The Beatles At The CavernThe Merseybeats cram onto
The Cavern’s tiny stage
suits”. There were 650 people in
The Cavern that night and most of them
screamed with delight as The Beatles
walked back out on stage.SETLIST SHIFT
By now, the fi rst real fruits of Lennon
and McCartney’s songwriting were being
integrated into the set. Inspired by The
Miracles’ What’s So Good About Goodbye,
John came up with Ask Me Why, with some
help from Paul, and the band learned the
song during a rehearsal at The Cavern. Paul
had recently written Pinwheel Twist and in
December 1962 his soaring I Saw
Her Standing There was added to
the set.
The start of 1962 also saw an
important shift in The Beatles’
choice of covers, as the band
looked towards the Luther Dixon-produced
R&B sound of The Shirelles, coming out of
New York, tracks such as the Goffi n & King-
penned Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?
and Baby It’s You, the Bacharach-David-
Williams composition that Lennon seized
upon to sing.
Nothing, it seemed, was out of bounds,
as John, Paul and George rifl ed through the
latest releases at NEMS. They even dippedinto the Great American Songbook. By early
1962, George had two such songs in the
set: Dream, written in 1944 by Johnny
Mercer, and Blue Skies, composed in 1926
by Irving Berlin.
Audiences at The Cavern would
frequently hear the same song of the
moment covered by numerous Merseybeat
bands. Such was the case with Roy Orbison’s
Dream Baby. “The fi rst week Roy Orbison
came out with Dream Baby, everybody did
it,” Searchers drummer Chris Curtis told
Leigh in The Cavern. “Paul McCartney wasbest. He was up for it, he was really right for
the song.”
Alongside such sonic delights were a
number of 4/4 rockers, of course – Chuck
Berry’s Rock And Roll Music, Leiber, Stoller
and Barrett’s Some Other Guy, and Twist
And Shout by Phil Medley and Bert Berns,
which The Beatles pretty well made their
own when they released it as a single in
March 1963.In April 1962, as Epstein continued to
try to secure a record deal for the band,
The Beatles returned to Hamburg for
a two-month residency. Their future looked
assured. But their high spirits were quickly
shattered when they learned on their arrival
that Stuart Sutcliff e had died after suff ering
a brain haemorrhage.TALE OF TWO DRUMMERS
On 9 June, they returned to The Cavern
for a welcome home session and delivered
what Bob Wooler described
as “one of their fi nest ever”
performances. It is alleged that
900 fans crammed into the cellar
to watch The Beatles top a bill
that included The Red River
Jazzmen, The Four Jays and Ken Dallas
And The Silhouettes. The audience’s
reaction was “feverish” concluded Wooler,
and he likened it to the Beatlemania that
would break out nationwide over the
following year.
By now, the band had signed a contract
with EMI and had their fi rst recording
session with George Martin at Abbey
Road Studios. Momentum was building.On 9 June 1962, The Beatles
returned to The Cavern. It is
alleged 900 fans crammed in.JOH
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