sighed, exhausted. “Just like you, Mimi,” he said, “to go on about one hundred pounds a week when you know I’m tired.”
5
The five young men who returned to Liverpool that Christmas were so discouraged they didn’t even bother to speak to each other for weeks after they returned home. Paul took a job, working on a delivery truck for £7 a week to earn some extra money for Christmas, and John stayed in bed all day and slept, trying to escape the grim reality of being home in Mendips again. He was brought food and other sustenance by Cynthia. It was only by accident that they eventually discovered they were all in Liverpool and arranged to meet up again at the Casbah.
It was a few nights before Christmas that they set up their instruments at the Casbah and played together for the first time since coming home. The audience in the Casbah was thunderstruck; a remarkable transformation had occurred in Hamburg. Those long, nightly hours of playing had paid off in the most unexpected way: professionalism. Although they were still unorganized and casual on stage, they were no longer the amateur band that had left Liverpool five months before. They were now a slick entertainment act, full of confidence and stage presence. In particular, they were visually like no other group in town; their clothing was now an unaccountable mixture of leather pants, cowboy boots, and denim jackets; their hairstyles featured feminine bangs combed over their foreheads.
“It was Hamburg that had done it,” John said. “… it was only back in Liverpool that we realized the difference and saw what was happening.” What was happening was an instant snowballing of popularity as word spread about the new, improved Beatles back from Hamburg. Within a month they were recommended for a job as the lunchtime band at the Cavern Club on Matthew Street, which had just made a policy switch from jazz to beat groups. This was considered a plum job, although the surroundings left something to be desired. The Cavern was exactly what it sounded like, a slimy, subterranean cavern beneath a converted warehouse in the downtown business district. Eighteen steps below street level, it had three low-arched chambers. Because there was no ventilation, it was like descending into a sewer. The air was as fetid as a sweaty gymnasium, and the walls literally ran slick with condensation. No matter to the Beatles—at twenty-five shillings a day each they were ecstatic to be there; a steady lunchtime gig in a crowded club was exactly what the boys needed to build a following. In January of 1961 they began to play some evenings at the Cavern, as well as at lunchtime, and soon they were considered the house band.
It became Cynthia Powell’s lunchtime routine to leave art school and go to the Cavern to hear John and the boys play. Occasionally some member or another of one of the boys’ families would also stop by at lunchtime to see them. Jim McCartney was no stranger to the Cavern, and Louise Harrison made herself a frequent and welcomed visitor, cheering the boys on with the rest of the kids, although she was horrified at how awful the club was. Mrs. Harrison was sitting there with crowds of kids around her one day when John’s Aunt Mimi turned up. Mimi had come not so much to cheer as to check up on where John was spending all his time. She had stormed past the owner, Ray McFall, refusing to pay admission, saying she had “come for John Lennon.” She was aghast at what she found. Hundreds of kids screaming in that foul air, singing and dancing. She would have pulled John out of there by the ear if it hadn’t been for the large crowd by the stage.
Louise Harrison, happy to see Mimi there, called over to her, “Aren’t they great?”
“I’m glad someone thinks so,” Mimi shouted back. “You thing. We’d all have had lovely peaceful lives but for you encouraging them.”
6
By then all pretense of attending school was over, and music was a full-time
5
The five young men who returned to Liverpool that Christmas were so discouraged they didn’t even bother to speak to each other for weeks after they returned home. Paul took a job, working on a delivery truck for £7 a week to earn some extra money for Christmas, and John stayed in bed all day and slept, trying to escape the grim reality of being home in Mendips again. He was brought food and other sustenance by Cynthia. It was only by accident that they eventually discovered they were all in Liverpool and arranged to meet up again at the Casbah.
It was a few nights before Christmas that they set up their instruments at the Casbah and played together for the first time since coming home. The audience in the Casbah was thunderstruck; a remarkable transformation had occurred in Hamburg. Those long, nightly hours of playing had paid off in the most unexpected way: professionalism. Although they were still unorganized and casual on stage, they were no longer the amateur band that had left Liverpool five months before. They were now a slick entertainment act, full of confidence and stage presence. In particular, they were visually like no other group in town; their clothing was now an unaccountable mixture of leather pants, cowboy boots, and denim jackets; their hairstyles featured feminine bangs combed over their foreheads.
“It was Hamburg that had done it,” John said. “… it was only back in Liverpool that we realized the difference and saw what was happening.” What was happening was an instant snowballing of popularity as word spread about the new, improved Beatles back from Hamburg. Within a month they were recommended for a job as the lunchtime band at the Cavern Club on Matthew Street, which had just made a policy switch from jazz to beat groups. This was considered a plum job, although the surroundings left something to be desired. The Cavern was exactly what it sounded like, a slimy, subterranean cavern beneath a converted warehouse in the downtown business district. Eighteen steps below street level, it had three low-arched chambers. Because there was no ventilation, it was like descending into a sewer. The air was as fetid as a sweaty gymnasium, and the walls literally ran slick with condensation. No matter to the Beatles—at twenty-five shillings a day each they were ecstatic to be there; a steady lunchtime gig in a crowded club was exactly what the boys needed to build a following. In January of 1961 they began to play some evenings at the Cavern, as well as at lunchtime, and soon they were considered the house band.
It became Cynthia Powell’s lunchtime routine to leave art school and go to the Cavern to hear John and the boys play. Occasionally some member or another of one of the boys’ families would also stop by at lunchtime to see them. Jim McCartney was no stranger to the Cavern, and Louise Harrison made herself a frequent and welcomed visitor, cheering the boys on with the rest of the kids, although she was horrified at how awful the club was. Mrs. Harrison was sitting there with crowds of kids around her one day when John’s Aunt Mimi turned up. Mimi had come not so much to cheer as to check up on where John was spending all his time. She had stormed past the owner, Ray McFall, refusing to pay admission, saying she had “come for John Lennon.” She was aghast at what she found. Hundreds of kids screaming in that foul air, singing and dancing. She would have pulled John out of there by the ear if it hadn’t been for the large crowd by the stage.
Louise Harrison, happy to see Mimi there, called over to her, “Aren’t they great?”
“I’m glad someone thinks so,” Mimi shouted back. “You thing. We’d all have had lovely peaceful lives but for you encouraging them.”
6
By then all pretense of attending school was over, and music was a full-time
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