Spooky saviour of the Cavern Club

RAY CONNOLLY’S feature about the Liverpool Cavern Club (Mail) revived memories for me. Now aged 84, I was a young reporter running a Liverpool news agency when The Cavern opened its doors as a jazz club. World-renowned now as the musical birthplace of The Beatles, Alan Sytner bought the former wine cellar in 1957. It reminded him of teenage holidays in Paris, visiting Le Caveau on the Left Bank. Jiving in the dimly lit, vaulted rooms appealed to the youth of Liverpool and they flocked in droves to gyrate to the Mersey Beat. But after six months, the novelty began to wear a bit thin and takings began to slide. Alan discussed his fears for the viability of the club with a Daily Mirror reporter friend, Bill Marshall. He came up with a cracker of a gimmick story about The Cavern to give it the new lease of life it desperately needed. Marshall went to The Cavern one evening with his staff photographer, Charlie Owen, who took a photo of two pretty girls in the powder room. The next day, Merseyside read Marshall’s tongue-in-cheek story under the eye-catching headline: ‘Spook in boots in the powder room.’ One of the girls was quoted: ‘I came straight from the office to The Cavern tonight so I went into the powder room to change into my jiving gear. Suddenly, I looked up and saw the outline of a man. With dawning horror I realised it was a ghost because I could see right through him. I was so frightened I nearly jumped out of my panties. I screamed and the man disappeared.’ Marshall added: ‘Delving through the archives of the City Reference Library, I made this startling discovery — this very same cellar had been used by prosperous shipping merchants to house shackled slaves brought over from the west coast of Africa.’ Alan Sytner was then quoted: ‘Perhaps it was the tempo of the modern jazz that awoke the soul of a slave dormant for nearly two centuries.’ The Sunday Pictorial clamoured for a follow-up story and Marshall duly obliged. He asked a studiouslooking mate with a beard and horn-rimmed spectacles to sit on the loo in the powder room with a cumbersome Grundig tape recorder at his feet and hold a microphone in his hand. On his knee was a Speed Graphic plate camera complete with flash gun. A photo of him appeared under the headline: ‘Psychic research expert called in to lay powder room ghost’. The publicity did wonders for The Cavern and it became the ‘in’ place. Unfortunately for Sytner, its ventilation fell short of legal requirements and was expensive to fix. By 1959, despite its 25,000 members, The Cavern was in financial difficulties. Sytner sold the club later that year to one of the auditors. A band called The Beatles first performed there in February 1961 — and the rest is pop music history.

John Butler, Spalding, Lincs.