PROLOGUE
December 27, 1960
T hey had begun to pour into the village of Litherland as they always did, half an hour before the doors opened. Nightcrawlers: their bodies young and liquid, legs spidering along the sidewalks, exaggerated by the blue glare of the streetlamps. This time of year, Sefton Road at 6:30 was already dark; evening pressed down early from the desolate sky, raked by gunmetal gray clouds drifting east across the river toward the stagnating city of Liverpool.
Tuesdays at Litherland’s town hall were usually what promoters referred to as “soft nights”—that is, midweek affairs attracting a reasonable 600 or 700 jivers, as opposed to the weekend crush of 1,500—but tonight’s shindig was billed as a Christmas dance, which accounted for the unusually large crowd. Every few minutes another double-decker bus groaned to a halt outside the hall and emptied a heaving load of teenagers onto the pavement. The crowd, moving erratically in the brittle night air, swelled like a balloon waiting for a dart.
The main attraction, ex post facto, had not yet arrived. Running customarily behind schedule, the band had left West Derby Village later than anticipated after choosing, by consensus, a playlist for that night’s performance. The selection process was no mean feat, considering their repertoire of well over 150 rock ’n roll songs, from the seminal hits (“Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On,” “What’d I Say”) to pop standards (“Better Luck Next Time,” “Red Sails in the Sunset”) to obscure gems (“You Don’t Understand Me”); each demanded brief consideration. Afterward, equipment was loaded into the old bottle green van that had been recruited for service only that morning.
" The four boys, riding in the dark, grimy cargo hold like astronauts in a cramped space capsule, braced themselves with experienced hands as theold crate rattled north along the Stanley Road, past shops splashed with a waxy fluorescence. The road hugged the shoreline, where they could see harbor lights and the wharves of the distant port, then broke inland along the Leeds & Liverpool Canal. Even to a native, which they all were, it was difficult to tell where one borough ended and another began: Crosby became Kirkdale and eventually Bootle, then Litherland, their boundaries marked only by wide-mouthed intersections and the occasional shop sign incorporating a piece of local heritage into its name.
They stared silently out the back window for a while, absorbing the hallucinatory darkness. Paul McCartney and George Harrison, both prodigiously handsome, straddled two boxy amplifiers, while Pete Best, shifting and elusive, posted like a cowboy atop a bass drum case. Unspeaking also, John Lennon, who had been to Litherland twice before, rode shotgun in order to direct their driver to the proper location.
Chas Newby knew he was the odd man out. Crouched perilously on an enameled wheel arch, he regarded his mates with respectful detachment. Until a week before, nearly half a year had passed since he’d last heard them play. Those few months ago, they were like most other aspiring Liverpool bands, talented but unexceptional, performing identical cover versions of current hits that everyone else was doing. “I certainly didn’t think they would make much of an impression,” he says, recalling their muddy sound, their clumsy, mechanical attack, their unintentional anarchy. In fact, his former band, the Blackjacks, in which Pete Best had played, was no better or worse at entertaining the kids who followed local groups from dance club to dance club to dance club. On any given night, five bands on a bill would perform the same set of songs—the same way. Homogeneity was the criterion on which the whole scene turned.
Now suddenly everything had changed. When Chas had arrived at Pete’s house in West Derby Village the week before, he was quite unprepared for the scene inside. The living room was overheated and brighter than
December 27, 1960
T hey had begun to pour into the village of Litherland as they always did, half an hour before the doors opened. Nightcrawlers: their bodies young and liquid, legs spidering along the sidewalks, exaggerated by the blue glare of the streetlamps. This time of year, Sefton Road at 6:30 was already dark; evening pressed down early from the desolate sky, raked by gunmetal gray clouds drifting east across the river toward the stagnating city of Liverpool.
Tuesdays at Litherland’s town hall were usually what promoters referred to as “soft nights”—that is, midweek affairs attracting a reasonable 600 or 700 jivers, as opposed to the weekend crush of 1,500—but tonight’s shindig was billed as a Christmas dance, which accounted for the unusually large crowd. Every few minutes another double-decker bus groaned to a halt outside the hall and emptied a heaving load of teenagers onto the pavement. The crowd, moving erratically in the brittle night air, swelled like a balloon waiting for a dart.
The main attraction, ex post facto, had not yet arrived. Running customarily behind schedule, the band had left West Derby Village later than anticipated after choosing, by consensus, a playlist for that night’s performance. The selection process was no mean feat, considering their repertoire of well over 150 rock ’n roll songs, from the seminal hits (“Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On,” “What’d I Say”) to pop standards (“Better Luck Next Time,” “Red Sails in the Sunset”) to obscure gems (“You Don’t Understand Me”); each demanded brief consideration. Afterward, equipment was loaded into the old bottle green van that had been recruited for service only that morning.
" The four boys, riding in the dark, grimy cargo hold like astronauts in a cramped space capsule, braced themselves with experienced hands as theold crate rattled north along the Stanley Road, past shops splashed with a waxy fluorescence. The road hugged the shoreline, where they could see harbor lights and the wharves of the distant port, then broke inland along the Leeds & Liverpool Canal. Even to a native, which they all were, it was difficult to tell where one borough ended and another began: Crosby became Kirkdale and eventually Bootle, then Litherland, their boundaries marked only by wide-mouthed intersections and the occasional shop sign incorporating a piece of local heritage into its name.
They stared silently out the back window for a while, absorbing the hallucinatory darkness. Paul McCartney and George Harrison, both prodigiously handsome, straddled two boxy amplifiers, while Pete Best, shifting and elusive, posted like a cowboy atop a bass drum case. Unspeaking also, John Lennon, who had been to Litherland twice before, rode shotgun in order to direct their driver to the proper location.
Chas Newby knew he was the odd man out. Crouched perilously on an enameled wheel arch, he regarded his mates with respectful detachment. Until a week before, nearly half a year had passed since he’d last heard them play. Those few months ago, they were like most other aspiring Liverpool bands, talented but unexceptional, performing identical cover versions of current hits that everyone else was doing. “I certainly didn’t think they would make much of an impression,” he says, recalling their muddy sound, their clumsy, mechanical attack, their unintentional anarchy. In fact, his former band, the Blackjacks, in which Pete Best had played, was no better or worse at entertaining the kids who followed local groups from dance club to dance club to dance club. On any given night, five bands on a bill would perform the same set of songs—the same way. Homogeneity was the criterion on which the whole scene turned.
Now suddenly everything had changed. When Chas had arrived at Pete’s house in West Derby Village the week before, he was quite unprepared for the scene inside. The living room was overheated and brighter than
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