Rory Storm & The Hurricanes

Born plain Alan Caldwell and growing up with a speech impediment, ‘Rory Storm’ was an accomplished swimmer – once covering the length of Lake Windermere – and he was skilled at golf, bowling, skating, ice hockey, and was a speedy winger at football. Equally adept as a dancer, he learned tap as a youngster with his sister.

He also excelled in athletics and ran for Liverpool’s Pembroke & Sefton Harriers, specialising in the 3,000-metre steeplechase.

During one victory in 1956, he coasted down the home straight while singing Rock Around The Clock, signalling a change of vocational track to rock’n’roll via skiffle.

After meeting guitar-playing John Byrne on a bus, the two decided to form Alan Caldwell’s Skiffle Group, inspired by Lonnie Donegan.

Alan, ever-inventive, opened the Morgue Skiffle Club in the cellar of a large Victorian nurses’ home nearby. He used the venue to showcase his group, now renamed The Raving Texans.

Rory was obviously fond of the numerous Western series on television. He decided to call guitarist John Byrne “Johnny Guitar”, after the title of the 1954 Joan Crawford Western. Ritchie Starkey, the drummer, became “Ringo Starr” (after Belle Starr), and Charles O’Brien was renamed “Ty” after Ty Hardin, star of the Bronco series.

Rory also thought that “Lu Walters” was a more suitable name for bassist Wally Eymond.

On 24 May 1957, Alan’s band played what would soon become one of the best-known venues in the world – the Mathew Street jazz club, the Cavern.

On one occasion, the group were booed and fined six shillings for playing Jerry Lee’s Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On at the club. Alan and John Byrne’s rock ’n’ roll lightbulb moment had come three months earlier, when they sneaked into the Liverpool Odeon, dressed as a pair of workmen, and spied Bill Haley driving the crowd wild. John immediately obtained an electric guitar.

Alan, as his alter-ego Rory Storm, was perfect for rock ‘n’ roll’s pomp and peacocking. Strikingly good-looking, nearly 6’2” with a blond pompadour he would stop to comb onstage with an oversize comb, he loved to be the centre of attention. Add in an uproarious onstage persona, and all the girls flocked by.

His athletic prowess came in handy – he’d often hot-foot it from jealous boyfriends and brewing punch-ups, once jumping a train track to do so. Best of all for him, if he didn’t feel confident conversing too long with girls or fans off stage, at least while singing, his stammer would disappear.

Upon turning 21 in January 1959, Rory had given up his job at the Cotton Exchange to face his parents’ reactions: his father was deflated, while his mother was elated and promptly became his manager.

The band – now known as Rory Storm & The Hurricanes – were early converts to electric guitars, soon enhanced by three Selmer amps. They trumped The Beatles by beating them to win a coveted support slot for Gene Vincent at the Liverpool Stadium in 1960.

Promoter Allan Williams was tasked with supplying Liverpool groups to the Kaiserkeller club in Hamburg, Germany. He asked the Hurricanes, but Rory and the boys were already committed to a season at Butlin’s. Gerry and The Pacemakers also couldn’t go. Williams’ third choice was The Beatles – and the rest is history.

Gigs for both grew bigger, and back in England in November 1961, they shared the bill in front of 5,000 people at the Tower Ballroom, New Brighton.

It was during a residency at Butlins in Skegness that John Lennon and Paul McCartney turned up at the camp and offered Ringo £25 a week if he joined them. Ringo’s defection to join The Beatles was a major setback for Rory. Finding (and keeping) a good replacement became a recurring problem.

Rory never quite recovered from the line-up change, leading him to lament: “We train them, the other bands take them”. Another gifted drummer, Gibson Kemp, left in early 1963 to join Kingsize Taylor And The Dominoes, later forming the group Paddy, Klaus & Gibson.

In 1967, Storm disbanded the group following the sad and sudden death of Ty O’Brien, aged 26, due to complications from appendicitis.

Rory and Johnny, the original core duo, gave the group one more go, helped by ex-Mojos’ guitarist Adrian Lord and bassist Keith Karlson, plus Carl Rich on drums, but their hearts weren’t in it.

While Rory Storm & The Hurricanes never achieved worldwide acclaim, the group helped fuel a musical revolution.

Way ahead of their time, the Hurricanes scored many firsts: the first band to play rock ’n’ roll music at the soon-to-be legendary Cavern Club; the first to open their own cool DIY venue, The Morgue, playing and hosting momentous gigs there, and Rory Storm’s unique, non-stop showmanship was a first in itself.

His madcap antics variously involved springing from a pavilion diving board halfway through a set, to plunging onto the stage from a great height (resulting in several hospital stays), and deliberately crashing through the floor of Hamburg’s famous Kaiserkeller club.

Storm turned to DJ-ing, performing across Liverpool, Benidorm, Jersey and Amsterdam. When his father died, he returned to Liverpool to be with his grieving mother. Single and rudderless, by late September 1972, he developed a chest infection.

Unable to sleep, he took sleeping pills and never woke up. His accidental death on 28 September 1972 came at the age of 34 and on the same day as his mother’s.

The Sun newspaper carried a controversial version of the tragedy.

It is unproven but probable that his mother took her own life after finding her son’s body.

Johnny Guitar would go on to form his own version of the Hurricanes, which lasted until his death, aged 59, in August 1999.

Lu Walters died on 19 July 2022.

Rory Storm (Alan Caldwell)
Vocals
Johnny Guitar (John Byrne)
Rhythm guitar
Charles “Ty” O’Brien
Lead guitar
Lu Walters (Wally Eymond)
Bass, vocals
Ringo Starr (Ritchie Starkey)
Drums

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