Manchester

In addition to Liverpool, British producers also searched the other major northern cities for "beat" groups they had previously ignored. Manchester (just up the river from Liverpool) and Birmingham (in the Midlands) fit the stereotype established by Liverpool: decaying industrial cities north of London with masses of underemployed youth. And indeed, they found musical gold in both cities. Manchester is less than a hundred miles up the Mersey River (and the Irwell River) from Liverpool and is one of the largest urban industrial areas in England. During the Second World War the German Luftwaffe certainly thought that this industrial and port city [connected by the Manchester Ship Canal to the Mersey River) was important. The foundation of its original prosperity lay in cotton and weaving which flourished when the 18th-century canals linked it directly to the ocean.

Shambles Square

However, like other British textile centers which came to rely upon cheap Indian cotton, the source of their wealth waned in the twentieth century as India increasingly established control of its own processing. Many of the mills closed and workers scambled for employment. Those who did not have work had to settle for government housing and unemployment checks.

Brian Epstein thought Manchester musicians were good enough that he chose the Dakotas to accompany Billy J. Kramer and they apparently held their own with London session musicians. Many or the city's best rock musicians went through the same Hamburg revolving door as the Beatles and the other Liverpool groups so that many of them knew each other when the beat boom began in 1963.

Freddie and the Dreamers | Herman's Hermits | The Hollies Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders | Dave Berry

Manchester Sixties Pop

Northerners	Schedule	London
	08-Feb-2012