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352) Eamonn
Suffolk
Tuesday, 18 August 2015 06:30 PM
Dear Mike

I'm sure you must get loads of random emails from fans ,but here you go. You won't remember me, but I was at the music festival in Aldeburgh where your set (Mike Pender’s Searchers) was cut tragically short a month or so ago and you kindly signed a copy of your autobiography for me. I read the book with great interest but it also saddened me a great deal on a lot of levels. To achieve what you and your bandmates achieved in so short a space of time and for it all to end in acrimony is tragic, I think.

Like a lot of people of my age, the music of the Searchers has been a sort of soundtrack to my life really. One abiding memory is of sitting in my maternal grandfather's house in a small village in Co. Waterford in Ireland where he had an old 'Bush' radiogram where he would sit for hours listening to the racing results. I (aged about 12) bought the 'Bumble Bee' EP with my pocket money saved over many weeks and Grandad Bill would go 'here's dem ol’ bumble bees again' when I put it on.

I treasure the 2 vinyl albums you made with Sire in the late 70s and they are classic albums and it's a tragedy they went virtually unnoticed. Your story has a parallel on many levels with my other favourite band from the 60s and the only ones who could hold a candle to the Searchers for their gift for melody and vocal harmonies. Before they went global, the Bee Gees released some beautiful albums in the late 70s which also went unnoticed by the public. They were beautiful country rock and classic pop songs which no one was interested in except me! One was rejected by their record company.

That must have been hard and caused a lot of tension in their ranks. In spite of their great success, it must have been very difficult for Robin Gibb, the voice of the band as far as I'm concerned, to hear his vocal reduced to just one throwaway line on their 'Spirits Having Flown' album. Anyway, enough rambling from me. I just wanted to share with you that, at the tender age of 63, I'm getting married for the first time in Aldeburgh and the song we chosen for our first dance at the reception is 'Til I Met You' which was written, if memory serves me well, by your good self and another one of the Searchers. Cathy is 20 years my junior and of another generation but she loves the song too. Send us a card if you have the time or inclination. One thing that does shine out from your autobiography is what your family and children have meant to you over the years. God Bless you!

Eamonn
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