I was sat in my flat the other day. It's floor to ceil in' records, tapes, CDs, every surface covered. I was goin' through my Smash Hits magazines from 1963. Yellow pages, smell of decades, all of it. And there it was — an article about the Cavern Club before it was famous. Before the queues went round the block. Back when it was just a brick cellar on Mathew Street where the walls sweated and the sound bounced off every surface.
That's where this story starts. Not on a website, not in a book. In a cellar.
Liverpool was a port city, and that was everythin'. American records turned up here weeks before they hit London. Merchant seamen dockin' at the Albert Dock with crates of R&B records, early Motown 45s, Sun Records rockabilly — stuff you couldn't buy anywhere else in the country. I've got an original pressin' of a Chuck Berry 78 that came through that dock. You can hear the sea air in the crackle if you listen close enough. The city's teenagers went nuts for it. The most British pop sound that ever existed was built on American records that washed up on the Mersey.
A fella called Bill Harry — local journalist — came up with the name Merseybeat for his music paper. Gave the scene an identity. Before that it was just lads in cellars makin' a racket. After that, it was a movement. I've got a copy of the first issue of Mersey Beat. Priceless. Plastic sleeve. Still take it out sometimes just to look at it.
The Cavern opened January 1957. Started as a jazz club. By the time the beat groups got hold of it, it was a different animal. Sweaty, cramped, brick cellar with an acoustic that was biblical. The Beatles alone played there 292 times. Two hundred and ninety-two. Between 1961 and 1963 the Cavern hosted nearly three hundred lunchtime sessions alone. Boot camp. You couldn't be average and survive.
What made the sound? Energy. These bands did seven-hour sets in Hamburg on the Reeperbahn, playin' to drunk sailors at two in the mornin'. They came back tight as a drum. American rhythm and blues played with a British urgency, faster and harder than anythin' comin' out of London. The harmonies — the harmonies — that was the Everly Brothers meets Liverpool's Irish choral heritage. I've got a live recordin' from the Cavern. You can barely hear the band over the screamin'. But the energy jumps out of the grooves.
The Beatles rewrote the rulebook. But they weren't the only ones. Gerry and the Pacemakers knocked out three consecutive number ones. The Beatles never managed that. 'Ferry Cross the Mersey' still makes me well up when I hear it. I've got it on 45, the original orange and black Parlophone label. The Searchers with their chimin' twelve-string guitar sound that basically invented folk-rock. Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas got Lennon-McCartney cast-offs and turned 'em into hits. The scene was so massive that record labels sent scouts to Liverpool every single week.
I could talk about this all day. But the point is this — Merseybeat was the Big Bang. Every time a young band picks up electric guitars and starts playin' loud and fast, they're reachin' back to the cellars of Mathew Street, to a handful of workin'-class teenagers who heard American music and thought "I can do that." And they were right. And Britain has never been the same since.