Fact #53245

Bob Wooler (deejay) : The Cavern opened in January 1957 as a jazz cellar. It was a disused basement in Matthew Street.

Louise Harrison (George's mother) : It was really a dump. There was no air at all. The sweat just used to drip off them, or off the walls and onto the amps and fuse them. But they'd just carry on all the same, singing on their own.

Gerry Marsden [Gerry And The Pacemakers] : The Cavern was a small, smelly cellar that looked like a train tunnel, basically. It was great. All the kids came down and it stank of disinfectant because they used to clean it out with tons of the stuff. It was great place to play in, but there were another hundred places in Liverpool that were just the same.

Liz Hughes (Cavern regular) : The Cavern door was literally a hole in the wall. It had an arched doorway, painted at the top in red, white and blue, with 'The Cavern' scrawled up on one side. It was originally done by Paddy Delaney, who worked there. They couldn't afford a nameplate.

Paddy Delaney (bouncer, the Cavern) : The first one I ever saw was George Harrison. In those days, hairstyles were very strict and tidy, but George's hair was down to his collar. He was very scruffy and hungry-looking. I remember him ambling down the middle of the street and, for a minute, I didn't think he was coming into The Cavern. I stopped him at the door and asked him if he was a member. Of course, I knew he wasn't, and he said no, he was with The Beatles. Now, we'd heard a lot about The Beatles over the previous weeks and I knew they were on that particular night, so I let him in even though he was wearing blue jeans.

About fifteen minutes later, Paul McCartney tumbled down the street with John Lennon in close pursuit. Paul was carrying his bass guitar and John had his hands dug deep into his pockets. I had an idea they were with George because they all had the same sort of hairstyle. It wasn't quite a Beatle-cut then, but it was still well past their collars.

A little while after they strolled in, a taxi pulled up in front of the club and out came their drummer, Pete Best. He was carrying The Beatles first sound system, which consisted of two cheap chipboard speakers and a beat-up-looking amplifier. He also had a set of drums which he unloaded and took down the stairs.

Paul McCartney : We got a gig at The Cavern Club in Liverpool which was officially a blues club. We didn't really know any blues numbers. We loved the blues but we didn't know any blues numbers, so we had announcements like "Ladies and gentlemen, this is a great Big Bill Broonzy number called Wake Up Little Suzie. And they kept passing up little notes – 'This is not the blues, this is not the blues. This is pop.' But we kept going.

Pete Best : It was absolutely amazing because, when word got out that The Beatles were going to play the lunch-time show, it went from being a normal session of about 200 people to where the place was heaving with fans.

Tony Crane (The Merseybeats) : We came down to see another band called Dale Roberts and the Jay Walkers because we heard that he could sing like Cliff Richard and the band could play like The Shadows. So we saw them and when we got up to get out they said, 'We've got another band coming on now called The Beatles.'

Alex McKechnie (Director of the annual Mathew Street Festival) : They were so loud and the whole sound was so different.

Billy Kinsley (The Merseybeats) : The Beatles came on and I wanted to be in that band.

Alex McKechnie : They were wearing bomber jackets and black turtle neck sweaters, black leather pants and pointed Italian shoes.

Pete Best : We wanted to be like Gene Vincent. Leathers became a trademark with us.

Alex McKechnie : They were sarcastic, always acting the goat and cracking jokes. ... They would count in the songs by banging their heels on the hollow stage – they created a lot of excitement in the room. They weren't like any other band on the circuit.

Willy Russell (playwright) : They were such a hard driving virile force on a stage and that was so attractive to everybody who saw it.

Alex McKechnie : The standard songs that they sang - them and the other bands in Liverpool - were Chuck Berry, Little Richard, The Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly. The sound that I very clearly remember The Beatles playing in the Cavern was a Chuck Berry riff.

Jim McCartney (Paul's father) : The kids would be in a terrible state, fighting with each other to get near the front, or fainting with the excitement and the atmosphere. I'd see Paul and the others on stage, looking like something the cat brought home.

George Harrison : We probably loved the Cavern best of anything. It was fantastic. We never lost our identification with the audience all the time. We never rehearsed anything, not like the other groups who kept on copying The Shadows. We were playing to our own fans who were just like us. They would come in their lunch-times to hear us and bring their sandwiches to eat. We would do the same, eating our lunch while we played.

Bob Wooler : From January 1961 to February 1962, I introduced The Beatles at The Cavern Club 292 times. For that first lunch-time session they got £5. For the last one they got £300.
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Neil Aspinall : When The Beatles asked me to be their 'road manager' I didn't take the work too seriously. They paid me about £5 a week and I started driving them to local dates in a battered old van.

I just dumped them off at each dance hall or club and they set up their own gear on stage. I'd dash back home to study accounting and call for them at the end of the evening.

Then the bookings started coming in faster. Ray McFall, boss of The Cavern Club, tried the boys out "to see what they were like," and hastily offered them a block of 50 evening engagements, plus a string of lunch-time sessions! At that stage, I decided there was a little more money and a little more adventure in road-managing. I gave up my Job as a trainee accountant and went to work full-time for The Beatles. The next to make the same sort of decision was Paul.

He'd just left school and was working as second mate to a truck driver. He helped unload stuff for a cable firm and was paid about £12 a week for his work. The truck job didn't involve long-distance runs, so Paul could make the Cavern in the evenings, but the difficulty was those new lunch-time sessions. Paul's father was dead-set against him giving up his job. And Paul agreed.

"I can't give that up," Paul explained to the others. "It's a steady job and it's £12 a week! That's good money, you know." He meant it, too.

"You'll get a couple of pounds each lunch-time," John pointed out.

"That's nothing," replied Paul.

"Sod you, then!" decided John firmly. "We're playing without you."

But when the day of the first lunch-time session came around, John, George and Pete Best arrived at The Cavern to find Paul already there waiting for them! "Thought you were working," commented John blankly. "Of course not," said Paul. "I packed all that in. Never did like carrying blooming great cables about. That job was the last."

Neither John nor Paul discussed the matter any further, but I could see they were both pleased. "What's your first number, then?" asked John, and the session began. Paul wasn't playing guitar at that time. He just did vocals, sometimes solo and sometimes with John. George played lead guitar, John was rhythm, Stu Sutcliffe was on bass and Pete played drums.

Soon, The Beatles gathered a great following of local fans and they were much in demand among Merseyside promoters. They stuck up their nightly fee to around £18 (to be divided between the five boys!), which was a new high for a Liverpool group.