ALEX HALL is disgusted by the misuse of ‘emotional narratives’ to justify uninformed geo-political prejudice
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The original girl band
SYLVIA HIKINS relishes a brilliant untold Merseybeat story of how four talented women dared to break the mould
Girls Don't Play Guitars: Val, Sylvia, Pam and Mary.
SUE TURNER welcomes a thoughtful, engaging book that lays bare the economic realities of global waste management
JOHN GREEN welcomes an insider account of the achievements and failures of the transition to democracy in Portugal
SIMON PARSONS applauds an imaginative and absorbing updating of Strindberg’s classic
PETER MASON is enthralled by an assembly of objects, ancient and modern, that have lain in the mud of London’s river
MICK McSHANE rubs shoulders with Mod legend Steve Craddock and joins in with the joyous Glasgow choir
DENNIS BROE sifts out the ideological bias of the newest TV series offerings, and picks out what to see, and what to avoid
Girls Don’t Play Guitars
Royal Court Theatre, Liverpool
IN the early 1960s, changing their name from The Squaws to the fictional symbol of Liverpool, the four Liverbirds were one of the very few female bands on the Merseybeat scene, as well as one of the first all female rock and roll bands in the world. Yet how many of us have even heard of them?
Inspired by the Beatles, they went down to the Cavern Club to see what the Fab Four thought of an all-girl band. The response from John Lennon was his now infamous remark: “Girls don’t play guitars.” Unsurprisingly, The Liver Birds were shocked by this and they became even more determined to prove Lennon wrong.
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