Liverpool's Cavern Club remains one of the world's most famous venues. But now a campaign has begun to remember the forgotten Iron Door.
THEY were the crazy days of ban-the-bomb and beatniks, when young artists and poets, musicians and philosophers, slunk around the cellar dives, like prophets in jeans, awaiting the coming of the ones who would bring fame to their city.
And many of them gathered behind the towering bricks of an old butter warehouse. There, you could hear Priscilla White singing Fever with a savage intensity, which was not always respectful to the melody, while blond Fred Fowell had his hair dyed black to add authenticity to his Elvis impressions.
Sometimes John Lennon, his tongue fizzing with observations and sly cracks, would mosey in with his art school pal Stu Sutcliffe, who usually wore a floppy cowboy hat.
Yes, they are all part of history now. John and Stu are dead. Miss White is Cilla Black and Mr Fowell is Freddie Starr.
But thousands of others stepped into the Iron Door Club at 13 Temple Street, Liverpool.
And on September 3 there is to be a grand reunion night, when some of the old groups will try to recreate the atmosphere at the Olympia, West Derby Road, Liverpool.
In time-honoured tradition, the old premises were demolished to make room for a car park. But nearly all the Mersey acts had played there - The Beatles,, Gerry and the Pacemakers, Cilla, The Undertakers, Beryl Marsden, The Mojos, the Remo Four, The Big Three (which developed from Cass and the Cassanovas), Rory Storm and the Wild Ones and numerous others.
Additionally, national jazz acts such as Kenny Ball, Ronnie Scott, Tubby Hayes and Johnny Dankworth were billed at the Iron Door which opened in 1960. It changed to the more respectable sounding Liverpool Jazz Club the following year, after a series of prosecutions for breaching the licensing laws, and then reverted to the original name. At one time, it was also called the Storeyville Jazz Club.
Its bohemian habitues switched between the names easily enough. But it was as the Iron Door that it entered Merseybeat history, this spiritual home of the Searchers, the band which scored a string of big hits on both sides of the Atlantic and whose tight vocal harmonies were to influence American bands like the Byrds and the Eagles.
The popular version of events is that the Beatles played the nearby Cavern Club while the Searchers were gaining a reputation at the Iron Door.
That is largely true, though the Beatles appeared at the Iron Door seven times in 1961/62 and the Searchers made occasional visits to Mathew Street.
It is also true that The Cavern became an internationallycelebrated venue. The Iron Door, which closed in the early 1970s, is almost forgotten.
Now Geoff Hogarth, one of its former owners, has started a campaign to win recognition for the club in popular history, as Liverpool prepares to be the 2008 European Capital of Culture.
First, however, there is the reunion concert featuring Mike Pender's Searchers, The Undertakers, Kingsize Taylor and the Dominoes, Lee Curtis, Faron, Johnny Rocco, Carl Terry and the Cruisers, Nicky Crouch's Mojos and the Del Renas.
Hogarth's longer ambition is to have the Iron Door commemorated with a replica building or, at least, a plaque. Now, he is considering the possibilities in the conservatory of his home in the Grassendale area of the city with his wife Rose, 61, a former cloakroom girl at the Iron Door.
Suddenly their musings are interrupted by Paella, their 20-year-old Argentinian pony, who has just poked her head through a door and is baring her teeth into an unexpected grin.
This man is a few weeks short of his 70th birthday, but the eccentric spirit is as strong as ever. It was this spirit which persuaded the farmer's son from near Barnsley, Yorkshire, to enter Liverpool College of Art to study interior design. By then his father, William George Hogarth, had moved to Kirkby to start a paint factory.
With two years' National Service behind him, Hogarth stepped into a scene where artistic desires and entrepreneurial ambitions whirled together in a strange brew.
He left college and won commissions for his interior designs. Soon he met Harry Ormesher, later to become the official photographer at Liverpool Football Club, also much admired for his artistic studies of page three girls.
Together they acquired the leasehold on the five-storey warehouse, which, after a massive effort of clearance and refurbishing, they opened as the Iron Door Jazz Club on April 9, 1960, with an attendance of 1,600 - a thousand more than The Cavern could hold.
However, they were soon featuring beat groups as well, in the same way as their rival, The Cavern. A liberal atmosphere developed with Sam Leach, the promoter, staging all night rock and roll sessions. Regulars "kipped" on the floor..
Into this den stepped Brian Epstein, flushed with the success of the Beatles, to hear Priscilla White singing. He signed her.
In 1960, the Silver Beatles (John, Paul, George and Tommy Moore on the drums) were guests for Cass and the Cassanovas.
The Iron Door has been eclipsed by The Cavern in the history of Merseybeat. Yet, despite the presence of formidable bouncers, it was probably the more tolerant club with jazz, skiffle and beat musicians breaking the barriers between them to jam together.
Spencer Leigh, presenter of BBC Radio Merseyside's On the Beat and author of the newly-published Twist and Shout, reckons The Cavern won because its owner Ray McFall was able to persuade the Beatles that it was the best place for them.
But Geoff, a father of three, who left the Iron Door in 1964 to manufacture garden sheds from an old church in Toxteth, feels that more should be done to promote memories of his old club.
"With the Capital of Culture, we should remember its part in the popular history of Liverpool."
Brendan McCormack, a distinguished rock and classical guitarist, played there with his group Rikki and the Redstreaks. Lennon thought he was the best guitarist in the city.
"The Iron Door was very important," he recalls.. "It was bigger and a little more sedate. But it didn't achieve the kudos of The Cavern for some reason."
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