They came into being as a skiffle band in Liverpool in 1959, pre-dating The Beatles, The Who and The Rolling Stones. Now The Searchers are calling time with a ‘final farewell’ tour that culminated in a last ever performance on the acoustic stage at this year’s Glastonbury.
“It’s unbelievable,” their 83-year-old founder and guitarist John McNally tells MOJO down the phone from his home in Crosby, Merseyside, before the gig. “Our first time at the festival! Our agent said, ‘you’ve been offered it,’ and of course we said yes. Since then Frank [Allen, bassist since 1964] and I have been going through all the old songs, working out which ones we’re going to be doing. I’ve got my guitar here, I’m all set. We’re on top form.”
McNally still remembers the first time the group’s pre-Searchers incarnation The Army Generations played, when he was just 16. “We were in Kirkdale, had a tea chest and washboard and performed in St Paul’s church doorway until the bobbies moved us along. My dad said, you’ll never get anywhere doing that.”
By his early 20s though, as The Searchers, they were performing at Hamburg’s Starr Club and heading up Liverpool’s Merseybeat boom playing The Cavern, the Iron Door and other clubs. “It was short-lived, but you’d never seen anything like it, there were so many bands - The Silver Beatles as they were back then, Gerry And The Pacemakers, Kingsize Taylor… and so many bands saying they were from Liverpool even though they weren’t! Hamburg, that was a scream. We got to meet all our heroes, Gene Vincent, Ray Charles, Jerry Lee Lewis - he got on the piano one time and we had a jam. That was a moment.”
Another was hitting Number 1 with their debut single, their 1963 cover of The Drifters’ Sweets For My Sweet.
“We were ready to retire right then,” says McNally, “but that’s when the pressure starts. The label said we needed a follow up. Luckily Tony Hatch gave us Sugar And Spice and that made number 2.”
Their next two releases, 1964’s Needles And Pins and the same year’s Don’t Throw Your Love Away, meanwhile, returned them to the top spot. Their jangly 12 string guitar and harmony vocals, also heard on their 1964 Number 3 cover of Jackie DeShannon’s When You Walk In The Room, chimed fortuitously with the US folk rock explosion at the time. “Going to the US for the first time in 1964 was a real high,” says McNally. “We’d all dreamed of going there because that’s where all our idols came from and we lived it up, all the best hotels, room service… we gorged ourselves.”
While the hits dried up in the late ‘60s, the demand for live shows never did. With Spencer James replacing original lead vocalist Mike Pender in 1985, the group’s evolving line-up averaged some 200 gigs a year until 2019. “That’s when we first quit,” says McNally, “but after a few years off we did another final tour in 2024. We couldn’t keep away [laughs]. But this time it really is goodbye. I’m old and need a rest! We’ve had a great run though. We never thought it would last, we just did one gig, then another and then another. Looking back, I wouldn’t change a thing.”