"Ray McFall, who has died aged 88, owned and ran the Cavern Club in Liverpool during the Mersey Beat explosion of the early 1960s and not only transformed it from a jazz venue into a sweaty furnace of rock and roll but also ordered the Beatles to smarten up their act. Within two years, the club had become the crucible for the Liverpool sound that swept the world. A foul-smelling, dirty, damp and cramped cellar beneath a fruit warehouse in Mathew Street in Liverpool city centre, the Cavern had served as a Second World War air-raid shelter, its steep flight of 18 slippery stone steps leading down to a set of fetid brick catacombs. In January 1957 a young trainee Liverpool stockbroker called Alan Sytner opened it as a jazz club. McFall, another jazz lover, was a 32-year-old accounts clerk with the firm handling the club’s finances, and when it became clear that Sytner was struggling to make the Cavern pay, took it over in October 1959. With no experience other than as an auditor, McFall paid £2,750 for the premises, promising to “put Liverpool on the map as the leading jazz centre in the country outside London”. Top of the bill on McFall’s opening night were Acker Bilk and his Paramount Jazz Band. Although jazz acts attracted a sizeable audience, McFall realised that the club’s future lay in the beat boom. “The club’s fortunes were going down,” he remembered, “and there was a tremendous interest for beat music.” He soldiered on, booking top names like Terry Lightfoot’s New Orleans Jazzmen, the Alex Welsh Dixielanders, George Melly and Ronnie Scott, but eventually yielded to the onslaught from beat groups, including Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, featuring Ringo Starr on drums, who made their Cavern debut in May 1960. Tipped off by the club’s disc jockey, Bob Wooler, McFall booked the Beatles, who made their first appearance at a lunchtime session at the Cavern in February 1961. They had recently returned from a residency in Hamburg, and looked so scruffy in leather jackets and jeans that McFall felt obliged to point out to them that such outfits were taboo at his club, even among the punters. “Our doormen would stop anyone wearing jeans,” he recalled. “I felt that if people were wearing good, clean clothes they would be more likely to behave themselves as they wouldn’t want them getting dirty and damaged.” Nor was McFall impressed by the foursome’s musicianship, their singing being rough and guitars out of tune. Nevertheless, they pulled in capacity crowds, mainly of screaming girls, and when Brian Epstein visited the Cavern in November 1961 he was immediately struck by the group’s potential. Epstein signed them the next month, and they auditioned for Decca Records on New Year’s Day 1962, famously failing to make an impression. Over the ensuing four years McFall booked many other leading acts of the 1960s, including The Who and the Kinks. The Beatles appeared on 292 occasions until August 1963, earning 25 shillings [£1.25] for each performance. When Beatlemania exploded in 1964, the Cavern became the focal point of unprecedented attention, even broadcasting its own weekly show on Radio Luxembourg. But by then the Beatles had outgrown the venue. Attendance figures dropped and, faced with a £3,500 repair bill to update the drains, McFall was forced to declare bankruptcy, selling the club in 1966. It reopened under new management, but it had a drinks licence, unlike the old Cavern, and drew an older crowd. It was demolished in 1973. The son of a merchant seaman, Andrew Raymond McFall was born on November 14 1926 in Garston, south Liverpool, and when the family moved to Maghull, north of the city, he attended St Mary’s Roman Catholic College in Crosby. During the Second World War he worked as a Bevin Boy at the Clock Face Colliery, St Helens, and was later articled as a clerk in a firm of accountants. It was in this capacity that he became acquainted with Alan Sytner, and worked part-time as a cashier at the Cavern during Sytner’s tenure. After McFall took over the club, he had hoped to expand the premises, but his plans coincided with the decline of the Mersey Beat era. In February 1966, the bailiffs arrived. Although a fund-raising session by Cavern artists attracted a packed house, McFall was forced to admit defeat." http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/11333602/Ray-McFall-obituary.html
