Mini festival ensures that the Mersey beat goes on

The Original Quarrymen today. Picture: Dave NelsonThe Original Quarrymen today. Picture: Dave Nelson
The Original Quarrymen today. Picture: Dave Nelson
Sixty years – almost to the day – since The Beatles took to a Leeds stage for the last time, a mini festival in the city this weekend aims to keep alive memories of the Fab Four and the Beat group boom that they inspired.

Leeds Beat ’24 is the brainchild of musician Adam Williams of The Mathew Street Band who describe themselves as a “Beat group playing the best of the Beatles’ early years from Hamburg to the toppermost”.

The all-dayer, which takes place at the Heart Centre in Headingley, will feature music from, among others, Leeds’s “premier Beatles tribute band” The Fib Four and Rod Davis, former member of The Quarrymen, the 1950s skiffle group whose ranks also included a young John Lennon.

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“The Mathew Street Band play around Leeds, we’re all 40-odd, we’ve been in other bands over the years but myself and the bass player really wanted to do something ambitious,” says Williams. “At the gigs we do in Leeds there are a lot of Beatle people around and lovers of Beat music both young and old. There are various things like (this Beat festival) around the country – obviously the big one being the Beatles Week held over in Liverpool – and I just thought we could put on an event that tied in.

The Fib Four will be playing at Leeds Beat '24.The Fib Four will be playing at Leeds Beat '24.
The Fib Four will be playing at Leeds Beat '24.

“This year there have been a lot of 60th anniversaries, it was the 60th anniversary of A Hard Day’s Night, the 60th anniversary of them going to America, and it tied in with the 60th anniversary of the last date they played in Leeds. It’s actually October 22, so we’re a couple of days out, but as near as damn it.”

He intends that this mini festival will “reflect the whole spirit and ethos of Merseybeat and the 60s Beat movement” – hence bill being “quite diverse” and including a “Beat origins flavour” with shades of the rock ’n’ roll and skiffle. “Liverpool, being a port, had great access to (music coming over from the US),” Williams says. “So we got Shayler Franklin and this guys in to do the rockabilly stuff. We wanted to finish off with a more traditional Beatles tribute, with the wigs and all that kind of stuff, to do the hits.

“We thought it was really important to get someone over from the Cavern, which was the centre of it all, so it’s brilliant to have Tony (Skeggs) over, we will open the show as the house band and the big cherry on top was reached out to The Quarrymen management and Rod getting in touch. He and David Bedford are coming over which is fantastic because it gives it that massive air of authenticity. In the Beatles circles they’re sort of royalty, especially Rod with his backstory.”

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Davis might now be 82 years old but his appetite for music remains strong. He says Leeds Beat offers him a rare opportunity to play on the east side of England. “It tends to be fairly Liverpool orientated, one way or another,” he says. “It’s going to be a bit different because my brother Colin is on holiday and our keyboard player lives in Bristol, so (Leeds) is a bit of a hike for him, but I’m coming and our bass player David Bedford, who’s also a renowned Beatles author. He actually lives near Colin in Liverpool, near Penny Lane. He plays guitar, keyboards and bass so we will be doing our comedy double act, chatting and playing a few songs.”

The Mathew Street Band performing at the Cavern club in Liverpool.The Mathew Street Band performing at the Cavern club in Liverpool.
The Mathew Street Band performing at the Cavern club in Liverpool.

As an added bonus, Davis will be bringing replicas of the banjo and guitars that The Quarrymen played in 1957, along with a tea chest and washboard.

It was at St Peter’s Sunday school in Woolton where David first encountered Lennon and several other soon-to-be members of The Quarrymen. “It was in the same room, funnily, enough as where John met Paul (McCartney) later on,” he recalls. “In my class were Pete Shotton, Ivan Vaughan, Nigel Walley, Geoff Rhind, who took the famous photograph (of the band in 1957). When John came to live with his aunt Mimi she presumably also fancied a quiet Sunday afternoon and so John appeared in our class.

“His little gang were ready made there – Ivan and Nigel and Pete, all three of whom lived within 200 or 300 yards of Mendips. But he lived on the opposite side of Woolton Hill and at that age between five and 10 there was plenty of mischief to get up to on my side of the hill. I was never really a close friend of his, but when we were both 11 we passed the 11-plus and went to Quarry Bank School and were in the same year. And Eric Griffiths, who was also in The Quarrymen ended up in the same year.

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“In 1956, inspired by Lonnie Donegan’s Rock Island Line, somebody suggested to John Lennon that he started a skiffle group. The guy who suggested it lent John a guitar and John used to cycle around with it strapped across his back trying to impress ladies.”

Davis, having acquired a banjo from a friend in North Wales who had been in a pre-war band with his uncle, was invited by Eric Griffiths to join the group. He remembers; “They knew I couldn’t play because I’d only bought it the day before, but it was all three chords in those days and in fact playing on the banjo, you don’t even have to put your fingers on at all because it’s tuned to an open G, so it was not rocket science by any means.”

The Quarrymen’s gigs in those days mostly came at dances. “What used to happen quite a lot was if somebody organised a dance, it would be with a dance band, so they would be playing waltzes and quickstep,” David explains. “In the interval, that’s when the skiffle groups were on and kids could jive to the skiffle. People have often said to us, like at St Peter’s, ‘oh, you opened for the George Edwards Band. No, sorry, it didn’t work that way in those days. The George Edwards Band played the first half and the second half and the skiffle was in the middle. So, that was quite a common thing for us to do.

“We also played quite a few skiffle contests. There were lots of them in Liverpool, it was a nice cheap get-out for the organisers because you didn’t have to pay the groups, they normally brought their mates along anyway who had to pay to get in and somebody got a prize at the end of it, but it was a good way of making a few bob if you were a promoter. We played the odd party as well.”

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David played with The Quarrymen for about a year until the end of July 1957. “They all left school, I stayed on at sixth form to try to get to university, and by that time, a couple of weeks into July, at the famous St Peter’s rose queen (event), that’s when John and Paul got together,” Davis says. “After that, the banjo player drifted out – me, the washboard player drifted out, and they were becoming more of a rock ’n’ roll group.”

Although not haring Lennon’s fondness for rock ’n’ roll, Davis remembers of the soon-to-be Beatle: “In front of the group, he was very good. Because we didn’t have our own PA, there was usually only one microphone and he had the best voice so he would choose the songs he liked. I don’t remember any animosity choosing songs apart from me, who wasn’t too keen on the rock ’n’ roll, especially when we played at the Cavern because the Cavern was a jazz cellar. Skiffle originated in the New Orleans jazz bands and consequently there was no problem at all about playing skiffle at the Cavern, but when John started to slip rock ’n’ roll numbers in the management and the audience didn’t like it, so you had to be a bit careful.

“I probably got on with John OK because we’d known each other since we were five years old, but he could be difficult. My younger brother, who was also at Quarry Bank, said Lennon was a guy who you kept out of his way. He was not a model pupil.”

Davis remembers Lennon writing “the odd poem for the school magazine – there was one called The Tale of Hermit Fred, which was a nonsense rhyme” – but he wasn’t aware of him writing songs before he quit the group in 1957. The closest it came, he says, was Lennon’s addition of the line “Down, down, down to the penitentiary” to their cover of Come Go With Me by doo-wop group The Del-Vikings.

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Going on to study at Cambridge University, Davis became more interested in folk, blues, bluegrass and traditional jazz. However, there was final meeting with Lennon in 1962, which could have sent him on an altogether different musical trajectory. “I was walking through Liverpool at Easter ’62 and I bumped into John, that was the last time I saw him,” David recalls. “He said, ‘what are you playing now?’ and I said, I’m playing bluegrass and mandolin and fiddle and stuff, and he said, ‘Ah, pity you can’t play the drums. You could’ve come to Hamburg and played drums with us.’ I don’t think for one moment that this was a formal invitation, but people have taken it to indicate that even at that time they were thinking of changing the drummer (from Pete Best).

“I had forgotten that part of the conversation but my sister reminded me that my mother said, ‘He’s not going to Hamburg to play the drums with that Lennon’ – because that’s what John was known as in our house. So if I had gone to Hamburg with them she would’ve been waiting on the white cliffs of Dover with a big carving knife.

“The bit of the conversation I did remember was I was playing in a university jazz band and we made a record on Decca, so I think I said, we may have been you onto a record. Although ours was done in October ’60 and (The Beatles) made My Bonnie (with Tony Sheridan) in July ’60, so I was mistaken there.”

Williams believes that The Beatles’ influence will last long after the final member of the group has passed away. “It think it’s beyond music, it’s a cultural thing,” he says. “When Paul and Ringo (Starr) pass on, it will maybe change slightly but is there any less interest in John Lennon and his music now and his influence, and George (Harrison). I firmely believe it is so entrenched in Western culture, and the influence is so enduring. Look at Elvis – it carries on.

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“As long as Paul and Ringo are able to (continue performing) they will, and the product is so carefully managed and curated. There’s always another reissue, there’s always another set of tapes that have been found. It’s the gift that keeps on giving.”

Leeds Beat ’24 takes place on Saturday October 19 at the Heart Centre, Headingley, Leeds from 1pm-9pm. https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/heartcentreheadingley/t-noqgkox

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