Liverpool Music

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Ferry ‘cross the Mersey… to meet Eric, Vasily and Cap’n Jim

Film stars, politicians, singers, actors. For the glitterati of the early post-war era, there was but one way to enter Liverpool. Standing on the promenade deck of a proud transatlantic Cunarder as her bow cuts through the water, the imposing Liver Building finally coming into view off the port bow.

My own arrival was on the rather more modest Mersey Ferry, though the view was still as stunning. The brisk trade with America meant that in the Forties and Fifties, Scouse seamen (‘the Cunard Yanks’ as they were called) would come back with records you couldn’t get hold of on this side of the pond. Blues, jazz… and rock and roll. No wonder the ‘Pool had such a head start in making the Sixties swing. But disembarking at the Pier Head, my first thought wasn’t John, Paul, George or Ringo. It was Eric. Eric who? Well, it’s more a ‘where’.

The now closed and much-missed ‘Eric’s Club’, where I spent many a night in the early Eighties when I should have been revising my Philip Larkin.  I was a student at nearby Edge Hill College and, for little more than the price of a pie and a pint, you could see and hear the best and most exciting of the post-punk bands. It was cramped and sweaty but there was always the chance you might rub shoulders with Julian Cope or Ian McCulloch and that was enough for a starstruck woollyback, the locals’ name for those of us from ‘the steppes of Lancashire’.

“Eric’s was on Mathew Street opposite the Cavern but the music originally played there was a world away from the matching suits of the Fab Four. ‘No Elvis, Beatles or The Rolling Stones’ sang The Clash in the song 1977 and Eric’s was originally a cradle for pure, raw punk at its anarchic best, sparking a cultural revolution that inspired a generation. Bands that played there included the Sex Pistols, The Ramones, The Buzzcocks and the aforementioned Clash – and if I go on to name them all, we’ll be here all day.”

I wonder if Vasily Petrenko is a fan of punk? No, he’s not the latest signing at Anfield. He’s the Principal Conductor of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, and the youngest in the orchestra’s 165-year history. The famous Orchestra sits on Hope Street, at one end is the soaring brutalist Sixties-trendy Catholic cathedral or ‘Paddy’s Wigwam’, with the awe-inspiring Gothic Anglican one at the other. With its Art Deco splendour, the Philharmonic Hall can also claim historic status, as can the RLPO itself, being one of the oldest concert orchestras in the world. But it also beats with the modern tempo, and in a ground-breaking partnership has been officially designated ‘Classic FM’s Orchestra in England’s Northwest’.