9. Gerry And The Pacemakers‘Ferry Cross The Mersey’ / ‘You You You’
I would just play the intro over and over and over again. In my head I remembered it as a trumpet, but I listened to it this morning and I was like, ‘Where the fuck’s the trumpet?’ It’s so gorgeous, it brings you in with a very nice melody, very lilting, and you get the feeling of travel in a way that’s quite lovely. A journey on the river; a slow journey. You don’t feel like you’re racing. I lived near the river in Oxton and I could see the boats.
I keep saying it, but the idea of faraway places was big with me. My mum and dad had been in Africa, my sister went to be a nanny in Brittany when I was six or seven. I didn’t include it in the list, but she got me ‘Leaving On A Jet Plane’ just before she left and I played it over and over again and cried my eyes out. I was very affected by music; I think I understood the emotional gravitas of it. ‘Ferry Cross The Mersey’ is quite a melancholy tune really. When I hear it, I hear a melancholy drifter, longing to come back to his home and longing to get away, it can be at either end of that continuum. It made me feel that feeling of being both adventurous and wary of adventure, wary of leaving home and wary of coming back. My mum was mad on Gerry Marsden. Funnilly enough he changed a tire for her once in Oxton, she was so pleased because she loved Gerry And The Pacemakers. She said he was lovely!
