30 August 1963
‘Saccharine’ is right there, waiting for me to use it. But what else can you call this? We’ll need The Beatles and also even the Stones to cleanse our palate after this candy floss.
Ostensibly another group of early-’60s Liverpool Beatles peers, The Searchers serve us up the ’50s cliches of stardust and the sandman with a moptop Merseybeat chirpiness. Don’t forget the sweets for their sweet, sugar for their honey, and pass the milk you cow! The rote I-IV-V chord progression doesn’t help either. I wonder if in 1963 this already sounded tired and unoriginal. And yet we’ll be seeing The Searchers at number one in Ireland again very soon.
