Column: Recalling life in the Cavern Club, legendary home of The Beatles

Fife Free Press music columnist, John Murray, on a new book about the world famous Cavern Club In Liverpool by someone whose family sat at its very heart in the 1960s

With so many music venues futures in doubt it was great to hear this week KT Tunstall supporting PJ Molloys in Dunfermline to raise funds to aid its survival.

The Contrived Cabaret in Kirkcaldy held a recent online show to support much needed funds for the Kings Live Lounge too, and this led me to examine some legendary venues.

The Cavern Club in Liverpool is a great place to start and helped by Debbie Greenberg and her book Cavern Club The Inside Story (Jorvik Press, £17.25).

She certainly knows the Cavern as she would spend her teen years seeing every group possible and, in those days, they had lunchtime sessions as well as night shows while she trained as a master butcher and part time model.

She described the experience vividly to me from entering the narrow doorway after an inevitable queue, down 18 steps to the low ceiling and the stagnant smell.

The toilets were dowsed in Dettol to mask the drains smell, and, because there was no ventilation, dampness was rife.

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If you add the tobacco smoke, the soup smells from the kitchen, the rotten fruit from the warehouse opposite and the sweat from the capacity crowd it was quite a mix but the romance of seeing the top Liverpool groups up close made for an unforgettable experience.

First in could get up close to the small stage and on one side was the band room while on the other was the cloak room where Cilla Black once worked.

She would guest with The Foremost or The Beatles back then before her own musical career took off.

The Beatles were the big attraction though and were so polished when they returned from Hamburg. Even in 1968 when they were the world’s top band Paul McCartney returned to meet Debbie and introduce her to his girlfriend Linda who was delighted to see where it all began.

Debbie’s father Alf went out to buy a camera especially for the occasion and Linda took control as Paul posed in the iconic venue and even played Hey Jude on the old piano.

When the Cavern came up for sale in 1966 it was bought by the Greenberg family and a huge refurbishment began before the VIP opening by PM Harold Wilson.

The post-Beatles years still attracted stars like the Rolling Stones, Supremes, James Brown, Status Quo and even Chuck Berry who appeared with Gerry & The Pacemakers backing. It peaked again by 1970 when an offer came in to buy the club and it was sold only for the Railways Board to exert a right to demolish the club to build a ventilation shaft for the Metro.

As it happened the shaft was never constructed, and the Cavern was gone. Today what you see is a replica but close to the original.

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