BEATLES HISTORIAN CLAIMS FAB FOUR WERE DISCOVERED IN TUEBROOK, NOT THE CAVERN

Gerry Murphy hopes to start project to find out more about history of St John's youth club

A Beatles historian has claimed manager Brian Epstein first spotted the Fab Four when they performed in a youth club in Tuebrook.

Gerry Murphy, who was a co-founder of the Cavern City Tours, claims to have discovered that the group was first seen by the manager who helped them to international success at St John’s Youth Centre on Snaefell Avenue, Tuebrook.

The Beatles at The Cavern Club

And he said the club, also known as Brockman Hall and now home to disability charity Daisy Inclusive, was the setting for the “best rock and roll ever seen”.

Mr Murphy said he was studying for an MA in the Beatles when he came across the information.

He now believes Epstein came to a Beatles concert in July 1961 and spotted the group months before his first reported gig at the Cavern in November that year.

Mr Murphy said: “In 2011 I staged a 50th anniversary event at Brockman Hall and told the audience the Beatles had played there just months before Brian Epstein saw them for the first time at the Cavern and signed them up on the spot.

“Afterwards a woman said to me ‘it’s wrong what you said about Brian Epstein - because he was standing just there’. She said they recognised him from NEMS record shop.”

Mr Murphy said her description of John Lennon’s wife Cynthia in an all leather outfit, which would have been bought on the group’s recent trip to Hamburg, convinced him she was right.

He later spoke to her friend, who was with her on the night and backed up the story.

Last month he spotted a picture in the ECHO of fans with the group, which then included Pete Best, at the gig in question.

He said: “My belief is that Epstein went to see the group in late July, kept in contact with them and formally went to see them and make a proposal in the November that year.”

He added: “I think he watched the audience at the gig in Brockman Hall, not just the band, and realised if they could get 200 kids jiving like that in that hall, they could get the world jiving.”

But Cavern Club director Bill Heckle disputed the claim.

He said Epstein’s first sighting of the group was well documented in his own autobiography and was not at Brockman Hall.

Mr Heckle added: “What is possible is that he was there but did not remember seeing the Beatles or being impressed, because his first memory and encounter is obviously irrefutably at the Cavern.”

Mr Murphy and Dave Kelly, of Daisy Inclusive, now hope to start a project to uncover more about the hall’s connections with the band. They are appealing for people to share their memories.