How The Liverbirds defied Sixties sexism (and John Lennon) to become the first all-female rock’n’roll band

The two remaining members of the UK’s pioneering band are back with a new single and a memoir. They talk to Fiona Sturges about blazing a trail while still in their teens, the day Chuck Berry invited them to support him in Las Vegas (so long as they were topless), and inspiring a generation of girls to play music

Formed in Liverpool in early 1962, The Liverbirds set the standard for all-female groups (Redferns)

When Mary McGlory saw the Beatles at the Cavern Club in early 1962, she decided there and then that she would form a band. The Fab Four had just had their first hit with “Love Me Do” and Liverpool was abuzz with the Merseybeat sound. One year later, McGlory was back at the Cavern watching the Beatles, this time with her bandmates: bassist Sylvia Saunders, guitarist Valerie Gell and Mary’s guitarist cousin Sheila.

After the gig, the Cavern’s DJ and compere Bob Wooler asked them if they’d like to come backstage. “So we all went in,” recalls McGlory, “and John Lennon and Paul McCartney were getting changed. Bob said to them: ‘Boys, this is The Liverbirds. They are going to be the first all-female group.’ And John looked at us and said, ‘Uh-huh. Girls don’t play guitars.’ The cheek of him! We thought: ‘You just wait. We’ll show you’.”

I am talking to Saunders and McGlory – the two surviving members of The Liverbirds - via video call: Saunders, who at 77 is “the baby of the band”, lives in Earby in Lancashire, while Mary, 78, is speaking from her home in Hamburg. The pair are not only revving up the band again but this month are publishing a joint memoir The Liverbirds: Our life in Britain’s first female rock’n’roll band. The book tells the remarkable tale of four working-class girls who defied the conventions of their era to become musical trailblazers.