ROGER EAGLE was a towering figure in British popular music. Uniquely, his influence straddled the apparently insurmountable cultural divide separating Manchester and Liverpool.In any music scene there needs to be a personality capable of leading a generation towards a new sound and consequently new tastes and fashions. What is unusual about Roger Eagle is his formative role in the development of at least two and arguably three such music scenes in the north-west between the mid sixties and early nineties. From the Blues explosion of the mid sixties, via the birth of Northern Soul to the pioneering Beatles defying spirit of Merseyside’s New Wave and the re-birth of Manchester music in the late 1980s, close friend and former neighbour Bill Sykes charts Roger’s continued infl uence on the music scenes in both cities and talks to some of the main fi gures who were inspired by him.
