The Blisters in Liverpool: The Beatle Week
The Blisters in Liverpool: The Beatle week
We ran down the stairs like children coming out of school. A wave of heat met us between the brick walls. We could see the stage despite the crowd and the lack of lighting ….. The music pumped out, the beers were lined up and the people were dancing excitedly: we were in the Cavern Club. To try to put into words what we felt during those five days of `Beatle Week´ would be too much for anyone´s vocabulary. We lived one of the most important musical experiences of our lives, and we enjoyed it among friends because the bonds between us came away notably stronger after Liverpool.
To play in The Cavern, there where Brian Epstein discovered the most important group in the history of modern music, is without doubt something special. With mouth open, you touch its walls and walk along its corridors, and the humidity caused by the heat and the sweat of the people is palpable. It could be unpleasant but really it gives it a touch of something different…The Cavern oozes music, it is pure energy. You get there and think: “I´m going to give the best concert of my life, because I´m here, because these bricks have seen the best musicians in the world walk by, because its stage radiates power…it infects you with the `Gift´. You dream about being like John, Paul, George or Ringo, the true proprietors of this `Gift´. You think that just by being there, the dream is more possible…
Whether you are dreaming or awake, The Cavern (Front Stage) is a magical place. There, we had the immense good luck to give three concerts to excited audiences, given over completely to the sound of the Fab Four that we played. Every shout, every applause, every time someone asked us “ One more, one more!”, our batteries were recharged and our hearts beat wildly. There, we performed some of the lesser known songs like Twenty flight rock, In spite of all the danger…that the Beatles played in the very earliest days when they were unknown, and that wonderful audience joined in with the words and danced to them. Even the very limit of what we dared, Because I know you love me so, an unpublished song that John and Paul left unfinished and which we rescued from the recording sessions of Let It Be was also applauded and received well…And what about the classics!I’m down, Revolution, All my loving, Get back, Come together, Run for your life… The audience went wild and so did we every time.
But that wasn´t the only stage we played on. In the Blue Angel Club, another emblematic place in the mythical history of the quartet from Liverpool, we put on the third show of our short tour. There, in 1960, the first polaroid photo was taken of the group called The Silver Beatles, with the youthful John, Paul and George to the fore. We also appeared in the Adelphi Hotel on two occasions, closing the show each time. And our debut on the second stage in The Cavern, known as the Back Stage, the same place where Paul McCartney put on a memorable concert in 1999.
They were five full, intense days in which each second that passed seemed like forever. The only thing that concerned us was to keep on playing. Feeling exhausted wasn´t a factor, it felt as if it never had, and we moved from gig to gig as if we had always been there, as if it was the most natural thing in the world! It was a feeling of being in a family, we felt `at home´ doing what we liked best for an audience who liked it as much as we did.
Of course, we didn´t miss out on a little `beat tourism´, seeing sights that now form part of our memories. We visited the house where John grew up and also the unmistakeable gate of Strawberry Field , we saw a double of Paul coming out of what used to be his house, the barber shop on Penny Lane, the art school where John studied…We wanted to take in each moment, each colour, each aroma, trying to relive in our imaginations those fleeting years that changed modern music. There is something special in the air of Liverpool, you feel as you walk along its streets that you breathe in the notes of the music.
We were there, making the most of every breath to absorb a little of that spirit, to fill up on rock and roll to the very last cell ….. And there we stay, with as much energy as ever, with our desire renewed to keep on having fun and enabling our fans to have fun, getting better every day to be able to give the eternal homage that The Beatles deserve.
From The Cavern to you…
The Blisters.