Freddie and The Dreamers - Legacy

Legacy

In the 1980 Rolling Stone History of Rock & Roll, writer Lester Bangs paid tribute of a kind to the group:

"Freddie and the Dreamers no masterpiece but a plentitude of talentless idiocy and enough persistence to get four albums and one film soundtrack released ... the Dreamers looked as thuggish as Freddie looked dippy ... Freddie and the Dreamers represented a triumph of rock as cretinous swill, and as such should be not only respected, but given their place in history."

In an interview, Paul McCartney said that the Freddie and the Dreamers version of "If You Gotta Make A Fool Of Somebody" was copied from an arrangement performed by The Beatles at a show in The Cavern. The Dreamers released their copied version of the song as a single, leaving the Beatles uncredited. Because of this incident, the Beatles decided to concentrate on their own compositions, rather than cover versions. The Beatles later forgave the Dreamers, and invited them to do a guest appearance in their 1964 Christmas Special.

Freddie and the Dreamers — with a few different line-ups of newer Dreamers which included Alan Mosca, Brian Byng,Stuart Simpson, Tony Brooke, Ritchie Madden, Spencer Montgomery Paul Atack, Gary Smith, Gary Rudd, John Denny jnr, Paul Madden, Hugh Whitaker, Ray Barlow, Noel Walsh, and Eamonn Carr — remained a touring band into the 2000s. They appeared with other artists from the same era, such as Gerry & the Pacemakers, The Troggs and Peter Noone of Herman's Hermits.

Garrity retired in February 2001, along with his last Dreamers (Nick Foti, Simon Clarke and Alan Edmundson), due to pulmonary hypertension, and died on 19 May 2006. Drummer Dwyer died on 4 December 2002 from lung cancer; Birrell became a taxicab driver. Crewdson now runs Dreamers bar in Tenerife, while Quinn lives in Cheshire and is in the distribution business. Eamonn Carr heads TN Dreamers touring band. Nick Foti is to be seen playing all Freddie's hits and other sixties hits as Nico. Simon Clarke is also a solo act and emigrated to Canada in 2003. Alan Edmondson is a music teacher.