The Solid Silver 60s pop tour has mutated up a precious grade into the 60s Gold Tour and the ageing stars roll into the New Theatre next Wednesday to please all of us who still love that music from nearly half a century ago.

The headline acts are the stalwart Searchers, P. J. Proby and just one of the Tremeloes, ‘Chip’ Hawkes. But the main attraction will surely be Gerry Marsden, evergreen front man of his Pacemakers (none are original members).

How Do You Do It? (the group’s first hit and, of course, number one) was the second single I ever bought and it was with a mixture of awe and slight trepidation that I telephoned him to chat about the great days.

I needn’t have worried: aged 67, Gerry is as chatty and bubbling as ever he was, and his memory for detail remains precise.

“Liverpool being a sea port, we had music from all over the world coming in on ships and you could go round the pubs and listen to all sorts.

“Then Lonnie Donegan came on the scene with skiffle and quickly there were about 50 bands playing all around the city. The Beatles were a skiffle group — the Quarrymen — and there was my skiffle group! And then rock ‘n roll came along and we needed to get a pianist”!”

The first time Gerry’s group and the Beatles played on the same bill was on June 6, 1960, at the Grosvenor Ballroom in Wallasey.

I asked Marsden how much competition there was between the two bands. “On stage, very heavy rivalry, but off stage, best of mates. John Lennon was my best pal — he had the same sense of humour as me and we had a great time together. On stage, lots of arguments, lots of gear. But at one gig, at Litherland Town Hall in 1961, we both went on stage together and called ourselves the Beatmakers — fantastic night!”

Gerry and the Pacemakers fell into the arms of Brian Epstein and George Martin — they were Epstein’s second signing after the Beatles — and famously inherited How Do You Do It? in 1963 after Lennon was seriously unsure about making it the Beatles’ first release. Did the Pacemakers think their version would be such a triumph?

“George Martin called us into the studio cubicle after we’d done about four takes and said, ‘have a listen to this’. And he played it back and I said, ‘is that us?’, because we’d never heard ourselves recorded on a proper machine. He said, ‘yes, that’s your voice — and I’ll tell you something: this is going to be a hit!’.”

The next two were number ones as well — I Like It and the evergreen You’ll Never Walk Alone. There were four more successes in 1964 — all penned by Marsden — but by then the Beatles had raced away to glory. Could Epstein have done more for his second signings?

“Brian said to me ‘Gerry, if you want to change management, I would fully understand’. But I told him that he’d done us a favour. I knew he had to spend more time with the Beatles — they were the biggest thing since sliced bread. He managed me until he died.” His voice nearly broke.

The Pacemakers packed up in 1966. Marsden, surprisingly, went into an acting career on stage and TV, but time came when “I had to go back on the road!” And he’s been doing the hits all round the world since then.

“We were just writing songs we liked to play. The beauty was, the music was very simple. The lyrics were simple, and after three plays you could hum one of those sixties songs.”

I once saw Gerry get through How Do You Do It? in about 45 careless seconds on the New Theatre stage; he’s promised me it’s gonna be all right next Wednesday evening.