“Girls don’t play the guitar”: The controversial phrase by John Lennon (The Beatles) that inspired a legendary female rock band

June 10, 2024 4:42 pm
Posted by Editorial –

The possibilities of setting up a group and having it influence the Beatles or the figure of John Lennon in particular are very high, but there may also be a nuance such as that this influence comes from a phrase as controversial as the “Girls don’t play the guitar” from the always missed singer and guitarist of the Liverpool band, who inspired the first female rock band in the United Kingdom.

These words from Lennon are what he recalled in a recent interview with Guitar World the 78-year-old bassist Mary McGloryone of only two survivors of The Liverbirdsthe first female rock group that emerged in Great Britain in the 60s, whose career, full of obstacles and anecdotes, has been captured in the book “The Liverbirds: Our life in Britain’s first female rock n’ roll band”.

After receiving that phrase from John, McGlory assures that they did not collapse: “It encouraged us more than it discouraged us, but Paul MCCARTNEY He said, “What a great idea,” and I thought, “Well, I’ll just play bass, because that’s what Paul McCartney played.”

Next to the 77-year-old battery Sylvia Saundersare the two people who can tell that story first-hand, about which the bassist remembers and regrets that her managers ended up focusing their performances on the European continent and even in Japan, but less in the United Kingdom: “I met Charlie Watts about ten years ago. We play with The Rolling Stones when we were still in England. When she found out who she was, she said to me, “You know, Mary? Bill Wyman and I always wondered what had become of those fantastic girls. We never heard from them again in England.”

So, you know, even people like the Stones or later The Kinks They really liked us and thought we had something special. Now, it was just me and Sylvia, and we just realized how special we were, because we didn’t have other girls that we could look up to and say, “Well, let’s try to be like them.” “We had to be like ourselves.”

Lennon’s phrase not only inspired The Liverbirds to take flight, but they have also been transformed into the musical “Girls Don’t Play Guitars”, that this fall will return to the stage of Royal Court Theater from Liverpool.

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