Back in the ’60s, guitarists Valerie Gell and Pamela Birch, bassist Pamela Birch, and drummer Sylvia Saunders – known collectively as the Liverbirds – rivaled peers such as the Beatles and the Rolling Stones with their unique brand of Merseybeat and rock ’n’ roll.
“We were the very first all-female band to play at The Cavern [the legendary venue in Liverpool],” McGlory told Guitar World in a 2024 interview.
“And we didn't know how the female audience was gonna react to us because we thought maybe they might think, ‘Oh my gosh, they're gonna take our boyfriends away from us,’ or, you know, the groupies might suppose, ‘Oh, they're gonna get the first choice of the bands.’ And then we started playing, the girls started screaming just the way they did for the boys.”
The band toured relentlessly all over Europe – gaining a residency at Hamburg's famed Star-Club – and wrapped up a tour in Japan before they broke up in 1968. However, according to McGlory – and even the history books – the Liverbirds never quite reached the level of fame, and, more importantly, the recognition that they worked so hard for.
“I met Charlie Watts [Stones drummer] about 10 years ago,” recalled McGlory. “We played with the Rolling Stones when we were still in England. And when he found out who I was, he said, ‘You know, Mary, Bill Wyman and I, we always said, we wonder what happened to them fantastic girls. We never heard of them again in England.’
“So you know, even people like The Stones, or later on The Kinks. They all really liked us and thought that we had something special. And we've only just realized ourselves now how special we were because we had no other girls who we could look up to and say, ‘Well, let's try and be like them.’ We had to be like ourselves.”
Fast forward a couple of decades, and the Liverbirds’ legacy is now being celebrated. Aside from the McGlory’s book, The Liverbirds: Our Life in Britain's First Female Rock 'n' Roll Band, released in 2024, Liverpool finally embraced the band with the staging of a musical, Girls Don’t Play Guitars – a reference to John Lennon’s initial reaction to the band.
“We realized when the musical was on in Liverpool, how many young girls came up to us when we were signing autographs at the end, and said, ‘I'm gonna go home now and get a guitar. I've never even realized it. But it's right. We girls have to start doing this,” concludes McGlory.
Another pioneering band that famously rubbed shoulders with the Beatles – and even recorded with their engineer at Apple Studios – was the ’70s band Fanny, led by sisters June and Jean Millington.
