The Searchers, the longest-running band in pop history, have decided to call it a day after 68 years. The group rose to fame in the early Sixties as part of Liverpool’s Merseybeat scene, where they were contemporaries of The Beatles. Yet they formed three years before the Fab Four, in 1957, beginning as a skiffle group and later sold millions of records, with hits such as their Jackie DeShannon cover “When You Walk in the Room”, their No 1 “Sweets for My Sweet”, and their No 2 single “Sugar and Spice”.
They announced this week that they plan on retiring after what will be their first and only show at Glastonbury Festival in June. Speaking to The Guardian, guitarist John McNally, 83, and bassist and singer Frank Allen, 81, said they had decided to retire partly because of their age, but also because they were sick of driving up and down motorways in heavy traffic.
“Age slows you down a bit,” Allen, who joined the band in 1964, said. “We did between 180 and 200 shows a year. But driving up and down the motorways is the hard part because the traffic is so much heavier than it ever was… There was never a problem with recovering from a show because that’s the thing that brings you to life. We were always fit to do a show. It’s just the driving up and down motorways.”
Original member McNally, who formed the band when he was 16, agreed: “The traffic is now an absolute nightmare.” Allen told The Independent last year that The Searchers initially decided to call it a day in 2019, after growing weary of non-stop touring. “We thought, well, we’ve been doing this for six decades, about time to have a rest,” he said. “We were getting on, we were well past retirement age and we’d been doing 200 shows a year up until that point.”
After five years of “retirement” however, the band’s jokes about a comeback tour became reality, and the consequent shows turned out to be “a lot fun”. “By the end of it, we finished on an epic night in Liverpool at the Philharmonic and it was probably the best night we’ve had of our careers,” Allen said. “We were on such a high.”
Asked about the secret to The Searchers’ longevity, he said it was down to being “being a part of one of the most important periods in pop history.” “If you made it during that period, people are never gonna forget you,” he said. “We’ve influenced so many American names, from The Byrds to Tom Petty, Marshall Crenshaw, Bruce Springsteen. We’ve had our time in the sun.”
The band’s current lineup comprises Allen, McNally, Spencer James, and Richie Burns. Allen said no one had asked them to play Glastonbury until now: “No one’s asked us. The Searchers are finally performing at the greatest music festival of them all. What a way to round off a tour and a career.”
The Searchers will appear on the Acoustic Stage at Glastonbury on June 27. This year’s festival is being headlined by Neil Young, Olivia Rodrigo, and The 1975, with Rod Stewart in the Legends’ Slot.
