(Credits: Far Out / Rory Storm and the Hurricanes)
Fri 12 September 2025 22:30, UK
While you might think that today’s musical climate is far more competitive than it was back in the 1960s, it might surprise you to learn that it was perhaps just as cutthroat back then as it is in the modern era.
While The Beatles seemed to have few obstacles standing between them and success, they could easily have been left behind as the band were perennially performing at the Cavern Club, making only a meagre living out of performing to the same audiences every night. Not only was the competition around the country proving to be tough, but the number of bands emerging from Liverpool at the same time was staggering, and they were sharing stages with equally talented and formidable acts at home as they would have been anywhere else.
They could quite easily have fallen by the wayside and never made it to becoming one of the most celebrated bands in history, but that’s only something we can think about in terms of ‘what ifs’ and ‘maybes’, and the reality for those who never did make it was far more dire than one might imagine. Being swallowed up and spat out by the music industry is something that all musicians hope never happens to them, especially when you’ve been promised fame and stardom along the way, but for Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, a fellow Merseyside act who emerged at the same time as The Beatles, they ended up being the unfortunate ones.
The group had even boasted Ringo Starr as their drummer prior to him being recruited as the replacement for Pete Best shortly before the Fab Four’s explosion, but this was far from the worst thing to have happened to the group. The riotous rock and roll act with an enigmatic frontman in Storm, born Alan Caldwell, had followed all of the right steps towards becoming successful, with them following The Beatles out to Hamburg to play shows with them, but fortune was never going to come their way, with various incidents at shows leading to abrupt ends, poor attendances, and bad luck seemingly following the group around.
It was in the late 1960s when things began to get desperate for Storm, and with the rock and roll and skiffle movements losing traction, there were very few places left for his band to go without jumping on another bandwagon and risking it all. The sudden death of his guitarist, Ty O’Brien, from appendicitis in 1967, meant that he was scrambling to find someone eager enough to take on his role in the band, but he was unable to salvage the group, choosing to disband shortly after.
Several years of working part-time as a disc jockey at an ice rink and occasionally moonlighting as a water skiing instructor meant that he was no longer focused on music as his primary passion in life, but this is where he’d always wanted to be. If there was anything that arguably sent him over the edge, it was the passing of his father in 1972, after a five-year absence from the music industry. It was at this point that a period of ill health took over, and Storm found himself struggling with sleep and unable to keep his head above water.
Plagued with grief and depression, he decided on September 28th of that year to ingest a bottle of sleeping pills that he’d been prescribed to aid him in this period of poor health, and allegedly, upon finding his body, his mother chose to take her own life as well. Rumours circulated at the time that there was a suicide pact between the two, but evidence has always been inconclusive on this, and all the evidence points to is how desperation took hold of a man who seemed destined to have a big break, and never did.
What could have been for him is something we’re only able to speculate about, but the fact is, this is a heartbreaking tale of a man who had everything that could have taken him to the top, except for luck.
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