, and major fes­ti­vals such as Coachel­la and South By South­west have had to dras­ti­cal­ly change their plans last minute.”

In response, “artists are turn­ing to livestream­ing to stay in touch with their fans. Neil Young, Coldplay’s Chris Mar­tin, Death Cab for Cutie front­man Ben Gib­bard, and John Leg­end are stream­ing inti­mate con­certs live from their very own homes.” Young’s “Fire­side Ses­sions” launched on the Neil Young Archives site last Mon­day.

That same day Mar­tin, leader of Cold­play, “streamed a mini con­cert on Mon­day as part of Instagram’s ‘Togeth­er, at Home’ vir­tu­al series” (which will con­tin­ue next week with John Leg­end). Even more ambi­tious­ly, Gib­bard has a dai­ly stream­ing series set to launch next Tues­day on YouTube and Face­book. “Apt­ly titled ‘Live From Home,’ the dai­ly live ses­sions will see the indie rock­er take requests and even pos­si­bly duet with spe­cial guests,” writes Schatz. (You can view Gib­bard’s first Live from Home ses­sion at the top of the post.)

“Addi­tion­al­ly, punk rock­ers Jeff Rosen­stock and AJJ are both sched­uled to per­form a spe­cial con­cert that will be livestreamed on Spe­cial­ist Subject’s Insta­gram Sto­ries. That event goes down Tues­day after­noon begin­ning 7:45 p.m. ET.” Putting the show on by any tech­no­log­i­cal means avail­able is, we can sure­ly agree, very much the punk-rock way. And even apart from broad­cast­ing con­certs online, from home or else­where, “acts like Deaf­heav­en are releas­ing live albums (sans any audi­ence).” Deaf­haven, if you don’t know them, are a post-met­al band out of San Fran­cis­co; on the oth­er end of the musi­cal spec­trum, coun­try star Kei­th Urban streamed a live con­cert on Insta­gram from his base­ment this past Tues­day.

Over at the The­atre Devel­op­ment Fund (TDF), Raven Snook rounds up a vari­ety of New York the­atre insti­tu­tions now stream­ing online. These include 92nd Street Y (whose per­for­mance archive we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture); Broad­way­World, which has come up with “dai­ly Liv­ing Room Con­certs, a series of one-song per­for­mances record­ed by Broad­way stars in their respec­tive homes”; The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Opera, whose night­ly stream­ing of “pre­vi­ous­ly record­ed pre­sen­ta­tions” we men­tioned ear­li­er this week.

Oth­er par­tic­i­pants in this push include The Actors Fund, with its new “dai­ly performance/talk show Stars in the House” in which “Broad­way lumi­nar­ies will sing and chat from their homes,” and the Nation­al Yid­dish The­atre Folks­bi­ene, which “kicks off its Folks­bi­ene LIVE!: An Online Cel­e­bra­tion of Yid­dish Cul­ture” this week, all streamed free on its Face­book page. And be sure to vis­it the site of New York non-prof­it arts pre­sen­ter and pro­duc­er The Tank, whose new Cyber­Tank series live streams a “week­ly, remote, mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary arts gath­er­ing” every Tues­day. What­ev­er your pre­ferred vari­ety of live per­for­mance, you’re sure to be cov­ered until you can get back out to the the­atre, the club, the opera hous­es, or wher­ev­er you enjoy your live cul­ture of choice.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Met Opera Stream­ing Free Operas Online to Get You Through COVID-19

92nd Street Y Launch­es a New Online Archive with 1,000 Record­ings of Lit­er­ary Read­ings, Musi­cal Per­for­mances & More

Use Your Time in Iso­la­tion to Learn Every­thing You’ve Always Want­ed To: Free Online Cours­es, Audio Books, eBooks, Movies, Col­or­ing Books & More

Relive 16 Hours of His­toric Live Aid Per­for­mances with These Big YouTube Playlists: Queen, Led Zep­pelin, Neil Young & Much More

Going to Con­certs and Expe­ri­enc­ing Live Music Can Make Us Health­i­er & Hap­pi­er, a New Psy­chol­o­gy Study Con­firms

Pink Floyd Films a Con­cert in an Emp­ty Audi­to­ri­um, Still Try­ing to Break Into the U.S. Charts (1970)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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David Bowie’s Rise as Ziggy Stardust Documented in a New 300-Page Photo Book

in Music, Photography | March 18th, 2020

Great rock pho­tog­ra­phers of the sev­en­ties often cap­tured their sub­jects at their mood­i­est, as in Pen­nie Smith’s pen­sive tour pho­tos of the Clash, or Kevin Cum­mins’ stark, some­times explo­sive pho­tos of Joy Divi­sion. These were bands best shot in black and white. Punk looked back to the rock of the fifties in its high-con­trast sim­plic­i­ty. But the ear­ly sev­en­ties belonged to glam—or, more accu­rate­ly, belonged to Zig­gy Star­dust, a char­ac­ter who demand­ed to be cap­tured in full-col­or.

Mick Rock was just the pho­tog­ra­ph­er to frame the alien space rock opera in bril­liant reds, greens, and blues. Zig­gy was sev­er­al parts T‑Rex swag­ger and riffage, Sun Ra out­er-space per­sona, Lind­say Kemp kabu­ki mime, and Bauhaus-inspired cos­tum­ing.

Get­ting all of this in his shots of Bowie as Zig­gy earned Rock the nick­name “the man who shot the sev­en­ties.” His “career took off along­side Bowie’s,” writes Kris­ten Richard at Men­tal Floss, “and between 1972 and 1973, Rock was the musician’s go-to pho­tog­ra­ph­er and video­g­ra­ph­er.”

More than that, Rock is almost as respon­si­ble for Zig­gy Star­dust’s rise as Bowie him­self, giv­en the way his pho­tos spread the mythos through print media of the time and became icon­ic dig­i­tal images that still define Bowie’s career. When we think of Zig­gy Star­dust, it’s more than like­ly we are think­ing of an image shot by Mick Rock. Bowie’s “cre­ative part­ner” com­piled his pho­tographs in 2015, “with Bowie’s bless­ing,” and they will soon be pub­lished in a new, 300-page book by Taschen.

“You’ll find pho­tographs of Bowie both on stage and behind the scenes,” Richard notes, “giv­ing fans an up-close look at the trans­for­ma­tive performer’s life on the road as he honed his dar­ing new per­sona.” That per­sona upend­ed what it meant to be a rock star, and opened doors for oth­ers to push into new per­for­ma­tive ter­ri­to­ry. “Rock’s glam imagery toyed with the idea of mas­culin­i­ty,” writes Christo­pher Mosley of a recent exhi­bi­tion in Dal­las. For exam­ple, the pho­tog­ra­ph­er “avoid­ed a tough-guy image with the group Queen by encour­ag­ing singer Fred­die Mer­cury to pose in a man­ner sim­i­lar to that of an old still of Ger­man silent film star, Mar­lene Diet­rich.”

Nei­ther Mer­cury nor Bowie need­ed per­mis­sion to chal­lenge rock’s het­ero­nor­ma­tiv­i­ty, but Rock drew out of them the per­fect pos­es to turn their stage per­sonas into super­heroes. No rock star before Bowie had ever looked so gor­geous­ly oth­er­world­ly, an image we remem­ber thanks in large part to Mick Rock. Order a copy of The Rise of David Bowie, 1972–1973 here.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Stream David Bowie’s Com­plete Discog­ra­phy in a 19-Hour Playlist: From His Very First Record­ings to His Last

David Bowie Picks His 12 Favorite David Bowie Songs: Lis­ten to Them Online

David Bowie Became Zig­gy Star­dust 48 Years Ago This Week: Watch Orig­i­nal Footage

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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The Met Opera Streaming Free Operas Online to Get You Through COVID-19

in Music | March 17th, 2020

Image by Lech­hansl, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

On its web­site, the Met Opera announced that “effec­tive imme­di­ate­ly, all per­for­mances have been can­celed through March 31 because of coro­n­avirus con­cerns.” But that does­n’t mean audi­ences can’t get their fill of opera per­for­mances. Accord­ing to Opera Wire, in an “effort to con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing opera to its audi­ence mem­bers, the Met Opera will host ‘Night­ly Met Opera Streams’ on its offi­cial web­site to audi­ences world­wide.” They add:

These free streams will present encores of past per­for­mances from its famed Live in HD series. The encore pre­sen­ta­tions will begin at 7:30 p.m. each night on the company’s offi­cial web­site and will then be avail­able for an addi­tion­al 20 hours there­after. Each show­case will also be view­able on the Met Opera on demand apps.

Head over Met Oper­a’s site where they’re stream­ing Car­men now…

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Use Your Time in Iso­la­tion to Learn Every­thing You’ve Always Want­ed To: Free Online Cours­es, Audio Books, eBooks, Movies, Col­or­ing Books & More

Hear Singers from the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Opera Record Their Voic­es on Tra­di­tion­al Wax Cylin­ders

The Opera Data­base: Find Scores, Libret­ti & Syn­opses for Thou­sands of Operas Free Online

How a Philip Glass Opera Gets Made: An Inside Look

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How Patti Smith “Saved” Rock and Roll: A New Video Makes the Case

in Music | March 16th, 2020

Rock and roll has always had its huge stars: from its ear­li­est begin­nings as a cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­non of inter­ra­cial and sex­u­al anx­i­ety, to its turn as the sound­track of free love, good drugs, and civ­il unrest. By the ear­ly 70s, how­ev­er, Poly­phon­ic argues above, the music of rebel­lion had “lost its way,” become the province of super­rich super­stars in pri­vate jets and French chateaus. As the 60s crashed and burned with the deaths of major fig­ures like Jimi Hen­drix, Janis Joplin, and Jim Mor­ri­son, the 70s dawned as an era of rock and roll excess to a degree that ful­ly betrayed the music’s scrap­py, teenage roots.

Punk, as the sto­ry goes, was born of back­lash against the bloat­ed, prog­gy state of affairs rep­re­sent­ed by the likes of Gen­e­sis; Yes; Emer­son, Lake & Palmer; and so forth. While still musi­cal­ly lean­er than these bands, the once scrap­py Pink Floyd also suc­cumbed to the trend of rock as musi­cal theater—staging grand, expen­sive pro­duc­tions that required whole fleets to move from city to city. One icon­ic response, the Sex Pis­tols’ hand­made “I Hate Pink Floyd” t‑shirt, seems to sum up punk rock’s gen­er­al sneer in the direc­tion of all rock stars.

Punk may have been a reac­tion, but it was not some­thing oth­er than rock and roll. Rather, it was a recla­ma­tion of rock’s spir­it phrased in the idiom of the angry, crum­bling, sub­ver­sive 70s. At the cen­ter of punk’s CBG­Bs ori­gins was “rock and roll war­rior poet” Pat­ti Smith and her debut, Hors­es, its unfor­get­table open­ing line a “radi­al dec­la­ra­tion of youth, rebel­lion, and free­dom.” (The line orig­i­nat­ed in an ear­ly poem, “Oath.”) Once Smith deliv­ers her state­ment of intent, she and the band launch into “Glo­ria,” a garage-rock sta­ple by Van Morrison’s 60s garage band, Them.

Smith explic­it­ly con­nect­ed her musi­cal rev­o­lu­tion to the three-chord pro­to-punk of ten years ear­li­er, just as Iggy and the Stooges warped the mean­est expres­sions of 60s rock into music that more accu­rate­ly reflect­ed the state of the Motor City. Her sound was pure down­town New York, with its hus­tlers, schemers, and dream­ers, a dis­til­la­tion of rock’s essence, fil­tered through the seedy poet­ry of the Bow­ery.

There were many others—Richard Hell and the Voidoids, The Ramones, for­got­ten but sig­nif­i­cant bands like Pure Hell—whose sound was more pro­to­typ­i­cal­ly punk. Smith was there before punk, liv­ing the life she writes of in Just Kids, hang­ing out with Bob Dylan and Allan Gins­berg, bridg­ing the 60s and 70s while rad­i­cal­ly recov­er­ing rock’s racial and sex­u­al trans­gres­sions and turn­ing them on their patri­ar­chal heads. In Smith’s ver­sion, “the lyrics and per­for­mance of ‘Glo­ria’ were overt chal­lenges to per­cep­tions of sex­u­al­i­ty and gen­der.” After her came dozens of punk front­women who did the same, play­ing roles pre­vi­ous­ly reserved for male rock stars.

Unlike the Sex Pis­tols, Smith did not spit in the eye of the rock stars of the past. She eulo­gized them in the sweaty down­town clubs of mid-70s New York City, in a scene hap­py to jet­ti­son rock­’s past. Despite her unshak­able title as the “god­moth­er of punk,” Smith insists “I was not real­ly a punk, and my band was nev­er a punk rock band.” She is an artist and a poet who played rock and roll. And while she might not have “saved” the music, as Poly­phon­ic claims, she cer­tain­ly helped pre­serve it for the first punk audi­ences and first wave of punk bands, achiev­ing her goal of pass­ing the spir­it of the coun­ter­cul­ture to the next gen­er­a­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pat­ti Smith, The God­moth­er of Punk, Is Now Putting Her Pic­tures on Insta­gram

Hear Pat­ti Smith Read 12 Poems From Sev­enth Heav­en, Her First Col­lec­tion (1972)

Watch Pat­ti Smith’s New Trib­ute to the Avant-Garde Poet Antonin Artaud

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Italians’ Nightly Singalongs Prove That Music Soothes the Savage Beast of Coronavirus Quarantine & Self-Isolation

in Health, Life, Music, Opera, Travel | March 16th, 2020

It’s not like we’re maestros…it’s a moment of joy in this moment of anx­i­ety. —Emma San­tachiara, Rome

As report­ed by The New York Times, Ms. Sanachiara, age 73, has joined the vast choir of ordi­nary Ital­ians tak­ing to their bal­conies and win­dows to par­tic­i­pate in social­ly dis­tant neigh­bor­hood sin­ga­longs as coro­n­avirus rages through their coun­try.

The Inter­net has been explod­ing with mes­sages of sup­port and admi­ra­tion for the quar­an­tined cit­i­zens’ musi­cal dis­plays, which have a fes­tive New Year’s Eve feel, espe­cial­ly when they accom­pa­ny them­selves on pot lids.

Three days ago, Rome’s first female may­or, Vir­ginia Rag­gi, called upon res­i­dents to fling open their win­dows or appear on their bal­conies for night­ly 6pm com­mu­ni­ty sings.

A woman in Turin report­ed that the pop up musi­cales have forged friend­ly bonds between neigh­bors who in pre-quar­an­tine days, nev­er acknowl­edged each other’s exis­tence.

Nat­u­ral­ly, there are some soloists.

Tenor Mau­r­izio Mar­chi­ni ser­e­nad­ed Flo­ren­tines to “Nes­sun Dor­ma,” the famous aria from Puc­cini’s opera Turan­dot, repeat­ing the high B along with a final Vin­cerò!, which earns him a clap from his young son.

In Rome, Giu­liano San­gior­gi, front­man for Negra­maro, hit his bal­cony, gui­tar in hand, to enter­tain neigh­bors with Pino Daniele’s 1980 hit “Quan­no Chiove” and his own band’s “Mer­av­iglioso.”

Ear­li­er in the year, the 11 mil­lion res­i­dents of Wuhan, Chi­na, the dead­ly epi­cen­ter of the coro­n­avirus out­break, also used music to boost morale, singing the nation­al anthem and oth­er patri­ot­ic songs from their indi­vid­ual res­i­dences. Jiāyóu, or “add oil,” was a fre­quent exhor­ta­tion, remind­ing those in iso­la­tion to stay strong and keep going.

Read­ers, are you singing with your neigh­bors from a safe dis­tance? Are they ser­e­nad­ing you? Let us know in the com­ments.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Tom Waits Releas­es a Time­ly Cov­er of the Ital­ian Anti-Fas­cist Anthem “Bel­la Ciao,” His First New Song in Two Years

Bruce Spring­steen Sin­gin’ in the Rain in Italy, and How He Cre­ates Pow­er­ful Imag­i­nary Worlds

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Like most of us in this crazy, his­toric peri­od, all of her events have been can­celled. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Covering Robert Johnson’s Blues Became a Rite of Rock ‘n’ Roll Passage: Hear Covers by The Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, Howlin’ Wolf, Lucinda Williams & More

in Music | March 13th, 2020

Amer­i­can rock and roll orig­i­nat­ed from all cor­ners of the coun­try in the 1940s and 50s: from the exu­ber­ant gospel of the south, rol­lick­ing west­ern swing of Texas, lean elec­tric blues of Chica­go, fast-paced Chi­cano music of L.A…. Tru­ly a cul­tur­al melt­ing pot, it rep­re­sent­ed the U.S to itself, ampli­fy­ing and inten­si­fy­ing con­tem­po­rary trends that con­tin­ued right along­side the upstart new genre. But along with the deaths, arrests, and army stints of the music’s most famous stars at the end of the 50s, rock’s first wave suf­fered from a kind of cre­ative fatigue, seem­ing to have done all it could with its source mate­r­i­al.

British musi­cians who fell in love with Elvis and Lit­tle Richard saw a need to revi­tal­ize the music by reach­ing back to old­er forms—to the influ­ences of rock and roll’s influ­ences, most from the Amer­i­can South. First came skif­fle, a jazz-blues-folk fusion born in the ear­ly-20th cen­tu­ry U.S. It launched the careers of The Bea­t­les and became huge in its own right as a pop­u­lar British folk form of the 50s. Then came the mas­sive influ­ence of the Mis­sis­sip­pi Delta blues, which gave The Rolling Stones, and vir­tu­al­ly every band fea­tur­ing Jeff Beck, Eric Clap­ton, or Jim­my Page, a rea­son for being.

Among Delta Blues play­ers, no one con­tributed more to British inva­sion bands and the blues-rock explo­sion in the U.S. than Robert John­son, the leg­endary Mis­sis­sip­pi blues­man who is said to have trad­ed his soul for his tal­ent. Johnson’s evo­lu­tion from rel­a­tive obscu­ri­ty in his life­time to rock’s most revered ances­tor in death is the sto­ry of the music’s rebirth. As Kei­th Richards put it:

To me Robert Johnson’s influence—he was like a comet or a mete­or that came along and, BOOM, sud­den­ly he raised the ante, sud­den­ly you just had to aim that much high­er. You can put the record on now, and it’s a fresh and inter­est­ing as the first day you heard it.

Nev­er mind that John­son died five years before Richards was born. For the gen­er­a­tion just dis­cov­er­ing him, the blues­man was a brand-new epiphany. All of them returned the favor, giv­ing Johnson’s name immor­tal fame and cov­er­ing his songs. How do their ver­sions stack up against the orig­i­nals? Com­pare for your­self in some clas­sic exam­ples here. At the top, see the Stones play “Love in Vain” live in Texas in 1972, and below them, hear Johnson’s record­ed ver­sion.


Clap­ton leaned even more heav­i­ly on Johnson’s style than Kei­th Richards, turn­ing Johnson’s icon­ic “Cross­roads” into his own sig­na­ture blues. Fur­ther up, see Clap­ton play “Ram­bling on My Mind” at Madi­son Square Gar­den in 2008. Just above, hear Johnson’s 1936 record­ing. The tra­di­tion of cov­er­ing John­son didn’t start or end with clas­sic rock stars, of course. “Long before white British kids dis­cov­ered him,” writes Stephen Deusner at Paste, “old­er black blues­men were play­ing the hell out of Robert Johnson’s tunes, chief among them Howl­in’ Wolf.” See Howl­in’ Wolf, anoth­er hero of the Rolling Stones, play “Dust My Broom” below with his killer elec­tric band.


Still, it took white musi­cians to bring Johnson’s music to white audi­ences out­side of blues fan­dom, just as it took Clapton’s cov­er of “I Shot the Sher­iff” to help Bob Mar­ley cross over. After Cream, the Stones, the Yard­birds, etc., it became fash­ion­able for every­one to cov­er Johnson’s songs, almost as a rite of rock and roll pas­sage.

Lucin­da Williams record­ed a take of “Ram­bling on My Mind” for her debut album in 1979, Coun­try-blues punks Gun Club released their man­ic, unhinged ver­sion of Johnson’s “Preach­ing the Blues” on their 1980 debut. The list of explic­it­ly Robert John­son-influ­enced musi­cians goes on and on, dwarfed by the list of musi­cians indi­rect­ly influ­enced by him. Hear the 10 best Robert John­son cov­ers, accord­ing to Deusner, at least, at Paste, and find all of Johnson’s orig­i­nal record­ings for com­par­i­son here.


Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sto­ry of Blues­man Robert Johnson’s Famous Deal With the Dev­il Retold in Three Ani­ma­tions

Kei­th Richards Wax­es Philo­soph­i­cal, Plays Live with His Idol, the Great Mud­dy Waters

Robert John­son Final­ly Gets an Obit­u­ary in The New York Times 81 Years After His Death

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Meet the Liverbirds, Britain’s First Female (and Now Forgotten) Rock Band

in Gender, Music | March 10th, 2020

We nev­er ever got as famous as the Bea­t­les. But we start­ed as friends, and we end­ed as friends. —Sylvia Saun­ders, The Liv­er­birds’ drum­mer

John Lennon (a mem­ber of a band who in a par­al­lel uni­verse might’ve been billed as the male Liv­er­birds) announced that the all-female quar­tet would fail, a deeply inac­cu­rate pre­dic­tion.

The band got a lot of atten­tion, toured with The Kinks and The Rolling Stones, dis­missed Bri­an Epstein when he pooh-poohed their desire to play in Ham­burg, reject­ed an offer to play top­less in Las Vegas, and were sought out by Jimi Hen­drix, owing to their bassist’s joint-rolling skills.

They also learned how to play the instru­ments they had opti­misti­cal­ly pur­chased after see­ing The Bea­t­les in Liverpool’s famed Cav­ern Club.

Respect to any grand­moth­er with brag­ging rights to hav­ing seen The Bea­t­les live, but it’s heart­en­ing that these 16-year-old girls imme­di­ate­ly pic­tured them­selves not so much as fans, but as play­ers.


As bassist and for­mer-aspi­rant-nun Mary McGlo­ry recalls in Almost Famous: The Oth­er Fab Four, Ben Proud­foot’s New York Times’ Op-Doc, above:

“Oh my god!” I said to my cousins, “We’re going to be like them. And we’re going to be the first girls to do it.”

Mis­sion accom­plished, in trousers and neat­ly tucked-in shirts, but­toned all the way to their col­lars.

It’s not ter­ri­bly hard to guess what put an end to their six-year-run.

Moth­er­ly, wife­ly duties…

Sylvia Saun­ders, who became drum­mer by default because sticks were a bet­ter fit with her small hands than frets, got preg­nant, and recused her­self due to com­pli­ca­tions with that preg­nan­cy.

Valerie Gell, the Liv­er­birds’ late gui­tarist and most accom­plished musi­cian, mar­ried a hand­some fan who’d been en route to Ham­burg to pro­pose when he was par­a­lyzed in a car acci­dent, devot­ing her­self to his care for 26 years.

The oth­er two mem­bers car­ried on for a bit, play­ing a Japan­ese tour with a cou­ple of female musi­cians they’d met in Ham­burg, but the chem­istry couldn’t com­pare.

The dream was over, but for­tu­nate­ly rock and roll star­dom was not their only dream.

Unlike the fourth Liv­er­bird, Pam Birch, who descend­ed into addic­tion after the band broke up, nei­ther Saun­ders nor McGlo­ry seems angry or regret­ful over what could have been, smil­ing as they men­tion their long, hap­py mar­riages, chil­dren, and grand­chil­dren.

They were awful­ly tick­led by Girls Don’t Play Gui­tars, a recent West End musi­cal that tells the sto­ry of the Liv­er­birds.

And McGlo­ry is admirably san­guine about Lennon’s famous diss, reveal­ing to the Liv­er­pool Echo that:

He had a smile on his face when he said it—he wasn’t being mali­cious. But it would have been nice to have bumped into him a few years lat­er and for him to say, “Well done, you proved me wrong,” which I’m sure he would have been hap­py to do.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

New Web Project Immor­tal­izes the Over­looked Women Who Helped Cre­ate Rock and Roll in the 1950s

Women of Jazz: Stream a Playlist of 91 Record­ings by Great Female Jazz Musi­cians

Ven­er­a­ble Female Artists, Musi­cians & Authors Give Advice to the Young: Pat­ti Smith, Lau­rie Ander­son & More

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join Ayun’s com­pa­ny The­ater of the Apes in New York City for her book-based vari­ety series, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain, and the world pre­miere of Greg Kotis’ new musi­cal, I AM NOBODY., play­ing at The Tank NYC through March 28 Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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