Alan Sytner Opens the Cavern Club
In 1957 a twenty-one-year-old Liverpool man, Alan Sytner, who had been running a weekly jazz club at several other Liverpool locations, decided he would like to open his own club. He had been impressed by a club he had visited on the Left Bank in Paris called Le Caveau, which was housed in an underground cellar with brick arches.
On his return to Liverpool he sought out similar premises in the city centre and found what he was looking for in Mathew Street, a narrow street with warehouses on one side and the Fruit Exchange on the other. It had previously been used for storage and even as an air raid shelter in Word War II.
1,500 Left Outside!
The cellar was painted, lighting was installed and a stage was built at the far end of the middle one of three tunnels. On Wednesday January 16th 1957 the Cavern Club opened for its first gig, with 600 people crammed inside – and 1,500 left outside. The headline act, the Merseysippi Jazzmen, are still performing today.
Alan Sytner ran the Cavern strictly as a jazz club but starting in 1957 he allowed skiffle groups to play, getting very annoyed if any of them tried to play rock ‘n’ roll. The Quarrymen skiffle group, precursor to the Beatles, first played the Cavern on a date no-one can pinpoint in mid-1957 and again on 7th August 1957, only weeks after John met Paul at the St. Peter’s Church Garden Fete in Woolton Village.
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