Who played in Paul McCartney’s supergroup for ‘Live at the Cavern Club’?
Any thought of The Cavern Club in Liverpool immediately conjures up the figure of an eternally youthful Paul McCartney and his fresh-faced mates in The Beatles. This iconic venue is synonymous with the band and is intrinsically associated with their first steps on the road to super-stardom, and, world-domination. It was at this very venue that the group were first recognised for the raw energy, astonishing new sounds and chemistry between the young men, and from where they went on to start a revolution, and eventually change the face of modern music forevermore. The Cavern Club to The Beatles was not just a venue, but the crucible from which their legend was forged.
Despite being opened in 1957 as a jazz club, the 250-capacity room is now inextricably linked with the birth of the British invasion and Mersey Beat thanks to the many performances that the Fab Four gave in the venue. The first group to play in the club—the Merseysippi Jazz Band—stayed more faithful to the original intentions of founder Alan Synter while still giving a nod to the local area.
Inspired by a trip to the Le Caveau de la Huchette cellar club in Paris, Synter was soon booking more than just jazz groups to play at the tiny venue. In the months after it opened, The Quarrymen, featuring Paul McCartney and John Lennon, played on a lineup that also included Ron McKay’s Skiffle Group, Dark Town Skiffle Group and The Deltones Skiffle Group. When they went on to Hamburg to cut their teeth, Rory Storm and the Hurricanes brought a new style of music – a combination of the local Liverpool sound and a more American, R&B feel – to the club, with the help of their drummer, Ringo Starr.
Following their German excursion, The Quarrymen – now known as The Beatles – returned to Liverpool and to the Cavern Club, making the first of 292 performances at the venue with a lineup of John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison with Stuart Sutcliffe on bass and Pete Best on drums on February 9th, 1961.
It was at the Cavern Club where The Beatles were first spotted by local businessman Brian Epstein, who went on to become their manager and secure their first recording contracts. A few months later, they would play at the club for the first time with their new, and most enduring, lineup, with Ringo Starr now behind the drums.
Their meteoric rise to megastardom meant that everything which was associated with them became venerated, vaunted and legendary by association, and so naturally the Cavern became a mythic location in the story of this mythic band. Just about everyone from the scene wanted to play there-and did-from The Rolling Stones to Cilla Black; Gerry & the Pacemakers to John Lee Hooker, The Hollies and The Searchers, The Kinks, The Who and beyond.
The original club closed down in 1973 to be converted into a ventilation shaft for the Merseyrail underground railway network, which was never built. The site was later turned into a carpark.
Though a new Cavern opened up, this, too, subsequently shut down following a few name changes. A 1981 plan to excavate the original Cavern Club proved to be a logistical impossibility, although the brickwork from the original archway was salvaged and sold to raise money for charity.
On July 11th, 1991, the club re-opened once again, as close to the original site and built from as many of the original bricks as possible. Since then, the club’s most famous alumni, Paul McCartney, has been back to perform at the Cavern multiple times, most recently in 2018, usually in support of a new album or to warm up for a new tour.
In 1999, he even recorded a live album in the iconic venue. It had been 36 years since McCartney had stood on the Cavern Club stage and a lot had changed in that time. The Beatles had taken over the world and broken up, each member had carved out a successful solo career or formed other bands, John Lennon had been murdered in New York and George Harrison had made his final public appearance.
So, who was in McCartney’s supergroup?
John Lennon had had The Dirty Mac; George Harrison was a Traveling Wilbury, and Ringo Starr had his All Starr Band. While McCartney didn’t have any fellow Beatles backing him at his return to the new Cavern, he needed a suitably all-star band of his own to mark the occasion, and a suitably all-star they were. Joining him as he ran through a collection of rock and roll greatest hits, from ‘Brown Eyed Handsome Man’ to ‘Shake a Hand’ and ‘All Shook Up’, as well as The Beatles’ ‘I Saw Her Standing There’, were Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour, Pirates guitarist Mick Green, Deep Purple drummer Ian Paice, as well as Pete Wingfield on keyboards and Chris Hall on accordion.
Perhaps believing that most of his assembled super-group needed no introduction, McCartney only gave the audience the first names of each of his backing band. Following a fine performance of Gene Vincent’s ‘Blue Gene Bop’, McCartney said, “First of all, I want to thank all this brave band of minstrels who joined me on stage”, before pointing to each man behind him saying, “We’ve got Dave, we’ve got Mick, we’ve got Pete, Ian and this is Chris”.
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