The Roadrunners

"The Stones are good - almost as good as the Roadrunners"

- George Harrison -

Photo by permission of Max Scheler/K&K Hamburg

Somewhere in the history of sixties Liverpool music is a small footnote beginning with "R". That stands for The Roadrunners - sometimes billed as The Road Runners. (We never actually performed as the "Liverpool Roadrunners" but we have used that name to improve search engine rankings!)

Above, you can see us on stage at the Cavern in 1963. We also did the obligatory stint at Hamburg's Star Club. But our real home was the Hope Hall (now the Everyman Theatre) where we were pretty much the house band, entertaining the artists and students with our take on rhythm & blues classics.

We played the Cavern on many occasions, often on the same bill as the Beatles, and we were invited by them to share their final appearance there on 3rd August, 1963. (See press ad below.)

Maybe because we refused to compromise on our music we never quite made it to the "big time". But George Harrison had respect for us, as the quote at the top of this page shows. Bill Harry (of "Mersey Beat" fame) confirms it in this story:

"In Liverpool there was a big beat contest taking place at the Philharmonic Hall. We were sitting behind George Harrison who was one of the judges. One of the other judges was Dick Rowe from Decca who was living under the stigma of 'the man who turned The Beatles down'. Liverpool had an R&B group called The Roadrunners who were really good. George was saying to Dick Rowe, 'Oh, we went to see this group in Richmond called The Rolling Stones. They're an R&B group, almost as good as our own Roadrunners!' Dick Rowe got up, left the contest straight away without participating in the judging, got on the train back to London and signed The Rolling Stones."

And so we missed out... But now you can judge us for yourselves as you browse through our selection of songs (on .mp3), photos and memories. Everything here is authentic and brought to you by people who really were there at the time. This isn't a fan site - we were that band!

Thanks to Cherry Red Records we're back on CD. Their re-release of Mike Hart's first solo album "Mike Hart Bleeds" includes bonus tracks from the Roadrunners and the Liverpool Scene.  

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