The Cavern Club in Liverpool, the Star Club in
Hamburg and Shea Stadium in New York are all landmarks in the history of
The Beatles. But now a new shrine is to be added to the list: the Fox and
Hounds in Caversham. The run-down, little-known pub on the outskirts of
Reading, Berkshire, has been revealed as the venue where, on Saturday,
April 23, 1960, John Lennon and Paul McCartney played their only gig as
a double act, calling themselves The Nerk Twins – in front of an
audience of just a few people.
Strumming acoustic guitars and singing without microphones,
the teenage duo perched on bar stools in the tiny tap room to perform a
set that included an old Les Paul and Mary Ford hit, The World Is Waiting
For The Sunrise, as well as Be Bop A Lula and other rock’n’roll
and country standards. They reprised the concert the following lunchtime,
to the same resounding apathy from the locals.
Rookie rockers: Paul McCartney and John Lennon in 1960,
soon after their not-so-successful gig at the Fox and Hounds
‘At first, nobody went into the tap room to watch them,’
recalled Mike Robbins, the then landlord of the pub. ‘My regulars were
in the other bar, saying “Who are these Nerk Twins, then?”’
In fact, the two future stars had been playing for years
under a variety of names, including The Quarrymen, The Silver Beetles,
The Silver Beats and, just a few weeks after the Fox and Hounds gig, The
Beatles. The unlikely performance happened because Mike’s wife Betty was
Paul McCartney’s cousin. The couple had both worked as Butlins Redcoats
before taking on the pub and the teenage Lennon and McCartney were keen
to get their advice.
‘It was the Easter school holidays and John and I had
hitchhiked down from Liverpool to help out in the pub,’ Paul McCartney
recalled. ‘We generally dossed around for a week and worked behind the
bar. Then Mike said that me and John should play there on the Saturday
night. So we made our own posters and put them up in the pub: “Saturday
Night – Live Appearance – The Nerk Twins”.
‘It was the smallest gig I’ve ever
done. We were only playing to a roomful, a small, throbbing roomful.’
Now a hunt is on to find one of those hand-drawn posters.
Beatles memorabilia expert Paul Wane said: ‘It’s a long shot but you never
know what’s in somebody’s attic. The fact that these posters were hand-drawn
by Paul and John would make them a fantastic find. The most money ever
paid for a Beatles poster was £75,000 for the Shea Stadium concert.
A poster from the Fox and Hounds would easily attract as much interest.
I estimate it would sell for between £80,000 and £100,000."
Stunned: Current landlord Tony Gomez had no idea Lennon and McCartney
had played at the pub
Beatles expert Bill Heckle, owner of The Cavern Club in
Liverpool, said last night: ‘The Fox and Hounds is irrefutably a pub of
huge historical significance. As the only venue ever to host a public performance
by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, it should be a world-famous pub. With
proper investment it should become a destination for Beatles fans and general
music fans. ‘In Liverpool, a nerk is a derogatory term for somebody completely
without street cred, but this place has real credibility as where John
and Paul cemented their musical partnership. I think it should be renamed
The Nerks’ Head in their honour.’
Although the gig seemed destined to be just a couple of
lads with guitars singing to little reaction, Paul McCartney credits the
pub session for giving him and Lennon a crucial lesson in creating the
Beatles stage act that would make girls scream around the world.
‘My cousin used to tread the boards – he was a bit showbizzy,’
he recalled. ‘He’d been an entertainments manager hosting talent contests
at Butlins and he’d been on the radio. He asked us what song we were going
to open with and we said Be Bop A Lula. He told us, “No, it’s too slow.
This is a pub on a Saturday night, you need to open with something fast
and instrumental. What else have you got?”
‘We said, “Well, we do The World Is Waiting For The Sunrise’
– I played the melody and John did the rhythm – so we played him that and
he said, “Perfect, start with that, then do Be Bop A Lula.”
‘This was our introduction to showbiz wisdom here and
I would remember his advice years later when we were organising The Beatles
shows.’
The potential of Lennon and McCartney was, however, lost
on the Fox and Hounds locals. Mike Robbins remembered: ‘When Paul and John
had gone, one of the locals said to me, “When are you having them Nerk
Twins on again, then? They were a load of bloody rubbish but they brought
a bit of life into the pub.”’
The Fox and Hounds’ current landlord, 57-year-old Tony
Gomez, who has been running the pub for 25 years, was completely unaware
of the hidden history of his tap room.
He said: ‘When I heard that Paul McCartney and John Lennon
played here, I thought people were having me on. I guess this news will
put the pub on the map – and a lot of local people are going to be looking
for those posters.’
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