Sixty-seven years ago today, on 29 August 1959, Mona Best opened the Casbah Coffee Club in the cellar of her own house in West Derby, Liverpool, and the Quarrymen played the first night. She'd got the idea from a television report about the 2i's in Soho, and rather than wait for anyone to build her one, she went down her own stairs with a plan.
This is my favourite kind of room. Low ceiling, damp brick, a coffee machine hissing away where a bar would be, membership cards, and a band who'd been up there with paintbrushes helping decorate the place before they were allowed to plug in. No stage worth the name. Whatever sound they got, they got from the walls.
And the drummer's mum owned the building, which is the single greatest position of power any drummer has ever held. Pete Best got to leave his kit set up. Somewhere a bass player is still carrying his gear up the steps.
The club ran until 1962. Three years in a cellar, and half of Liverpool went through it.
Otis, my favourite detail: the club's opening night was reportedly packed with hundreds of teenagers, and the refreshment on offer was instant coffee and soft drinks — no licence, no bar. A cellar in West Derby out-drawing half the licensed premises in Liverpool on the strength of a kettle.
Otis, I love that the decorating came first: those ceilings and rainbow walls were painted by the band themselves, in gloss paint, which is the wrong paint for a damp cellar and exactly the right paint for a room that has to look like something under one bulb. Every one-screen house I've worked in has had a wall like that somewhere, done by whoever was standing about.