And now here's Mike Pender of The Searchers.
Mike,
I was very surprised,
as I'm sure a lot of people were recently,
to learn that Chris Curtis had suddenly decided to lead the group.
Now, what happened?
Yes,
well,
we could say he'd come up for a long
time before everybody else knew about it.
And mostly it was with children out of the country.
It was
the last time we were out of the country,
which was in the Philippines,
he was rather ill.
Yeah.
And that's one part of the job he didn't like,
you know.
Mm-hmm.
But he felt that he'd done everything he wanted to do.
Yeah.
Such as he'd done the Palladium and he'd
been number one in the hit parade and that.
Yeah.
So we were a bit, sort of,
we didn't know what to do when he was going to leave,
you know,
naturally.
So when he first left,
there was just a possibility you might all have packed it in,
you think?
Yes, I think there was,
we thought this,
you know,
the rest of the group.
Instead of which you're going on,
you found yourself a new drummer,
introduce him to us,
will you?
Yes,
it's a chap called Johnny Blunt,
comes from Croydon,
London.
Oh, he's not a Liverpool lad.
No, he's a mud.
It doesn't matter anymore, does it?
Where they come from.
Okay,
well,
can you do for us now the number from your latest
record, Take It or Leave It?
Yes, we'll do it.
Here we go.