Searching to end a life of touring the world
Af t e r a non-stop professional touring career of a mind boggling 56 years, you might wonder how and why The Searchers have never slowed down or stopped.
It is a back breaking schedule that has constantly amazed their contemporaries in the heady world of pop music. But wonder no more because at last the band has decided to end the touring and enjoy a well deserved rest.
And they aim to celebrate their final tour with fans at Howden Park Centre next year.
In January 2019 they begin their farewell series of solo presentations around the UK culminating in a final show on March 31. It is surely a sad time for their loyal and devoted followers who thought they would go on forever.
It was certainly not a case of the need to. They still undertake somewhere between 150 and 200 shows a year and their legendary solo concerts in which they present a potted history of the iconic band in music and anecdotes are invariably selllouts.
They have never fallen out of love with performing and never will but that fun element is only the tip of the iceberg. Still fit and looking decades younger than their years they finally decided they want a rest from the constant driving, the clogged up motorways which for the most part these days resemble car parks, and the hours of hanging about waiting for their moment to shine.
Back in the mid sixties when the incredible beat boom created by the Beatles saw so many bands riding on the crest of a seemingly unstoppable wave of success eventually subsided many simply disbanded and got on with their lives as best they could. Not The Searchers.
They stayed firmly in place, a constant unit riding out the bad times putting the twilight years of the cabaret clubs, looked on as anathema by some, to good use as they diligently honed their stage craft and upgraded the quality of their shows to please the more mature audience who had replaced the screaming teenage girls who had mobbed them in those years of chart topping glory. Such dogged determination was to stand them in good stead for the momentous nostalgia revival which was to lift them once again to national and international prominence.
The Searchers seemed to be both unstoppable and indestructible. They were arguably the hardest working band in showbusiness and their amazing datesheet was legendary in the music industry. No other unit played more dates for such a continuous period without cessation.
Their impressive run of hits in those glory years from 1964 to 1966 was worldwide enabling them to travel the globe constantly.
`Sweets For My Sweet’, `Sugar and Spice’, ` Needles and Pins’, `Don`t Throw Your Love Away’, `Someday We` re Gonna Love Again’, `When You Walk On The Room’, ` Love Potion Number Nine’, `Goodbye My Love’, `He`s Got No Love’, `Take Me For What I`m Worth’, ` Take It Or Leave It’, `Bumble Bee and more.
They have performed for both The Queen and Princess Margaret, headlined over such Motown luminaries as Marvin Gaye, The Supremes, Martha and The Vandellas and The Temptations, entertained British troops in The Falklands, Bosnia and Belfast, toured Australia and New Zealand with The Rolling Stones and strutted their stuff in front of 80,000 people at Wembley Stadium as special guests of Cliff Richard.
In 2008 they found themselves back in the charts when the compilation album The Very Best Of The Searchers climbed to number 11. It was only prevented from entering the top ten by Old Blue Eyes himself, Frank Sinatra.
As recently as 2014 they appeared in Las Vegas, the entertainment capital of the world, to great acclaim and not for the first time. This was their third engagement in `Sin City’ but in fact the U.SA has played host to them constantly over the years. And on one special evening in New York they allowed Searchers afficionado Marky Ramone of the legendary punk pioneers to sit in on drums for Needles & Pins.
As well as The Ramones they can count Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, The Byrds, Marshall Crenshaw and others as musicians who came under their influence. In fact Roger McGuinn was recently quoted as saying that without The Searchers there would have been no Byrds.
Now the band are getting ready to play at Howden Park Centre on March 6.
For more information and tickets visit www. howdenparkcentre.co.uk.