‘Music and mayhem’ – Liverpool’s changing face in bygone years

Liverpool as different generations have come to know it has changed massively throughout the decades.

We’ve been at the centre of arts and music producing world-class artists, attracted fans from around the globe for our local football teams, hosted a catalogue of unforgettable events and become known for our creativeness, kindness and sense of humour. But life in Liverpool wasn’t always like it is now and the city looked a lot different in an era which saw decline and outside opinions take hold.

The turbulence of the 1980s in Merseyside saw job losses, inner-city poverty, strikes and riots, with the impact being felt in the years to follow. For younger generations, it’s hard to imagine the city as it looked to their parents and grandparents.

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Former Football Editor of The Times and author Tony Evans grew up in Liverpool and explores how life has changed in the city from the 1960s to 2010s in his new book Good Guys Lost. Tony told the ECHO: “It’s the story of a Liverpool family over 60 years and the impact set against the backdrop of Thatcherism. Two murders, lots of mayhem and plenty of music because it’s in part set in the music scene.

“I grew up in Liverpool 3 in the tenements. I say in the thanks to the book, part of me hates the book because it picks out some of the worst aspects of society I grew up in and the culture, because it wasn’t brilliant in the sense that there were loads of flaws in it, but the other side of it was I grew up in a community where there was a sense of community.

“When you live in tenement blocks you do know everyone in the block. I had a great childhood, I really enjoyed it but it probably wasn’t until I went to university that I realised exactly how poor we were – it was a bit of a shock.

“I grew up in an era where the sort of characters I knew, I thought these are too good not to write about. Some look at narrators and think its autobiographical and in some ways it is, I’ve taken my experiences but given them significance and that creates fiction.”

The narrative of the book carries through to 2015 and Tony said he was keen to capture the mood of what Liverpool was like in the mid 80s. He said at the time, when he was in his 20s, Liverpool was “politically, socially and economically under the most pressure it had ever been” but the city also had “a sense of the vibrancy” about it.