Bill [Bill Harry] began the painstaking task of creating the new paper [Mersey Beat]. Fastidiously, he set about the print and layout, but was forever changing it. He was positively passionate when describing the subtleties of ‘caps’ and ‘points’, printers’ jargon I could only pretend to understand. One night, I erupted. ‘Bill! Just get the bleedin’ thing printed, so we can sell it!’ The paper was part of a concept I’d been formulating for some time. Our groups were so good, I wanted to start my own record label and already had a name for it: Troubadour Records. And that was before I was booking The Beatles. My head was buzzing with ways of exploiting the fantastic beat scene that surrounded us. The priority was to create a regular and sound financial base — such as that enjoyed by Alan Williams and Ray McFall — to support my ambitions. Therefore, I had to find premises to open my own club, and then make it Liverpool’s premier nightspot. For months, I scoured the city centre looking for the right place until, finally, I pipped local disc-jockey, Bob Wooler, to an ideal venue in early December 1960: Sampson and Barlow’s Ballroom, on the corner of London Road and Fraser Street.
Bob and I have been the best of friends and enemies since then. Like myself, he was to play an important role in establishing The Beatles, working hard on their behalf to gain as much publicity for them as he could. He was an excellent disc-jockey and compere, the best of his day, and was responsible for getting them into some important venues, not least The Cavern. We should have been able to work together, but Bob decided from the start that we stood on opposite sides of the fence and he went to great lengths to exclude me from the clique encamped in Mathew Street. Even in later years, whenever he was approached by Beatles biographers and documentary researchers, he seldom mentioned my name.
Profits from The Checkmates ‘strip’ show meant I had enough money for advance rent and advertising. I decided to name the new venue The Cassanova Club after a great new group, Cass and The Cassanovas, who agreed to play for me exclusively. I know it’s spelt wrong, but you can blame lead-singer Brian Cassur for that.
Dozens of other brilliant groups began to appear and there was already a realisation awakening that something special was afoot in Liverpool. A number of bands competed eagerly for recognition as the best. By early 1961, there was a steady stream of groups from the city making their way over to Hamburg and this was entirely down to Alan Williams. <…> It is not true that Alan ‘gave away’ The Beatles. They weren’t his to give away. He was their agent, but never their manager. He did, however, look after them with good venues and you could argue that without the Hamburg experience the boys would never had made it. The long hours of playing every day did them no harm at all and helped them develop what became a unique sound. They appeared first at The Indra Club, where they played for six weeks, six hours a day from Monday to Friday and eight hours on a Saturday and Sunday. They then moved to The Kaiserkeller for a further six weeks, where they shared the bill with Rory Storm and The Hurricanes, meeting Ringo Starr for the first time. They were then made a better offer to appear at Hamburg’s Top Ten Club and felt that, as they had negotiated the deal themselves, they could effectively release Alan and free themselves from their obligation to pay him his agency commission. That isn’t generally the way things are done, but from then on they did not use Alan as an agent.
It was my intention to open the Cass in time for Christmas, but I was forced to suspend my immediate plans when I was suddenly stricken with pneumonia. While I was ill, Alan Williams opened, with some irony, his own Top Ten Club, off Soho Street, not far from the Cass, coaxing Bob Wooler to give up his day job as a British Rail clerk. The club was burned down after only six days, but they couldn’t blame me. I had a doctor’s note.
(The rocking city : the explosive birth of the Beatles by Sam Leach, 1999)
