The Searchers Official Website

While reflecting on that super trip to Wembley to see that terrific group Coldplay recently along with my friends Sue Johnston and Susie Mathis it brought back so many memories of when we, The Searchers, performed at the stadium back in 1989. Of course it was still the old building with the twin towers way before the magnificent all-singing, all-dancing edifice with the iconic arch that we know so well today. And it was certainly not a Searchers concert. My goodness, if we’d been the top of the bill there would have been three nuns and a whippet forlornly huddled together at the front of the stage wishing they’d stayed home and watched television.

It was June 16th and 17th, 1989 and The event, as it was dubbed, was Cliff Richard’s special celebration at having enjoyed thirty years as one of the world’s most successful entertainers. As I write this I am looking at the framed poster on my office wall. You`ve all been reading about the extortionate prices that tickets for the likes of Oasis and Coldplay were generating. How much to see Cliff, The Shadows, The Searchers, Gerry & the Pacemakers, Aswad, Jet Harris & Tony Meehan, the Vernons Girls, Cathy McGowan and the Kalin Twins? If you wanted to attend you were required to shell out a princely sum of £17.00 !!!!

Our inclusion in the project came about when Cliff and I were chatting over a cuppa at a David Lloyd gym and tennis centre we both belonged to. He casually asked me what we were doing in June 1989 to which I had to say I had no idea yet. And so he explained his plans to mark his years at the top and thought it would be nice to have all his old chums on the bill.

At that point I wasn`t even aware I was an old chum and simply dismissed the suggestion as banter which would never come to anything, at least nothing that would actually involve us. But when the announcement was eventually made he was as good as his word and there we were, the little old Searchers performing in front of 80,000 people. And repeating the whole thing on the next day as well. Mindblowing.

I’ve delved into my photo albums and assembled a bunch of pics from that amazing occasion, some of which I haven`t released before. I hope you enjoy them.