But to begin at the beginning: McGear’s awareness of Liverpool 8 began as a schoolboy when, with older brother Paul, he was a pupil at the highly prestigious Liverpool Institute, an all boys grammar school situated on the edge of Liverpool 8. “The Institute was on Mount Street, just off Hope Street which was the heart of the Arty district. At the same time John (Lennon) was next door at Art College – where I so desperately wanted to go when I left school. One of our teachers, Cissy Smith was John’s uncle. He taught me English in a room right at the top of The Institute from where, down below in the little quadrangle at the back of the Art College we could see John, his girlfriend Cynthia and a young man called Stuart Sutcliffe making things for their Panto Days (the name given to Liverpool students’ ‘Rag Week’). They looked cool in their jeans and sideburns – all the stuff we weren’t allowed to wear!”


McGear’s dreams of Art College were dashed by a cruel change to admission regulations: “Leaving school in ’62 I really wanted to go to Art College and disappear up me own proverbial for a couple of years. I had high hopes because Paul’s new friend, John, told me he’d got into College with no ‘O’ Level passes. At least I had one – in Art – so I thought I’d be ok. But the year I applied they changed the rules, now you had to have five ‘O’ Levels – in any subjects and not necessarily in Art! So I couldn’t get in. I’d stayed on at school to get some ‘A’ Levels but didn’t so instead I had to go into ‘life’ and get a job. With my Auntie Jin’s thoughtful comment – ‘hairdressing is an art son’ – ringing in my ears I went to work at Andre Bernard’s, a posh ladies’ barber just up the hill from The Cavern and just down the hill from Hope Street. As there was already a ‘Michael’ at Bernard’s I had to have another first name, hence I became ‘Peter’.”


Life as an apprentice hairdresser only emphasised McGear’s dismay at not making it into Art College. Heavily influenced by Surrealism he was gaining a reputation as an exceptionally gifted photographer and under the pseudonym Francis Michael, his photographs of the burgeoning beat scene appeared regularly in the City’s music dedicated rag, Mersey Beat. Photography and nights down The Cavern offered some relief from the tedium of the salon but it was to be his spare-time immersion in the alternative arts scene up on Hope Street that finally liberated him from the daily grind of the old shampoo and set.


McGear’s disdain for having to perform such menial tasks as brushing floors and emptying bins plus his predilection for surreptitiously sketching while at work was noted by Bernard’s “Mr. Vincent” (AKA Mike Weinblatt). An artist himself, Weinblatt provided the hapless apprentice with what turned out to be the key to a life beyond the hairgrip. “Mike said, ‘you’re artistic, aren’t you Peter? You should come with me to Hope


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Hall on Hope Street. Some friends of mine are organising an Arts Festival up there. It should suit you.’”


And suit him sir it did: “Hope Hall was an old, dilapidated ‘arts’ cinema which later became The Everyman Theatre. It showed classic French films – all the painters went there. Down below there was a cellar with a bar where all these experimental multi-media ‘events’ incorporating tape loops and things like poetry readings, satirical sketches, pop- art exhibitions, folk singing and stuff were taking place. It was mind-blowing for the time. It’s amazing to think just who came out of that whole area – Jonathan Pryce, Willy Russell, Alan Bleasdale, The Spinners, poets Roger McGough and Brian Patten, painters Adrian Henri, Sam Walsh and Maurice Cockrill. The Road Runners with Mike Hart on vocals were one of the great-unsung


mad people who, inspired by ideas from America, totally believed in what they were doing. Almost immediately I became heavily involved. I thought it was great because our kid (Paul) was on stage being a show-off with his pop group and then there were these other people doing something totally different without any guitars, getting up and showing off by reading poetry, performing sketches and in the process making political statements opposing the Vietnam War. To be part of that world felt good.”


Initially McGear did not consider himself to be a performer. “That arose when John Gorman asked if I would like to read – as in ‘perform’ – in his new sketch. I was taken off guard and said no, I didn’t do that sort of thing. In my head it was Paul who was the performer in the family. When Gorman pointed out that none of them were ‘performers’ but all had day jobs (Gorman was a Post Office engineer, McGough an English teacher, Adrian Henri a painter) – and that they did the sketches for fun it made me pause and think maybe I could do so as well.”


From that moment McGear’s days at Bernard’s were numbered. “The sketch was called ‘Old Folks’ and I played the part of an old man whom Roger McGough interviews. There weren’t too many lines so I quickly learned them and then began to think how could I transform myself on stage from being young into being old. I found some glasses and a shawl and then thought about my voice – how would an old man speak? First I developed a croaky voice but decided before I spoke I would let out a drawn out groan – as if having to crank myself up to speak. That clinched it, on stage it immediately got a laugh and at the end they all applauded. It went down so well there were now two show-offs in the family! That’s how it began for me. I couldn’t have gone into the song world because our kid did it too well but now we were in totally different worlds… I could do that and feel comfortable.”


McGear the performer joined the collective called The Liverpool, One Fat


Liverpool bands that regularly played in the cellar. Nearby Ye Cracke, O’Connors Tavern and the Sink Club were among the hippest venues of Liverpool 8. It was vibrant, that’s why Paul and John would come up from The Cavern to Hope Hall – terrific things were taking place there.”


On a visit to Liverpool in ’65 famed American Beat poet Alan Ginsberg was similarly moved, dubbing Liverpool as, ‘the centre of consciousness of the human universe’.” Over the top maybe – as Brian Patten sagely noted: “I think Allen believed the ‘centre of human consciousness’ to be wherever he was at the time!” Nevertheless Ginsberg had nailed Liverpool 8’s commitment to counter-culture.


As Beatlemania gathered pace so did McGear’s enthusiasm for The Merseyside Arts Festival. “I was swept up by all these


Lady, All Electric Show (“One Fat Lady” is a bingo term for the number eight and as most of the Electric Show lived in Liverpool 8 hence the name). From this Scaffold evolved. “We comprised Gorman, McGough, Adrian Henri, me, my girlfriend of the time – Celia Mortimer and her friend Jenny Beattie. One night the producers of the ABC commercial television programme Gazette came to see us. A magazine style programme along the lines of The Johnny Carson Show in America, Gazette was the forerunner of shows here like Russell Harty and Jonathan Ross. It featured a pop group every week but they also wanted to include some humour. They liked One Fat Lady but said there were too many in the group to appear on the show, so they chose just three of us – Gorman, McGough and McGear. This meant we needed a new name. With the help of Roget’s Thesaurus and Lift To The Scaffold (Ascenseur Pour L’Echafaud),


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