My husband, Geoff Davies, who has died aged 80, was an influential figure on the Liverpool music scene during the 1970s and 80s as an owner of a record shop and record label and as a promoter.
Geoff opened Probe Records in Liverpool with his first wife, Annie (nee Leadbetter) in 1971, a shop which, according to Paul Du Noyer, the author of Liverpool, Wondrous Place, functioned as “the semi-official control room of Liverpool music”. From 1976 onwards, along with the nearby club Eric’s, it became the centre of the local punk and post-punk revolution that transformed so many lives, including those of three Probe employees: Pete Burns, who became lead singer of the band Dead Or Alive, Pete Wylie of Wah! and Paul Rutherford of Frankie Goes to Hollywood.
