Swinging Sixties in Sunderland?
ANOTHER LOOK AT THE DECADE WHICH ATTRACTED THE FAB FOUR, THE STONES, MARLENE DIETRICH AND MORE
Picture the scene. There’s 61,000 people around you in a packed Roker Park and you’re not feeling great.
What’s the best course of action? Crowd surfing.
Back in the 1960s, when Sunderland’s ground was crammed to the rafters, there was a simple option for getting people to pitchside from the open terraces of the Roker or Fulwell Ends.
They would be passed over the heads of the fans. It was the easiest way of getting to medical attention.
And that’s just one example of a time gone by which is spotlighted in a new book which gets its final spotlight in Wearside Echoes this week.
Sunderland in the Swinging Sixties was very much a place to be. The celebrities of the time certainly thought at Number 1 with She Loves You.
Cue the screaming girls – and they kept up the decibels when the Rolling Stones appeared at the Odeon the next year.
Helen Shapiro was another star to arrive, and by September 1964, we had another new venue which was pulling in big names of its own.
The Blue Note arrived and had the likes of Little Eva and The Fortunes on its bills.
Television personality Cathy McGowan – who shot to stardom with Ready, Steady, Go – opened the new Teenage Boutique in Blacketts on February 25, 1967.
American star Del Shannon appeared at the Porama in High Street West in 1967, just a few years after his hit Runaway was in the charts.
Tom Jones, T. Rex, Pink