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The Georgians in the Cavern Club

With almost indecent haste we were to play our first gig in the Cavern, although these first gigs were unbilled. I remember that, if Bob Wooler liked you, you could play there for expenses only [about 10 bob from memory]. At one of the lunchtime sessions Geoff and I had approached Bob, told him how good we were, and he had agreed to 'give us a try'. We had shown him a rather amateur picture of ourselves, and he obviously thought we were 'pretty' enough to go down alright with the ladies.

I remember vividly our first gig at The Cavern. All the equipment and Geoff arrived in a Triumph Herald driven by his mother, and the rest of us came on the bus with Mike's drum kit [or, rather, Frank's who was not told that the Merseybeats were lending Sloan junior their kit]. We must have showed some potential because we were given a list of dates, again for expenses only, to be the rubbish that started and finished the sets either side of the star bands.

We actually had a fan club started, almost in the first few weeks of our playing at the Cavern, which had about 500 members in the first year.

It was very unusual for a relatively unknown group to have a fan club in those days, and we were fortunate to have an early fan, Hilary, who had the skills and enthusiasm to set it up.

Being a suport act in those days was pretty disconcerting. The girls in front always had their hair in curlers, doing their knitting, while we were on and, about ten minutes before we finished our first set and the class act was to come on, they would start removing their curlers and combing up the beehive hairdos. When the class act had performed and we came back on, they went home! Boy, did we feel important.

Strangely enough, whilst most groups came to The Cavern better prepared from other gigs, The Cavern was our training ground. We were playing there long before we were really good enough, but you could not get much better training, nor better groups to watch and emulate.

Whilst the raw Beatles sound was never repeated [not even by them, once they were Epsteined], there were many exciting years to come. Memories flood back of Sonny Boy Williamson, pissed out of his head, scrummaging in a plastic bag for the right key harmonica, for which he invariably brought out the wrong one. The backing band would be in 'G' and Sonny would be in 'A', and the band then had to try and find him.

Whenever these legends were on at The Cavern, if we were not on the same bill, we other bands would come from far and wide after our gigs to watch the masters and, if possible, organise a jam session. Pubs in those days closed at 10.30pm [If the walls in The Grapes and White Star had ears, what tales they could tell] so fortification was taken into the Cavern in the form of cider bottles filled with wine, ensuring that Paddy on the door didn't see it. Paddy could sink 'em back with the best of them, but the Cavern was dry, and that was that.