Magazine


MUSIC: The Drifters, Willows, Salford, Sunday


10/ 8/2007

THEIR classic pop songs might be cosy and familiar - Saturday Night at the Movies, Under the Boardwalk, You're More Than a Number in my Little Red Book. Yet the Drifters' actual members are not so easy to recall.

For a band who formed in 1954, it's not surprising that they've experienced line-up changes. But they must break the world record for personnel changes - with well over a dozen members coming and going, the band have often fought over who owns the original rights to the name 'The Drifters'. Earlier this year, as this comeback tour was announced, the band's former svengali even issued a legal writ accusing this current line-up of being 'fraudulent'.

It puts something of a dark cloud over one of pop music's greatest acts.

The Drifters are officially acknowledged as the longest-running band in pop history, with sales figures that rank alongside those of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Their early Fifties compositions with legendary songwriter/producer team Leiber and Stoller are indelibly etched in the great American songbook. Inevitably, those are the songs that make them an in-demand proposition for UK audiences.

The faces might not be the same, but those songs will always have a nostalgic, warm-spirited glow to them.


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