When the ravages of Alzheimer’s leave an elderly woman marooned in painful memories of October 1950, her grandchild comes up with a creative strategy.
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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.
[Atanas Paskalev]
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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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