The Casbah Coffee Club was a rock and roll music venue in the West Derby area of Liverpool, England, that operated from 1959 to 1962. Started by Mona Best, mother of early Beatles drummer Pete Best, in the cellar of the family home, the Casbah was planned as a members-only club for her sons Pete and Rory and their friends, to meet and listen to the popular music of the day. Mona came up with the idea of the club after watching a TV report about the 2i’s Coffee Bar in London’s Soho where several singers had been discovered.
The Quarrymen—John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ken Brown—went to the club to arrange their first booking, to which Mona agreed, but said she needed to finish painting the club first. All four took up brushes and helped Mona to finish painting the walls with spiders, dragons, rainbows and stars. In addition to the four boys’ artistic contributions, Cynthia Powell, later to become Cynthia Lennon, painted a silhouette of John on the wall, which can still be seen today. The group often played at the Casbah as other venues, like the Cavern Club, had a jazz-only policy at that time.
The Quarrymen played a series of seven Saturday night concerts in the Casbah for 15 shillings each, starting on August 29, to October 1959, featuring Lennon, McCartney, Harrison and Brown, but without a drummer, and only one microphone connected to the club’s small PA system. The opening night concert was attended by about 300 local teenagers, but as the cellar had no air-conditioning, and people were dancing, the temperature rose until it became hard to breathe. After the success of the first night, Mona gave the Quarrymen a residency, and paid the whole group £3 a night. Every Saturday thereafter, queues lengthened onto the street, which was financially good for Mona, as she charged one shilling admission on top of the annual membership fee. As there was no amplification, Lennon later persuaded Mona to hire a young amateur guitar player called Harry to play a short set before the Quarrymen, but this was only so they could use his 40-Watt amplifier.
Other artists and groups like Cilla Black, Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, the Searchers and Gerry & the Pacemakers later played in the club. The Black Jacks became the resident group at the Casbah, although the Quarrymen occasionally played there again and often visited. Even though the membership list later spiraled to over a thousand, Mona closed the club on 24 June 1962, with the Beatles as the last group to perform.
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