Searchers Snippets April 2026 – From Madison Square Gardens to Glastonbury
Well, what a coincidence. Jimi our magnificent sound man from the Thank You Tours passed on to me a clipping from a U.S British Invasion tour we undertook back in 1973 along with Peter Noone & Herman’s Hermits, Gerry Marsden and the Pacemakers, Billy J Kramer and the and Dakotas, and Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders. He shrewdly spotted that the date advertising that particular event at Madison Square Gardens was June 27th of ’73 and curtain up was set for 8 p.m.
Fast forward to our spectacular finish to what has been an incredible career and not only was it quite amazingly June 27th 52 years later but our time on stage was firmly set at 8 p.m. Remarkable. And it brought back so many memories.
I dived into my collection of memorabilia and I’ve selected a fairly random bunch of photos from that early tour just to give you a flavour of our six week trek across the States.
The clipping from Jimi
The poster for Glastonbury
The cover of the Invasion Tour brochure
The inside page and line-up
The Searchers photo used for the brochure (we were trying to be trendy by that time – maybe a little too trendy?
A bunch of pics which include:
Mike, me, Karl Green (Hermits) and John on the Hyatt House roof L.A.
At an after-show bash at a house Maurice Gibb was renting.
Mike, me, Maurice and our then drummer Billy Adamson plus a lady friend of the Adamsons.
The diving horse at the Steel Pier, Atlantic City. Quite rightly, you’d never get away with that now.
We all went to the Steel Pier to see our hero Jerry Lee Lewis in an afternoon show. Billy J called out for one of his big hits. Jerry called back, “I’ll play what I want son”. Typical Jerry Lee.
The diving horse at the Steel Pier, Atlantic City. Quite rightly, you’d never get away with that now.
With regard to the Midnite Special television show which we performed on in Los Angeles and which was compered by the Bee Gees, the entire show is available to watch on Youtube and the quality is remarkable good. Well worth checking out.
Keep logging on to the website because I’ll be searching for more of these gems to share with you whenever inspiration hits me. I hope you like what we`re doing.
Best wishes to everyone and thanks for all the great years of support. We couldn’t have done it without you.
Frank Allen.