It was dirty. It was incredibly noisy. It stank to high heaven.
January 30, 2017 4:31 AM   Subscribe

When the Beatles Played their Hearts Out for a Quid a Night

Remembering Liverpool’s Cavern Club— a ‘cellar full of noise’ that launched a musical revolution

It was not just a place but an experience, a revolution. I should know, I saw it through the halcyon years, right through to the bankrupt years. Fed up with my job as a railway clerk, I took a chance and jumped down into the Cave, as I still call it, as a part-time/lunchtime disc jockey and compere [host/presenter]. I found myself in a different world. I stayed in it for seven years. The happiest years of my life. I compered exactly 292 Beatles shows down in that sweaty hole. They loved every minute of it, so did the kids, and remember it was the kids who made the Cavern, not the Beatles, or the long line of groups that followed on.
posted by I_Love_Bananas (27 comments total) 13 users marked this as a favorite
 
I dated a girl in high school whose Dad saw The Beatles at The Cavern. I should have married her.

The Cave is in Chapel Hill, not Liverpool
posted by thelonius at 4:38 AM on January 30, 2017 [4 favorites]


Cover band, meh
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 4:41 AM on January 30, 2017 [2 favorites]


It's interesting how well-know and well-disected the Beatles story is. I've read so many books about the Cavern and seen it in film so many times I almost feel like I've been there myself.
posted by jabah at 5:55 AM on January 30, 2017 [5 favorites]


Great article.

I wish there were venues that featured lunch time concerts. I would definitively spend my lunch hour listening to bands.
posted by james33 at 6:27 AM on January 30, 2017 [1 favorite]


I wish there were venues that featured lunch time concerts. I would definitively spend my lunch hour listening to bands.

Hey look, it's opposite me! Whenever I see a band or even a performance space reserved for a band in a restaurant, I always ask for a table as far away from them as humanly possible.

Watching someone play music or otherwise perform as I'm eating feels similarly uncomfortable to having a dog stare at me as it poops.

I would have made a poor sultan.
posted by leotrotsky at 6:44 AM on January 30, 2017 [6 favorites]


A nice recollection, even if I am somewhat confused by the Pete Best bit.

#teamringo
posted by Capt. Renault at 7:08 AM on January 30, 2017


It was the shows at the Cavern (and especially in Hamburg), playing multiple sets a night of whatever a random drunk called out for that made them so tight, so knowledgeable and such pros. The same could be said of the Band. Maybe the lack of such a thing is what's missing from today's scene. I dunno.
posted by jonmc at 7:12 AM on January 30, 2017 [5 favorites]


And their trousers were very...tight.
posted by Smedleyman at 7:27 AM on January 30, 2017 [9 favorites]


I guess you had to be there... the early Beatles recordings I've heard never seem to reflect the energy / novelty spoken about by their audiences. Perhaps it's partly technical - as recordings not great?

However, about 11 months after their last Hamburg performance the Beatles played Drop In - a Swedish TV show - (30.10.1963). In the TV studio they get asked to play an additional song and they perform Long Tall Sally - I think it captures some of that energy that's spoken about from early Beatles performances - it crackles with new-ness, the guitar noise is extraordinary to my ears.

The clip is here on youtube (approx. 9min 40secs in):
The Beatles - Drop In Swedish TV show - 30.10.1963
posted by Speculatist at 7:36 AM on January 30, 2017 [4 favorites]


When my wife and I visited Liverpool, we hit up the Cavern Club.

Think twice before going back to the haunts of your youth. Avoid going back to the haunts of the youth of others. And for Pete's sake, NEVER go back to the filled-in-and-reexcavated tourist trap with fake graffiti staffed by a bored thrityish one-man-Beatles-cover-band.

The Cavern Club is no longer the real Liverpool, except on nights when they open the modern-age dance club next door and use the Cavern portion for bar and lounge instead.
posted by infinitewindow at 7:55 AM on January 30, 2017 [1 favorite]


I am somewhat confused by the Pete Best bit.

There's a fair amount of discussion about his being fired in Best's Wikipedia entry, including his mom's role. (She was apparently on good enough terms with the lads to loan them her father's war medals for the Sgt. Pepper cover.)

It was the shows at the Cavern (and especially in Hamburg), playing multiple sets a night of whatever a random drunk called out for that made them so tight, so knowledgeable and such pros. The same could be said of the Band. Maybe the lack of such a thing is what's missing from today's scene. I dunno.

I wonder about that, too; how many people may have been/might be dissuaded from trying to develop some talent by the fear of someone taking a video of their early efforts, literally before they can get their act together, and it going viral.

the early Beatles recordings I've heard never seem to reflect the energy / novelty spoken about by their audiences. Perhaps it's partly technical - as recordings not great?

Are you talking about the Star-Club tapes? I've always found it a bit difficult to get past the abysmal sound quality, although there have been heroic efforts made to correct for that.
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:01 AM on January 30, 2017 [4 favorites]


THANKS Smedleyman. The Rutles must always be mentioned.
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 8:03 AM on January 30, 2017 [2 favorites]


Regarding Pete Best and the reason Paul, George, and John did not personally tell him he was history: kicking someone out of a band is a a miserable experience for everyone involved. It can be worse than breaking up with a lover.
posted by kozad at 8:18 AM on January 30, 2017 [4 favorites]


....the fear of someone taking a video of their early efforts, literally before they can get their act together, and it going viral.

A few years ago, I discovered that Youtube had videos of shows I attended, in the 1980s, at relatively obscure clubs in Atlanta (although I don't know if anyone bothered to record any bands I was in - we certainly played some bad shows). It was a Drivin n' Cryin show on Mother's Day 1987 that I found - they were a big enough deal in Atlanta then to where local scene videographers were documenting them.

My point is, even camcorder footage that, at the time it was shot, no one expected it to circulate, is out there for eternity now.
posted by thelonius at 8:24 AM on January 30, 2017 [2 favorites]


"how many people may have been/might be dissuaded from trying to develop some talent by the fear of someone taking a video of their early efforts"

I very much doubt that's a serious disincentive.

The real problem is that such venues just don't exist, or at least they're very rare.

(Count the number of clubs in your city where a new band could play (checks the article...) four times a week! If it's greater than zero, congratulations.)
posted by floppyroofing at 8:29 AM on January 30, 2017 [3 favorites]


...the early Beatles recordings I've heard never seem to reflect the energy / novelty spoken about by their audiences. Perhaps it's partly technical - as recordings not great?

That's a petty typical effect you describe. Many bands are completely different live than they are on record. A good example were the Ramones. None of their studio recordings come close to capturing the impact of their live show. It's often like night and day. The studio Ramones were comparatively tepid compared to the live Ramones.
posted by Thorzdad at 8:58 AM on January 30, 2017 [3 favorites]


1 2 3 4! vs 1234!
posted by radiosilents at 9:13 AM on January 30, 2017 [4 favorites]


1 2 3 4! vs 1234!

Sugar plum fairies
posted by thelonius at 9:25 AM on January 30, 2017 [1 favorite]


I love how ridiculous that quote at the end of the piece is.

"it never, as has been suggested, exploited the penniless pop groups that queued to play there.

"It’s true the Beatles played their hearts out for a quid each a night, but there was nowhere else for them to play anyway, and they and the groups that followed were glad of the chance."

So basically "We never exploited them, we just took advantage of their desperation for exposure to force them to work for peanuts".
posted by howfar at 10:52 AM on January 30, 2017


Growing up, my best friend's dad was a Beatles freak who had a copy of Live! At The Star Club. One day, we were listening to records and we put it on. It was a total revelation! This was rock and roll like we'd never heard before! The Beatles kicked ass!

Eventually, we discovered that, since we had gone from playing singles to an LP, we had the turntable set on 45 instead of 33. Later, we came to believe that hearing the Beatles played way too fast was the genesis of our punk rock fandom.
posted by vibrotronica at 11:18 AM on January 30, 2017 [12 favorites]


It should be noted that the actual Cavern was demolished in 1973 to allow construction of an underground railway ventilation duct.. What is there now is a recreation... Great job Liverpool City Council!
posted by zeoslap at 11:51 AM on January 30, 2017


It's a matter of some hilarity in our family that my mother - who at the time was a 20 year old at college in north Wales - went to see the Beatles at the Cavern, just before they broke out onto the national scene. The punchline is that she hated the venue and thought the Beatles were terrible.

To give her credit, she was the person who got me into Sgt Pepper when I was a kid, so she more than made up for it. But there's no doubt she did not have a calling as a talent spotter.
posted by YoungStencil at 12:01 PM on January 30, 2017 [1 favorite]


When the Beatles Hit America (John Wesley Harding, 1990)
posted by Guy Smiley at 1:40 PM on January 30, 2017 [1 favorite]


It was dirty. It was incredibly noisy. It stank to high heaven.

These words exactly describe CBGB back in the day. Especially that last bit.
posted by Modest House at 4:18 PM on January 30, 2017 [1 favorite]


The Cave is in Chapel Hill, not Liverpool

I regularly used to go to the original Cavern Club, albeit in the early 70's rather than the early 60's.

Locals still all used to refer to it as The Cave.

The Cavern Club is no longer the real Liverpool

Or even the real Cavern. The City Council demolished the original venue years ago. The only resemblance the current ersatz location has to the original is that it's on the same street.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 2:47 AM on January 31, 2017


I guess you had to be there... the early Beatles recordings I've heard never seem to reflect the energy / novelty spoken about by their audiences. Perhaps it's partly technical - as recordings not great?

Yeah, I've puzzled over this as long as I've been into the Beatles. A lot of their early stuff just sounds like a bunch of white guys trying to cover R&B. It sounds tinny; the guitars, rubber-bandy. My guess is their music was mostly revelatory if you'd only ever listened to white people music up until that point. For a lot of fans, the Beatles may have been their first exposure to R&B or rock n' roll.
posted by panama joe at 8:43 AM on January 31, 2017 [1 favorite]


playing multiple sets a night of whatever a random drunk called out for

FREEBIRD!
posted by radwolf76 at 12:25 PM on January 31, 2017


« Older Terrorist attack in Quebec   |   There's always Eurovision Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments