PAUL DU NOYER'S Wondrous Place - Music from Cavern to Cream is a comprehensive source for anyone interested in Liverpool's pop music history.
The scene is set by an evocative foreword about his birthplace from Sir Paul McCartney before Du Noyer sets his stall out with a witty and poetic first chapter. Appropriately entitled Happy Hour in the Sad House, it perfectly captures the spirit of the city and its relationship with music.
Here's a small sample: "The port of Liverpool was made to supply Jack Tars' every need whether it be for tarts or tarpaulin. Naturally the town was prepared to offer entertainment too. And that readiness became a civic tradition of the town an acquired characteristic of its people that shaped their very nature ... In Liverpool, even conversation must work as entertainment: it isn't twinkling or gentle but hard, competitive and cruel.
"But Liverpool is always trying to turn rage into beauty. Periodically the place erupts with Vesuvian force. Creative individuals don't trickle out from Liverpool's edges: they explode from its very core. The ones the world knows are only the famous ones. In Liverpool there are plenty of stars who don't need guitars.
The Liverpool music story is as much about the audience as the performers they are but two sides of the equation. "From the Beatles to Cream, its successful exports owe their success to the Liverpool people's love of a good night out and their highly evolved capacity for telling s--- from shinola."
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