Legends On Tour: The Pop Package Tours Of The 1960s

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.

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