The Cavern Club Today
In April 1984 the club was taken over by Liverpool F.C. player Tommy Smith in association with Royal Life. Occupying almost 50% of the original site, it was re-built with many of the same bricks that had been used in the original club. The new design was to resemble the original as closely as possible. This was a difficult period of massive economic and political change in and around Liverpool and the club only survived until 1989, when it came under financial pressures and closed for 18 months. In 1991, two friends — school teacher Bill Heckle and Liverpool cabbie Dave Jones — reopened The Cavern. They still run the club today and are now the longest-running owners in its history. Despite being a world-famous tourist spot, the club continues to function primarily as a live music venue. The music policy varies from '60s, '70s, '80s and '90s classic pop music to indie, rock and modern chart music.
On 14 December 1999, former Beatle Paul McCartney returned to the New Cavern Club stage to play his last gig of 1999 publicising his new album, Run Devil Run. The Cavern Club is still open as one of the UK's most famous venues. It has around 40 live bands performing every week; both tribute and original bands, although the majority perform their own material. The back room of the Cavern is the most frequently used location for touring acts and ticketed events, recently playing host to The Wanted, Adele and Jessie J. The venue also plays host to young up-and-coming groups playing original material. The venue has recently outsourced its new music promotions to Jar Music.
The front room of the Cavern is the main tourist attraction, where people come to have their photograph taken on the famous Cavern stage, with the names of the bands who played there written on the back wall. This room hosts live music from 4pm to midnight Monday to Thursday, 12pm to close on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays with various acts playing famous songs from the past and present. Between November 2005 and September 2007, the Cavern front room played host to the Cavern Showcase, an organisation and event started by 60s star Kingsize Taylor, his wife Marga, and best friend Wes Paul. The night took place every Sunday and featured original 60s bands such as The Mojos and The Undertakers. The Cavern is also used as a tour warm-up venue with semi-secret gigs announced at the last moment. The Arctic Monkeys did this is in October 2005, as well as many others before them, such as Travis and Oasis.
In November 2008 a campaign to have Gary Glitter's brick removed from the wall of fame was successful, but was noted by a brass plaque erected near where it was. The plaque informs the reader that the bricks of two former Cavern Club performers (Glitter and Jonathan King) have been removed.
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Famous quotes containing the words cavern, club and/or today:
“From where Pan’s cavern is
Intolerable music falls.
Foul goat-head, brutal arm appear,
Belly, shoulder, bum,
Flash fishlike; nymphs and satyrs
Copulate in the foam.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“The barriers of conventionality have been raised so high, and so strangely cemented by long existence, that the only hope of overthrowing them exists in the union of numbers linked together by common opinion and effort ... the united watchword of thousands would strike at the foundation of the false system and annihilate it.”
—Mme. Ellen Louise Demorest 1824–1898, U.S. women’s magazine editor and woman’s club movement pioneer. Demorest’s Illustrated Monthly and Mirror of Fashions, p. 203 (January 1870)
“Chamberlain’s visit to Hitler today may bring things to a head or may result in a temporary postponement of what looks to me like an inevitable conflict within the next five years.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)