UNSEEN 1961 BEATLES PICTURES AT CAVERN

Alert Beatles fans will have noticed that during the past 24 hours two hitherto unseen photographs of the group playing at Liverpool’s Cavern Club in 1961 have come to light. Black and white copies have appeared on the internet and one featured in this morning’s Guardian but Just Backdated has acquired colourised versions from Paul Wane whose Chorley-based R&R memorabilia company has licensed the photographs from the copyright holder.

        According to Paul, a specialist in Beatles artefacts, the pictures were taken by a teenage fan who wishes to remain nameless. “Unlike most fans he had a camera,” Paul tells me, noting that in 1961 Cavern goers were unlikely to own one. “He prefers to keep his identity secret but he knew The Beatles back in those days and even used to drive them to gigs in the suburbs of Liverpool. It’s amazing that it’s taken so long for them to be discovered.”

        Paul adds that a contact sheet in the possession of the fan/driver shows another, already circulated, shot of The Beatles at the Casbah Club and two pictures of Brian Epstein’s NEMS record store in Whitechapel where The Beatles would hang around listening to records, usually American R&B songs that they might cover. 

        The two pictures show John, Paul, George and Pete Best on stage wearing black leather trousers and white tops, which is unusual, though it does appear to be an attempt at a uniform mode of dress. Best at the back can’t really be seen, but the three front men who, along with Best, had recently returned from a three-month stint at the Top Ten Club in Hamburg, all give the impression that slap-up meals were hard to come by in Germany.

        Mark Lewisohn, the world’s foremost Beatles archivist, confirms this. “Just back from Hamburg, slogging 500 stage hours in 90 days, they are whippet-thin undernourished lads of 20 (John), 19 (Paul and Pete) and 18 (George),” says Mark. ”So slender has this marathon made them, it’s as if their heads and bodies are strangers. It’s a look emphasised by their unusual clothes – leather trousers and cotton tops. No other photos show them dressed this way.”

        Paul, who looks especially scrawny, is playing the first of his Hofner violin basses and John plays his Rickenbacker 325, both instruments bought in Hamburg on this last trip. On the left George can be seen with his Czechoslovakian-made Futurama III guitar, roughly modelled on the far superior Fender Stratocaster. In a matter of weeks, he will set it aside for a Gretsch Duo Jet. Either George or Paul play through the Gibson GA-40 amp, seen behind them, and John is using a 15-watt Fender Deluxe Tweed amp. They’ve yet to acquire, or probably couldn’t afford, the black and gold Vox AC30 amps that audiences would become familiar with in two years’ time.

        It was during this stint in Hamburg that The Beatles backed singer Tony Sheridan on five songs recorded with producer Bert Kaempfert for Polydor Records, as well as two songs without Sheridan, ‘Ain’t She Sweet’ with John on lead vocals, and ‘Cry For A Shadow’, a Shadows-like instrumental credited to Lennon-Harrison. 

        The pictures were taken three months before John and Paul visited Paris to meet up with their Hamburg friend Jürgen Vollmer who persuaded them to abandon their quiffs and comb their hair forward, styling it into what became known as the ‘Beatle haircut’. They are certainly the last known pictures of them prior to this defining change in image. A few days after their return from Paris a curious Brian Epstein walked into the Cavern to catch a lunchtime show. “He offered to become their manager and set them on course to change our world,” adds Mark.

There are still a few tickets left for Mark Lewisohn’s latest talk on The Beatles, Beatles/Evolver: 62 at the Bloomsbury Theatre, 15 Gordon Street, London WC1, on October 7 at 7.30pm and October 8 at 2.30pm and 7.30 pm. Tickets can be obtained from www.ucl.u/culture/bloomsbury-theatre-studio or https://www.mcintyre-ents.com/