Cavern, The

A foul-smelling, dirty, damp and cramped three-tunnel vaulted cellar beneath a fruit warehouse at 10 Mathew Street in Liverpool city centre had served as a World War II air-raid shelter, its steep flight of 18 slippery stone steps leading down to a set of fetid brick catacombs.

On 16 January 1957, a young trainee Liverpool stockbroker called Alan Sytner opened it as a jazz club called ‘The Cavern’ (named after Paris jazz haunt ‘Le Caveau’), using a matured £400 insurance policy taken out at his birth by his father, Joseph Sytner.

Much work was needed to make this rough basement suitable for public entertainment – some of it done voluntarily by local jazz fans and musicians, the heavy work undertaken by professionals. Construction of the music stage, alteration of the staircase down from the street so that it included a ninety-degree turn, and (after a while) the concreting of the bare-brick floor was done by Paul McCartney’s uncle Harry Harris and his son, Paul’s cousin Ian.

The Cavern’s maximum capacity was 652, wedged in tight on the first night with the temperature and sweat rising in the airless cellar. Around 1,500 people were turned away.

The Cavern had to be a club to comply with regulations, with admission restricted to card-carrying members who signed up to a set of rules (members could sign in one non-member guest). It opened most nights of the week, accommodating regular live music in the city centre for the first time.

There were only three toilets and a single urinal, grossly inadequate for large crowds, and while it was assumed these led to mains sewers, everything actually went into the ground, ultimately oozing into the tunnel of Liverpool’s underground railway.

The Cavern also had no fire escape, just the one hopelessly narrow way in and out. It was reasoned, though, that because the place was entirely built from stone, there was little that could catch fire.

Located right in the middle of the city – in the business district and close to the main shopping streets – The Cavern attracted an audience of secretaries, clerks, office boys, messengers, telephonists, shop assistants, and girls from hairdressing salons rather than labourers of factory workers (the factories were out in the suburbs), and everyone was dressed for work – boys in suits and ties, and girls in smart skirts or dresses.

Thursdays were Sytner’s personal favourite, reserved for modern jazz and attracting a hip audience with crew cuts, button-down collars, skinny ties and an aloof air. Sunday was the Merseysippi Jazz Band residency, their Dixieland style bringing in a middle-class crowd from the suburbs; Friday often featured skiffle and drew a younger, slightly rougher element of lads in suits and ties but with slicked-back quiffs.

Andrew Raymond McFall (known to all as Ray) was a 32-year-old accounts clerk with the firm handling the club’s finances, and when it became clear that Sytner was struggling to make the Cavern pay, Ray took over the lease for £2,750 in October 1959.

McFall kept the Cavern alcohol-free (alcohol would have introduced problems he didn’t need) and provided affordable refreshments, so instead of eating lunch in their offices, clubgoers could spend their lunchtimes in the Cavern, watching the groups and enjoying a hotdog for ninepence, a bowl of soup and a bread roll for the same, and tea for fivepence.

The unique aroma of the Cavern was a combination of disinfectant, fruit (from the neighbouring warehouse), body odour, the soup-and-hotdog-infused steam from Thelma’s snack bar, the cigarettes smoked by most of the crowd, and smells from the men’s and ladies’ toilets (which regularly overflowed into the main area).

While jazz acts attracted a sizeable audience, McFall realised that the club’s future lay in the beat boom and started booking beat groups, including Rory Storm and the Hurricanes (featuring Ringo Starr on drums), who made their Cavern debut in May 1960.

Tipped off by the club’s disc jockey, Bob Wooler, McFall booked The Beatles, who made their first appearance at a lunchtime session at the Cavern on 9 February 1961.

They had recently returned from a residency in Hamburg and looked so scruffy in leather jackets and jeans that McFall felt obliged to point out to them that such outfits were taboo at his club, even among the punters.

Nor was McFall impressed by the foursome’s musicianship; their singing was rough, and their guitars were out of tune. Nevertheless, they pulled in capacity crowds, mainly of screaming girls, and when Brian Epstein visited the Cavern in November 1961, he was immediately struck by the group’s potential.

Epstein signed them the next month, and they auditioned for Decca Records on New Year’s Day 1962, famously failing to make an impression.

Over the ensuing four years, McFall booked many other leading acts of the 1960s, including The Who and The Kinks. The Beatles appeared on 292 occasions until August 1963, earning 25 shillings (£1.25) for each performance.

When Beatlemania exploded in 1964, The Cavern became the focal point of unprecedented attention, even broadcasting its own weekly show on Radio Luxembourg.

But by then, The Beatles had outgrown the venue. Attendance figures dropped, and, faced with a £3,500 repair bill to update the drains, McFall was forced to declare bankruptcy, selling the club in 1966 to 56-year-old Liverpool butcher Alf Geoghegan.

McFall later said he had made the mistake of not creating a limited company, which made him personally liable to the club’s creditors.

It reopened under new management (with Prime Minister Harold Wilson officiating), and by 1967, it had a drinks licence, unlike the old Cavern, and drew an older crowd.

The club was eventually demolished in 1973 when British Rail – which owned the land on which the Cavern stood – announced its intention to compulsorily purchase the club to build a ventilation shaft for a new underground railway network in Liverpool.

It transpired that British Rail didn’t build the ventilation shaft on Mathew Street after all, so the Cavern was demolished for nothing.

The Cavern moved across the road (to a venue that would later become famous in the punk era as Erics), but in late 1981, the original site was excavated, and the brickwork was saved and used to rebuild The Cavern to the original dimensions (if a little deeper).

Ray McFall died in January 2015, aged 88.