I was really sad to hear that Freddie Garrity died last month. He and his “Dreamers” were one of the more curios formations of the Merseybeat boom in the sixties. (Though they were not from Liverpool, but from Manchester.) They did not write their own material and did not even play on some of their records. It was their pre-rehearsed, synchronised wacky dancing routines and the fun they made out of their stage show. Freddie, with horn-rimmed glasses and his skeletal Buddy Holly looks, sported a frantical dance style, hopping up and down and waving his legs and armes. Waving his legs? Sorry for that one.
They did not change anything in their routines when Merseybeat started to fade away. Like ‘Gerry & the Pacemakers’ they could not compete with younger bands like ‘The Who’, ‘The Kinks’ or the psychedelic version of the Beatles – so their success was limited.
They were important in the rock history anyway because of another reason: When the Beatles played “If You Gotta Make a Fool of Somebody” in Manchester Freddie and Co copied it and performed the Beatles arrangement the next day. This convinced the Fab Four to concentrate on their own composiotions in th e future.
Here’s an informative fansite and some nice clips at YouTube: Funny Over You, You Were Made For Me and their last tv appearance in 1999.
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