This week’s final city-themed song of the day is “Going Down to Liverpool.” The song was initially released by Katrina and the Waves (you know them from their huge hit, “Walking on Sunshine“) but made a bigger splash when covered by the Bangles.
“Going Down to Liverpool” was written by Kimberley Rew of Katrina and the Waves. It first appeared on that group’s 1982 EP, Shock Horror! (this was pre-Katrina, when they were simply known as the Waves) with Mr. Rew singing lead, then re-recorded for their 1983 LP Walking on Sunshine (now with Katrina Leskanich but still with Mr. Rew singing lead). The group re-recorded it again in 1985, this time with Katrina on lead vocals, for their self-titled major-label debut LP, the one that included the hit version of “Walking on Sunshine.” Katrina and the Waves never released “Going Down to Liverpool” as a single, however, although that third version was included as the B-side to the “Walking on Sunshine” single, so Mr. Rew earned a bunch of royalties from that.
The Bangles had heard the original, pre-Katrina version of “Going Down to Liverpool” and decided to cover it on their 1984 debut album, All Over the Place. Here’s how guitarist Vicki Peterson remembers it:
“Michael [Steele, bass] and I shared a house, and our roommate was listening to a tape sent to her by a friend of ours who lives in San Francisco. This tape happened to have a song by a band called Katrina and the Waves on it, a demo version with Kimberley Rew singing the lead vocal, ‘Going Down To Liverpool.’ Michael and I were standing in the bathroom putting on make-up or something… It was great, the beat, the feeling of it, something about the guitars sounded like us. We were trying to think of a couple more numbers to put on the album, and we had some songs of our own and a couple of covers, but we decided it would be nice to do a more current cover. And it was just three chords, real basic.”
The Bangles’ version of “Going Down to Liverpool” is fairly faithful to the Waves’ original but slightly “Banglefied.” This is the rare Bangles tune with lead vocals by drummer Debbi Peterson, with sister Vicki Peterson and Susanne Hoffs providing their distinctive background vocals. It clicks.
The group released “Going Down to Liverpool” as a single later that year but it failed to chart in the U.S. After their second album, Different Light, and the single “If She Knew What She Wants” put them on the map, the Bangles, in 1986, decided to re-release “Going Down to Liverpool” as a single in the UK and Ireland. It was moderately successful, reaching #56 on the UK charts and #21 in Ireland.
Despite the song’s lack of mainstream success, it’s one I really like. It’s quite representative of the Bangles’ sound at that stage in their career and it’s just a darned good tune, in any case. I prefer the Bangles’ version to any of the Katrina and the Waves’ originals, but that’s not a knock on the British group; the Bangles just did it better.
For your daily bonus, here’s the Bangles’ music video for “Going Down to Liverpool,” which got a lot of airplay on MTV in 1984. As to that famous guest star in the video, Susanna Hoffs explains how the cameo came about:
“Leonard Nimoy is like an old friend of my family’s from way back. We were sitting around and we had this concept of the Bangles sitting in this mystery car being driven to Liverpool or whatever, right? And who’s gonna drive that car? It just occurred to me, Leonard Nimoy would be great, so I phoned him up and I thought, ‘Oh gosh, is Leonard gonna wanna do it, but he said yes!”
Indeed he did, making the video an instant classic.
