note:
In my last post I indicated I would be putting up another song in tribute to the late Gerry Marsden, frontman of the English Mersey Beat band, Gerry and The Pacemakers.

1964’s Ferry Cross The Mersey, (pronouned Murr-zee), Gerry’s love-letter to his beloved Liverpool and her people, was originally written for the movie of the same name, starring these contemporaries of the other famous band from Liverpool, The Beatles. With the huge success of the Beatles' film A Hard Days Night, Brian Epstein, manager of both The Beatles and the Pacemakers, advised Gerry and the boys to do a motion picture as well, and one day, while Gerry was taking the Ferry across the River Mersey in Northwest England (which flows into the Irish Sea of Liverpool), he suddenly got the idea for the movie’s title and its featured song. With the melody and a few lyrics still fresh in his head, Gerry hopped off the Ferry before it left the dock and made a mad dash to a nearby telephone box, where he proceeded to call his mother. “Push the ‘play’ and ‘record’ buttons on the answering machine, Mom,” Jerry anxiously told her.
“But what for, Gerry?,” she asked.
“Just do it, mom, before I forget the song!”
Over the phone, Gerry sang what he had of his composition, and later he and The Pacemakers recorded it with George Martin at the Producer’s helm. The rest is pop history. FCTM went on to make the top ten in both America and the UK. Interestingly enough, Chicago was the sole city in the U.S. where the song reached number one, staying there for several weeks.
24 years later, FCTM was released again and became a number 1 hit in the UK. Unfortunately the song did so under tragic circumstances.
During a soccer game (at Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield, South Yorkshire) between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest, the decision was made to open a “pen” in the stadium as a way to ease overcrowding. Instead of rectifying the situation, this action worsened it by causing an influx of even more supporters. The result was a human crush known as “the worst disaster in British sport’s history.” 96 deaths were recorded, along with 766 non-fatal injuries.
Gerry wanted desperately to do something to help. Eventually he came up with the idea of releasing a new recording of ‘Ferry ‘Cross the Mercy,’ with all proceeds from its sales going to the families of those killed or injured in the tragedy. On May 8th, 1989, less than a month after the Hillsborough disaster, the song was released, becoming number one on the British charts and an anthem for the ages in the city of Liverpool. Several artists, including Gerry of course, participated in the recording of the re-release, Sir Paul McCartney being among them.
“We don’t care what your name is boy, we’ll never turn you away” is the line that means most to me,” said Gerry in an interview a few years before his death at the age of 78, “That’s the kind of people the people of Liverpool are.”
And that is the kind of person Gerry Marsden was. He will truly be missed, not just by the people of Liverpool, but millions of young people around the world, (yours truly included) who, after hearing this song, written by a genuinely sweet man, fell in love with a city they had never visited and a people they’d never met.