The Beatles live: Cavern Club, Liverpool (evening)

Because of The Beatles’ second recording session at EMI Studios the day before, a previously-arranged lunchtime appearance scheduled for this day at the Cavern Club was switched to the following day; it wasn’t known if The Beatles would have returned to Liverpool in time.

They did, however, arrive back in the city in time to make an evening appearance at the venue. This was The Beatles’ 98th evening show at the Cavern, and their 227th overall, including lunchtime performances.

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

The Beatles had been filmed by Granada Television at the Cavern Club on 22 August 1962, performing ‘Some Other Guy’ for the Know The North programme. On this day their sound technician Gordon Butler returned to the venue to make a better-quality recording.

Butler used three microphones rather than one for this evening show. He made an hour-long recording of The Beatles, of which performances of Some Other Guy and ‘Kansas City/Hey-Hey-Hey-Hey!’ have survived.

Both versions of Some Other Guy have circulated among bootleg collectors, and may have been dubbed over the video footage from the earlier date; the audio and video are out of sync, suggesting a composite edit. An audio fragment of Kansas City appeared in the Anthology series, although was partially obscured by interview speech.

Butler made five acetate discs of the two songs, one of which was sold at Christie’s auction house in August 1993. It was bought for £16,000 by Apple Records, the company set up by The Beatles in 1968.

The sound engineer ran me off an acetate of Some Other Guy and Kansas City, and he gave another to Ray McFall and a couple to Brian Epstein. I kept mine in my box of records and I should have been more careful. When The Beatles became famous, the record disappeared. In 1993, a copy turned up at Christie’s and was sold for £15,000. I don’t know if it was my copy and anyway, I couldn’t prove it if it was.

Epstein also had a small number of acetates made of one of the Some Other Guy recordings, which he distributed through his NEMS store.

A tape featuring Butler’s audio recording of Some Other Guy was discovered in 2016, having been forgotten about for years in a desk drawer.