From Merseyside To Hamburg: The Complete Star-Club Recordings

Biography

The Liverbirds were a British all-female beat group, based in Liverpool, active between 1963 and 1968. The hard-rocking quartet (consisting of vocalist-guitarist Valerie Gell, guitarist-vocalist Pamela Birch, bassist-vocalist Mary McGlory and drummer Sylvia Saunders) was one of the very few female bands on the Merseybeat scene. Indeed, they were one of the few self-contained all-woman rock and roll bands anywhere in the world at the time. The band took their name from the liver bird, a fictiona...

The Liverbirds were a British all-female beat group, based in Liverpool, active between 1963 and 1968. The hard-rocking quartet (consisting of vocalist-guitarist Valerie Gell, guitarist-vocalist Pamela Birch, bassist-vocalist Mary McGlory and drummer Sylvia Saunders) was one of the very few female bands on the Merseybeat scene. Indeed, they were one of the few self-contained all-woman rock and roll bands anywhere in the world at the time.

The band took their name from the liver bird, a fictional creature which is the symbol of their native Liverpool.

Gell, Saunders and McGlory formed the band in 1963, along with guitarist Sheila McGlory (Mary McGlory's sister) and vocalist Irene Green, both of whom quickly left to join other bands and were replaced by Birch.

They achieved more commercial success in Germany than in their native Britain. Early in their career, they followed in the footsteps of fellow Liverpudlians and made their way to Hamburg, Germany where they performed at the Star-Club, following The Beatles own tenure, being billed as die Weibchen Beatles (the female Beatles). According to John Lennon, however, "girls" were unable to play guitars. The Liverbirds became one of the top attractions at the Star-Club and they released two albums and several singles. One of those singles, a cover of Bo Diddley's "Diddley Daddy" rose as high as #5 on the German charts. They broke up in 1968, after a tour to Japan. They last played together in 1998.

Three members of the band settled in Germany permanently. Only Saunders left and currently resides, with her husband John, in Alicante, Spain. Mary McGlory now runs a Hamburg-based company called Ja/Nein Musicverlag (which translates as "Yes/No Music Publishing.") She is married to one of her former colleagues from the Star-Club: the German singer and songwriter Frank Dostal. Her husband is also currently vice chairman of the German performance rights organization GEMA.

Pamela Birch (born Pamela Anne Burch, 9 August 1944, in Kirkdale, Liverpool), also settled in Hamburg and worked for many years in the city's clubs. She died on 27 October 2009 at the age of 65, at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf.
Valerie Gell, who settled in Munich, but later returned to Hamburg, died in December 2016, aged 71. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.