The Fortunes, Liverpool Empire Theatre. November 2014. Photograph by Ian D. Hall.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

The ties that bind Liverpool and Birmingham are deeper and stronger than many might realise or even understand. Politically both squeezed by the Westminster Empire and its mouldy London centric viewpoint, both devastated by unrest in the early 80s and both at one point claiming the title of second city of the U.K. They also share a people who took music to the hearts more than any other city during the 60s pop revolution and who have spawned some of the greatest musicians to ever play on a stage the length and breadth of the islands.

For Birmingham and its now neighbouring suburbs, the list of musicians to come out of the city in the ten year period when pop culture exploded in 63 is as impressive as those that followed The Beatles out of Liverpool and for The Fortunes to have been amongst them is to thank which ever deity that you pray too that were allowed a chance to shine.

For all who had gathered inside the Empire Theatre, the temptation to start reliving a time when the world seemed as though it was going to change, in which a revolution of sorts would finally free the country from its Victorian hangover that had persisted, even with the advent of the Second World War, before it turned into a soup of beige, was going to be too much to bear, this was a night in which the dancing shoes were primed and the mentality of rock and roll would win out and with The Fortunes leading the way.

Michael Smitham, Bob Jackson, Glenn Taylor and Eddie Mooney, who has done a sterling job as front man and vocalist since the passing of Rod Allen, took the audience’s cobwebs that had built up during one of those lazy Sundays on November, where the fire, endless cups of tea and the television seem more appealing than venturing beyond the front step, and blew them to smithereens.

With tracks such as Freedom Come, Freedom Go, Caroline, The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore, the fabulous You’ve Got Your Troubles, Storm In A Tea Cup and This Golden Ring being performed with enjoyment forever hanging in the air and the deep under-laying foundation of Brum Rock filtering past the Empire Theatre doors and out onto the dark streets of its adopted home for the evening, The Fortunes once more showed that those ties between Liverpool audience and Birmingham musicianship, and vice-versa, are strong, complete and at times more awesome than can be imagined.     

Fortune favours the bold so it is said, for those in attendance as part of the 60s spectacular at the Empire Theatre, The Fortunes were favoured greatly.

Ian D. Hall