Beatles on “I was there” ITV1

To mark the 50th anniversary of the first time The Beatles played at The Cavern Club in Liverpool, ITV1 will be showing a brand new documentary on the most famous club in the world on Wednesday, 9 February 2011, 10:40PM – 11:40PM.

“I Was There…When The Beatles Played The Cavern” tells the story of the underground venue which has become synonymous with The Beatles.

The programme includes rare archive footage of the Cavern Club in the sixties, including film of The Beatles performing ‘Some Other Guy’ at the club.

On 9 February 1961, having recently returned to Liverpool from performing in Hamburg, The Beatles played at The Cavern for the first of nearly 300 appearances at the club. By the time they played their last gig there, Beatlemania had swept Britain and the band was conquering the world.

The documentary also tells the story of what happened to The Cavern after The Beatles. It lived on until 1973 – with rock legends such as Queen, Elton John and Rod Stewart treading its cramped stage – before it was eventually closed during construction on the Merseyrail underground loop.

But that wasn’t the end of The Cavern story. A decade later the club was rebuilt on its original site and today serves a dual purpose as a venue for up and coming bands and a tourist attraction for Beatles fans from across the globe.

In this programme fans, members of other Merseybeat bands and Cavern insiders help separate the facts from the myths that have grown up around the goings on deep beneath the ground at 10 Mathew Street, Liverpool.

Gerry Marsden, who played at The Cavern with Gerry and the Pacemakers, recalls how, above all else, the thing he associates with the club is the smell of disinfectant.

The documentary includes an interview with Pete Best, drummer for The Beatles for much of their Cavern period, and famous Cavernites including playwright Willy Russell relive the heady excitement of their teenage years.