The Beatles live: Cavern Club, Liverpool (evening)

On this day The Beatles’ 62nd evening show at the Cavern Club took place. They were supporting an American act, Peppy and the New York Twisters, who had performed a lunchtime show at the Cavern earlier in the day.

When the twist came out, there was an Italian/American from New York called Peppy who came to the Cavern to demonstrate how to do the dance. He was on for half an hour and he was very good as I’d never seen anyone demonstrate a dance before. The twist was unheard of in Liverpool as everybody was jiving. The Beatles wrote a song called Pinwheel Twist and it was brilliant. It was a twist song with a great arrangement.

Overall this was The Beatles’ 157th appearance at the underground Mathew Street venue, including their lunchtime shows.

Shortly after Peppy and the New York Twisters did their set, The Beatles came on and said that they had written a song in the band room called The Pinwheel Twist. It was a one four five, C-F-G song, not much more than ‘Come on, do the pinwheel twist’. It wasn’t a brilliant song, but it showed that they had kept their ear to what was going on and I’d never heard anybody say before that they had written a song during the break. I liked the spontaneity of it all and it was another first for The Beatles.

The precise number of the group’s Cavern performances is not known, although they played at least 155 lunchtime and 125 evening shows between 9 February 1961 and 3 August 1963.