Tag: Liverpool Cavern Club

Liverpool Venues 25 to 27

Firstly, this week I will look at the latest hostelry visited within the cornucopia of establishments within the Matthew Street enclave. The lineage of the very traditional Liverpool White Star can be traced back to the 1880’s and this is proved by a reference to the White Star Carvery and Bar within an 1887 Empire Theatre programme. It is named after the Titanic shipping owners White Star Line.  

Apparently, the pub in those days remains relevantly unchanged from today, apart from the fact there used to be a back yard and there was living accommodation upstairs. Astoundingly there were no ladies lavatories in the building until 1987, the wafer thin justification for this was due to the premise of endeavouring to discourage visits from the large number of prostitutes working in the city post Second World War up to the late 1980’s.    

After the war, a punter called Mr Quinn purchased five pubs in the city, including this one and on all that quintet he inscribed the word Quinns on the front windows. To a degree that name stuck to the level that the good beer guide named the pub as the White Star (Quinns 2).

The Beatles ‘back wall’. Image Credit pinterest.com

In the 1960’s, two promoters named Bob Wooler (the original DJ in the Cavern Club) and Alan Williams arranged for bands to play in the back room, and that is where the Beatles played their first ever gig. That room is also where the bands were paid after they had performed at the Cavern and naturally contains Beatles memorabilia, known locally as the ‘Beatles back wall’.

Apparently, Brian Epstein also discussed with Mr Wooler there in 1963 about their upcoming appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show which provided their first exposure to American audiences. On my one foray there I saw a local singer called Siobhan performing.   

Across town on Renshaw Street within the Grand Central building, you will find the Liverpool Liffey Bar, and as I am sure you can glean from its moniker it is yet another Irish themed hostelry, this time named after the river which permeates straight through Dublin city centre.  The plethora of such bars is no surprise when you factor in that 75% of Liverpudlians have Irish descent, the highest heritage of any British city apart from Glasgow.

The pub was subject to a long running rental dispute with a former tenant which resulted in the pub suddenly closing in March 2022, the disagreement also impacting on the Smokie Mo’s and Nelly Foley bars, which were reviewed in a previous blog. The Liffey was closed for around a year and grabbed that fallow period as an opportunity to undergo a £200,000 refurbishment.

The Liffey Bar. Image Credit liverpoolecho.co.uk

From a business profit viewpoint, they ensured that they managed to reopen in time for St Patricks Day on Friday 17 March 2023 and must have expected a busy one by stocking fifteen barrels of Guinness which equates to 1500 pints, you would be a tad merry after that! They have live music every night and on my visit, there was a singer called Paddy performing.

The Liverpool Sound City festival is an annual multi venue music shindig similar in structure to the Dot to Dot events. It was founded in 2008 and acts such as White Lies, White Denim, Gil Scott Heron, Swans and Hold Steady played in some of those earlier years.

It also runs in conjunction with the John Peel World Cup which is a British Heart Foundation led event where teams derived from band members and music industry bods play in a five a side tournament. It is a gala that I have always yearned to attend and in May 2025 that came to fruition.

Now, my football team Preston North End had proceeded to make an absolute dogs’ dinner of the end of the season, and this allied with some unfeasibly spectacular results from their rivals meant that the spectre of relegation had gone to the last game. Thus, I was nervously checking the scores on the train commute over but results thankfully went in our favour and we achieved safety. I could now relax, and as a result the first cold one did not touch the sides!

The hub points for picking up our wristbands and then our first venue was Liverpool Spanish Caravan. The bar and tapas restaurant is located on Slater Street, and the side wall of the building contains a large mural of ex Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp. There was a spacious indoor bar and beer garden and a decent choice of beverages.   

Spanish Caravan complete with mural. Image Credit liverpoolecho.co.uk

At our visiting time the singer on the small stage at the end of the bar was a chap called Oscar Blue who maintained our Irish theme by hailing from County Clare. He had a busker vibe about him and has apparently been a hit on social media where his initial debut singles have been streamed over 10 million times globally.  

Liverpool Venues 11 to 12

I am returning this week to the ‘Beatles influenced’ musical haven of Mathew Street in the centre of the city. One of the establishments even goes so far as to name itself after one of their albums, namely Liverpool Rubber Soul. There are a suite of bars that line the street, and they are badged within the ‘Rubber Soul Complex’ and located within the Cavern Walks area.

Rubber Soul Bar. Image Credit go-eat-do.com

I surmise that the bar has been open for many years but can find no detail of this apart from the fact that it unexpectedly closed in 2009 before being extensively refurbished and reopened in 2013. One of the two bar rooms incorporates an exhibition pertaining to its history as a former fruit market and the legendary Liverpool Eric’s nightclub that is situated in the downstairs space.  

Additionally, TP Molloys the site of the previous Tutti Frutti nightclub which was originally behind the venue was changed into a carvery and grill restaurant. That building which dates back to the 1930s had lain empty for many years but this was also restored and is now called Yesterday. Rubber Soul is a fairly basic sports bar showing big screen sports and has DJ’s playing every Friday and Saturday. On one particular night I saw a singer called Callum play there.

The afore mentioned Eric’s opened on 1 October 1976 in the basement of the Fruit Exchange building in Victoria Street. Shortly after they moved to their new location of Mathew Street opposite the Cavern Club. The local promoter Roger Eagle was the driving force and used his experience from previously hosting nights at the Stadium in Liverpool and the Twisted Wheel in Manchester.

He was joined in the enterprise by Ken Testi, who managed Deaf School and Pete Fulwell who was the owner of the ‘Inevitable’ record label and latterly manager of local bands It’s Immaterial and The Christians. The choice of Eric’s name was a tad tongue in cheek and its particular plainness was in response to the trend at that stage of naming disco clubs with funky names such as ‘Tiffany’s’!

The original Eric’s in the 1970’s complete with intriguing graffiti! Image Credit pinterest.co.uk

A lot of life’s successes and failures can come down to timing of ‘sliding doors’ moments and they were very fortunate in this regard as the opening of the club coincided with the explosion of punk. Thus, in the opening month the Stranglers played and there were huge queues for The Runaways.  The Sex Pistols also performed which transpired to be their one and only Liverpool gig.  Other acts to play there include The Clash supported by The Specials (a fine double bill!), The Ramones, The Slits and X-Ray Spex.

They also had the novelty of staging two shows on Saturday’s, one a matinee set in the afternoon for the under 18’s and then a more regular gig in the evening. There was apparently one famous afternoon show when Iggy Pop played a storming set to a posse of school children who took him by surprise by singing a full rendition of ‘Happy Birthday’ back to him. He finished the performance with ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog’ though due to his star quality the price of the show had doubled from the usual price of £1 to £2!

The mention of matinees makes me reminiscent of those days where bands would not arrive on stage before 11pm. It has now gone so far the other way that due to club nights following the gigs in some venues, the event can be finished by the very early time of 9.30pm. There were also in those days’ gigs taking place all year round and I recall Blondie once playing Glasgow Apollo on New Years Eve in 1979 which was recorded for Radio 1 and Old Grey Whistle Test.

Talking of timings and also the recent onset of spring makes me recall when my brother and I were young lads down in London on a weekend when the clocks changed and were heading back to Preston on an early train on the Sunday morning. When we got on the train back into the city, we both commented that it seemed remarkably quiet, little wonder as we had tangled up on our spring forward/fall back understanding. Thus, our thinking was that we were on an 8am train, but the real time was actually 6am, what a couple of plonkers!   

Iggy Pop on stage at the infamous Eric’s gig. Image Credit liverpoolerics.blogspot.com

The club survived until March 1980 when it was raided by police for drugs offences, and the last band to play there was Psychedelic Furs, I never visited in that era as I was far too young. The club was then briefly Brady’s before closing again shortly after. There was a significant time gap after that before the original venue reopened in 2011, with OMD playing on the opening night. I once recently visited the pub at ground level and saw a chap called Teddy playing.   

In 2009 Eric’s history was covering extensively in the tome titled ‘Liverpool Eric’s: All the Best Clubs are Downstairs, Everyone Knows That’. An ethos I can readily attest to as I have found that many of the most atmospheric venues are in cellar spaces, The Ruby Lounge, Roadhouse and Peer Hat in Manchester, EBGB’s in Liverpool and the 13th Note Bar in Glasgow to name but a few!