The Beatles live: Cavern Club, Liverpool (lunchtime)

This was The Beatles’ second performance at Liverpool’s Cavern Club. As with their debut on 9 February 1961, it was a lunchtime show taking place from 1-2pm.

The Beatles came on at the Cavern and it was a great sound. Not many groups had an electric bass then: we didn’t have one with Bob Evans and the Five Shillings, and Rory Storm had the first bass. The Beatles were raw and vivid and I knew that they would do something. It does all seem to have started at the Cavern. To us as kids, fire regulations meant nothing and it didn’t matter that it was a dirty, stinking sweaty place.

This was the first time Stuart Sutcliffe performed at the Cavern Club. He had returned to England from Hamburg on on 20 January 1961. In the audience was his fiancee Astrid Kirchherr.

21 February was also the first day in which The Beatles performed three concerts. In the evening they played at Liverpool’s Cassanova Club and the Litherland Town Hall.

The precise number of The Beatles’ Cavern performances is not known, although they played at least 155 lunchtime and 125 evening shows between 9 February 1961 and 3 August 1963.