Biography
Born in Liverpool, Lancashire, England in 1940 as Alan Caldwell, the singer who would later adopt the stage name Rory Storm died on 28 September 1972. His first performances came with the Texan Skiffle Group, after which he assembled one of the city’s earliest beat ensembles alongside Johnny Byrne, who performed under the name Johnny Guitar (born 4 December 1939, died 18 August 1999), Lou Walters, Ty Brian and Ritchie Starkey, the future Ringo Starr. The five musicians cycled through several designations, among them the Raving Texans and Al Caldwell And His Jazzmen, before settling on Rory Storm And The Hurricanes in 1960 and installing Caldwell as frontman. Local audiences responded enthusiastically to the group, drawn especially by the singer’s flamboyant stage presence, and Mersey Beat’s 1962 readers’ poll ranked them third after the Beatles and Gerry And The Pacemakers. Starr’s departure for the Beatles in August of that year triggered ongoing difficulties in securing a permanent drummer, forcing the use of a substitute for the Hurricanes’ three tracks on the album This Is Merseybeat. Though energetic, those recordings exposed limited vocal ability and lacked originality; a subsequent Brian Epstein-produced version of “America” likewise failed to convey the intensity of their live shows. Ty Brian’s early death together with Lou Walters’ exit extinguished remaining prospects, leading to the band’s dissolution in 1966 after they played the Cavern club’s final night. Storm subsequently worked as a disc jockey, yet declining health culminated in his death from an accidental combination of alcohol and medication. His mother, discovering the body, took her own life in grief. Byrne later served as a technician with the Merseyside ambulance service while occasionally reassembling the New Hurricanes for commemorative performances; he succumbed to motor neurone disease in 1999.