When they first took to the stage at the Cavern club on 9 February 1961 – 50 years ago today – they were a ragtag bunch of skinny Scousers looking for laughs. But that first gig in the Liverpool venue was at the start of an extraordinary journey that would see the band become, as John Lennon once put it, "more popular than Jesus".
Fans are planning to gather at the basement club to mark the half century since that initial appearance. Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and drummer Pete Best – replaced in 1962 by Ringo Starr – made a total of 292 appearances at the Mathew Street venue, the last coming on 3 August 1963.
One of the lucky few at their first performance was Alex McKechnie, then a 16-year-old message boy in a printing factory. "It was atmospheric though not very crowded," said McKechnie, now a director of the annual Mathew Street festival. "They were sarcastic, always acting the goat and cracking jokes."
Unlike other bands at that time, they wore leather bomber jackets and Cuban heels.
McKechnie added: "They would count in the songs by banging their heels on the hollow stage – they created a lot of excitement in the room. They weren't like any other band on the circuit."
Gerry Marsden of Gerry and the Pacemakers – who were regulars there – said the club had a very particular charm.
"It was down in a dingy cellar and as you went down the stairs you could smell the Dettol. It was smoky and definitely a fire hazard – the sweat would drip off the ceiling on to the amps," he said.
The Cavern, a reproduction of the original club which was bulldozed in the 1970s by a forward-thinking Liverpool council, will be the centrepiece of a celebration including a set from the Mersey Beatles, a tribute band.
The council, perhaps making amends for past crimes, will unveil a new canopy of lights that will cover Mathew Street. The illuminations have – inevitably – been christened Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds.
