The Best Of Fellas. The Story of Bob Wooler – Liverpool’s
First DJ
Bob Wooler - Cavern DJ: Merely Spinning Discs And Nearly Spilling
The Beans.
“As
Beatles fans around the world eagerly await the publication of
BBC Music Journalist Spencer Leigh’s Book ‘The Best
Of Fellas. The Story of Bob Wooler – Liverpool’s First
DJ’ : here is an article which gives us an insight into
the former Cavern DJ’s take on all things Beatle related.
Spencer’s book is out in the shops on November 7th 2002;
- and as a taster of things to come, Liverpool writer and Beatles
fan and aficionado Joe Robinson recalls his own encounters at
the home of Bob Wooler. In a fascinating mixture of witty repartee
and inner strife, Bob struggled to tell his life story by giving
vent to his feelings, whilst trying to keeping both his reputation
and his sanity intact.”
I first met former Cavern DJ Bob Wooler in 1993 in Liverpool,
on the way to an evening concert at the Royal Court Theatre, performed
in recognition of Bob and Allan Williams’ joint contribution
to Mersey Beat. (See page 2 for photograph of Allan and Bob relaxing
together beforehand in the Shakespeare Public House in Williamson
Square. There’s also another of Allan, the Beatles first
promoter/manager, at the after show get-together in the Royal
Court Theatre bar. I’m the one standing to Allan’s
right, - with the long hair and grey shirt).
Typically, at an evening thrown in his honour, Bob Wooler, the
father of Mersey Beat and the only man to introduce the (pre)
Fab Four live on stage over 400 times, had already slipped away
almost unnoticed, before this group photograph was taken.
His health was already quite poor, though he had lost none of
his proverbial wit and charm, - and I remember the banter which
both Bob and Allan were so famous for, flowed along with the beer
and spirits that night. However, Bob could be quite curmudgeonly
and reticent when it came to reciting his anecdotes in public,
preferring mostly to listen and react, with a mixture of comic
disbelief and dry witted exasperation, - at Allan’s melodramatic,
sometimes inaccurate, but always entertaining take on all things
Beatle related.
I bumped into Bob and Allan again on August bank holiday 1994,
as they sat outside at a table sipping what appeared to be white
wine spritzers, chatting happily with the assembled crowds and
fans at the Mathew Street Festival. However, I did not speak to
him again until he phoned me at home in the Spring of 1997.
He had toyed with the idea of writing his memoirs for some time,
and had written various short articles for books such as Phil
Thompson’s The Best Of Cellars, given interviews to magazines
such as Record Collector, - as well as to the likes of the much
respected BBC music journalist and radio presenter Spencer Leigh.
Therefore, in view of his worsening health, the time seemed
ripe for him to pen a more expansive piece whilst he still could.
Having drafted up the beginnings of a foreword to a book about
the many Mersey Beat groups on the 60’s scene, by the Hamburg
based writer Manfred Koeman, - Bob then phoned to ask would I
help him amend and finish the piece.
This initial contact had been arranged by John Seddon, a family
friend of mine and a loyal and trusted friend of Bob Wooler. John
himself had produced records in the mid 1960’s, and had
been an associate of Teddy Taylor, from the Liverpool group Kingsize
Taylor and the Dominoes. He was also a past associate of Ringo
Starr, and was known to both George Harrison and Paul McCartney,
so when John suggested me to Bob as someone who might be able
to help him in this way, the former Cavern DJ tentatively listened.
Bob had always been very wary of professional journalists’
attempts to get him to ‘spill the beans’, and perhaps
my rather naive attempts to get him to do a bit of the same, seemed
perverse enough to persuade him to give me a chance. I had written
a poem called ‘Some Think Of Peace’, - a tribute to
John Lennon, which Bob liked, and which had been published in
The Liverpool Echo Lennon Memorial edition, a week after John’s
death, so maybe that swung it.
Bob was no mean writer himself, and his memory, despite his age
and his failing health, was impeccable. He was however prone to
bouts of insomnia, and he regularly tuned into the early morning
BBC Radio 2 60’s music programme hosted by DJ Brian Matthew,
where he could listen to some of the same discs he’d spun
at The Cavern. It was also interesting to note that he sometimes
spoke passionately about bygone events as if they had only happened
yesterday. When he did this his eyes seemed to mist over, his
gaze slackened, and he was back amongst the ‘jive hive’
promoters and venues which he had to a large extent, dominated
like some semi-benevolent godfather.
Anyway, my non-professional status as an adult education tutor
and cultural historian who writes about popular and working peoples'
culture, seemed far enough removed from the realm of professional
music ‘hack’. He told me that he had turned down requests
from such famous and infamous Beatle authors as Geoffrey Guiliano
and Albert Goldman. Now this chance to actually talk to him in
his own home about his role in the 60’s music scene in Liverpool,
was one I was not going to miss.
It was John Seddon himself who took me down in his car to Bob’s
small and cluttered apartment, in the rather bohemian district
of wine bars and bistros in Lark Lane, Liverpool. He reintroduced
me to Bob, and at one point both John and I went round to Bob’s
old flat to gather up the last of his possessions, since he had
not long moved into the new place. However, my first impression
of this new place was of brown cardboard boxes piled high to the
ceiling in Bob’s back room. There were only two rooms in
total, and one of these was packed with boxes seemingly full of
all sorts of potentially interesting items, books and memorabilia,
and what can only be described as piles of newspaper cuttings
and junk!
However, I was excited, and a little awed, since even a well-respected
and knowledgeable Music Journalist such as Spencer Leigh himself,
was pointedly never invited into Bob's private domain. Yet here
I was, chatting to him over a cup of tea about Messrs. Lennon
and McCartney! Once we had settled down, John Seddon left, and
I had an opportunity to discuss and review Bob’s hand-written
manuscript. We started by sorting through some of his memorabilia,
- and I listened as he began to recount a few of his wealth of
anecdotes and often controversial but knowledgeable opinions.
Firstly, Bob seemed at pains to stress that this Mersey Beat
based foreword was not primarily to be about The Beatles, and
this was a thread that ran through our various conversations together.
In spite of this, his talk was full of references to the Fab Four,
especially John and Paul. Secondly, though I had rather optimistically
brought a tape-recorder, I very quickly realised that if he wouldn’t
allow Spencer Leigh that kind of free reign, then my chances of
taping our conversation were non-existent.
This was despite John Seddon’s previous pleas that the
use of either a cassette recorder or a typed transcript of the
conversation was a necessary evil. Bob, undaunted by his friend’s
request, stubbornly continued to discount both options.
Before turning to the manuscript itself, which was largely hand-written
on pieces of lined A4 size paper, and carefully sellotaped together
like some semi-sacred scroll; - Bob opened a large journal cum
diary. He had kept this on a daily basis for some years. ‘I
take down notes on everyone I meet, what was said and what happened.’
he remarked, ‘then when other people tell me what they thought
happened, I can give them the definitive version.’
This was typical of Bob, a stickler for the truth as he saw it,
‘warts and all.’ Since both his recollection of events
and his avid documentation of other peoples’ words and behaviour
were both accurate and concise, I for one was not going to argue
with him at this point. Moreover, his exasperation with Allan
William’s often loose tongued and colourful tales about
‘Mythew St’ as Bob called it, sometimes hid his own
exasperation with himself.
The real truth of the matter after all was said and done, was
that Bob Wooler could not always bring himself to face up to the
truth about his own views on The Beatles, or the growth and demise
of the Mersey Beat Sound. Perhaps this explains his otherwise
puzzling reluctance to share these views with others. ‘Never
mind about spilling the beans.’ He quipped. ‘There’ll
be some blood spilt on the carpet after I’ve finished…
And if this ever gets published, they’ll run me out of town!’
Not usually one to use hyperbole where the mere truth would simply
do, Bob still seemed to leave his interviewees with a sense that
what he hadn’t said was just as important as what he had.
Turning to his foreword for the Mersey Beat manuscript, he remarked
that Manfred Koeman’s book was ‘well researched, though
a little dull in places. - It needs spicing up a bit.’ He
added, despite the fact that he thought that the ‘spice’
in his own tale would not curry favour with either his Liverpool
based contemporaries, or some of those pop personalities who lived
further afield. Stuck between the devil sitting on his shoulder
urging him to publish and be damned, and the deep blue sea which
urged a cool head and circumspect caution, Bob continued to ‘umm
and ah’, a bit like a frightened rabbit caught in the headlights
of a fast approaching motor car.
Nevertheless, in the privacy of his own home, he opened up a bit
more, and by now he was showing me his superb collection of original
black and white photographs of many of the Mersey Beat groups.
He wasn’t sure which of these to use for the foreword, and
as it was, he was spoilt for choice. The city authorities responsible
for the maintenance of The Cavern Quarter in Mathew Street, recently
got together with Cavern City Tours to produce ‘The Cavern
Wall Of Fame’. Much of the information they gleaned about
the groups who had actually played at The Cavern, was taken directly
from Bob Wooler himself.
I really hope that these photos, along with all his other memorabilia,
are given the respect they deserve. They should be archived properly
by the likes of Dr. Sara Cohen and her colleagues at The Liverpool
University Institute of Popular Music. It was a piece of historical
research by Dr. Cohen herself, which led Bob Wooler to believe
that the 60’s scene on Merseyside might not have been quite
as ‘special’ as it often seems in retrospect. It was
this ability not to look at the past through rose tinted glasses,
which both interested and troubled him. For someone whose frame
of mind was to hold onto and retain vast remnants of the past,
this was quite a feat.
In Dr. Cohen’s case, academic research had shown that the
number of beat groups on Merseyside during the 1960’s was
actually less than the number of local bands who performed here
during later decades. Consequently, Bob was very sceptical about
those who claimed that the Mersey Beat scene was anymore dynamic
or prolific than any other period. However, he was the first to
admit that ‘If it hadn’t been for The Beatles, no-one
would be interested in talking to me or anybody else about the
music scene in Liverpool, then or now.’
Bob was also quite adamant that the beat scenes in Newcastle,
Manchester, Birmingham and London were just as vibrant as Liverpool.
He didn’t wholly buy into the ‘seaport-returning sailors-cunard
yanks-chirpy, comical scouse’ argument which stated that
Liverpool, and Liverpool alone, was responsible for this explosion
of youth led, British based popular culture.
This tendency to underplay some of the popular myths that surrounded
The Beatles and their musical peers in Liverpool, also led Bob
to put forward his alternative to the ‘Hamburg made The
Beatles’ hypothesis churned out by all and sundry concerned.
These included Bill Harry, Tony Sheridan, Allan Williams, and
many others, - and even The Beatles themselves.
Bob’s reasoning included the fact that he had heard The
Beatles play in Liverpool before their Teutonic escapades. In
his opinion, all the major ingredients for success were already
there. By plying their trade in a tough, northern seaport to audiences
that could be as demanding and as cynical as any. These young
beat musicians were fashioning a sound which was uniquely English
and Liverpudlian in tone, albeit derived from their r’n’
b and rock and roll heroes across the Atlantic.
All one can say is that Bob certainly did not have a ‘tin’
ear. His vast experience of listening to literally hundreds of
local groups, along with his detailed knowledge of many of the
other great song-writers of the 20th Century, surely makes his
opinion more valid than most.
He was also of the opinion that general interest in The Beatles
was slightly on the wane just prior to the death of John Lennon,
though he never fully explained why he thought this was true.
I argued that continued record sales told a different story, that
rumours of a Fab Four reunion were rife in the late 70’s,
and that interest in John Lennon’s comeback was global before
he died. Bob wasn’t convinced. ‘Death’ he concluded,
like some latter day Sherlock Holmes, ‘ has a curious way
of boosting an artists career.’
Though the logic of his argument stood up, I think The Beatles
may have been the exception that proved the rule. Anyway, John’s
death certainly galvanised the City Of Liverpool, since the eternal
and Lennonesque truth ‘that everybody loves you when you’re
sixfoot underground’ was as true of Merseyside as anywhere
else.
Another of the ‘bees in his bonnet’ concerned debunking
the myth of Pete Best’s sacking. Since we all know the ‘official’
version of events, Bob seemed pretty sure that it wasn’t
Best’s drumming but his looks which finally led to his dismissal
from the group. As Pete was the most popular with the girl fans,
‘A Jeff Chandler look-alike.’ according to Bob, it
suited both John and Paul to have him turfed out by Brian Epstein
on the grounds of his poor playing. Bob’s logic followed
familiar lines, since even Ringo wasn’t allowed to drum
on their first single ‘Love Me Do’, and his drumming
at this stage in The Beatles career, surely couldn’t have
been that much better.
Turning to The Beatles music itself. I know he thought ‘She
Loves You’ was the perfect ‘Pop’ single, with
it’s brevity, directness and driving beat. However, as Spencer
Leigh later confirmed in his very dignified but witty eulogy at
Bob Wooler’s funeral in Liverpool earlier this year, Bob
wasn’t enthused with everything that adorned the Lennon
and McCartney catalogue. He much preferred the crafted, well-structured
almost neo-classical offerings of Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin,
George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Rogers and Hart, Oscar Hammerstein
and the Brill Building songwriters.
In addition, anyone who casually browsed through Bob’s collection
of books, would have immediately become aware of his intense interest
in the idioms of Tin Pan Alley and their ilk. As songs, I think
there can be little doubt their offerings generally owed much
more to a creative process that stays within the rules of metre
and conventional balladic sentiment.
However, all four Beatles were writing and re-writing the rules
of the recording process itself, and I think this is reflected
in many of their innovative pieces, where the excitement of experimentation
is obvious in the sublime optimism of the harmonies and subtle
but unconventional chord changes. Bob was surely aware of all
this, though he never said so to me.
He did like Paul’s ‘Here, There And Everywhere’,
and this was played at his funeral. He was also a great admirer
of the Lennon song ‘Girl’. Yet, John’s ‘I
Am The Walrus’ puzzled him with its pseudo-psychedelic stream
of consciousness. ‘I don’t get it, Joe!’ he
complained, when he asked me for my own favourite Fab Four song
and I responded with ‘Walrus’. Even one of Paul’s
ballads came in for a pasting. ‘The Long And Winding Road?’
He exclaimed almost painfully. ‘Now what’s that all
about? It certainly doesn’t go anywhere.’ God knows
what he thought of ‘Free As A Bird’ and ‘Real
Love’, - I didn’t dare ask!
As for The Beatles involvement with illegal substances. Bob had
been aware of this very early on in their career. He recounted
to me the time shortly after they had become stars in Britain,
when Andrew ‘Loog’ Oldham, then manager of The Rolling
Stones, shared a Liverpool taxi cab with Bob on the way to The
Cavern, and also offered to share ‘a reefer as big as a
smoking chimney stack.’ Bob apparently refused this act
of kindness. As he did one day in the Grapes Pub in Mathew Street
when John Lennon slid ‘ a tube of uppers’ across the
table. Again, the Cavern DJ demurred, and John might well have
forgotten the incident altogether, had Bob not bumped into him
a day or two later. ‘Travelling by tube today are we John?’
Bob asked. He never told me whether John Lennon replied.
Since Bob’s move from railway clerk to full time DJ was
first prompted by an offer of work by local impresario Allan Williams,
you might have thought that Bob would have been eternally grateful
to Allan. Not a bit of it! A week after he took up his new position,
the club burnt down. Bob Wooler remained convinced that various
clubs which mysteriously self-combusted around the same period,
were just ‘Molatov cocktails’ waiting to happen.
In the weeks and months that followed my first visit to Bob Wooler’s
house, I visited him on another three occasions, staying chatting
for hours on end, and occasionally breaking off for a bacon-roll
and pot of tea at a nearby café. He also continued to phone
me at home, sometimes reciting his latest writings to me and asking
my opinion. Sometimes, just phoning up for a chat.
It was during one of these calls that he asked me to draft up
an article myself about the work we were doing together, though
he wanted me to send it to him first for proof reading and approval,
before giving it to the press. His idea was to gauge what the
potential media interest and reaction might be to a book of his
own. He also asked me to bring down my word-processor, and at
one point we really seemed to be moving forward with his foreword,
if you’ll pardon the pun.
However, as Spencer Leigh was soon to find out for himself in
the year that followed, working with Bob at close quarters could
be a time consuming and frustrating experience. He chopped and
changed, adapted and amended his still hand-written manuscript
so many times, it all got too much for him. In the end, he’d
screw up his eyes and peer at the manuscript as if it was some
ancient and indecipherable Egyptian hieroglyphic. Then he’d
put it down on the table, hold his head in despair and curse under
his breath. When things were going well, he’d chuckle and
his eyes would light up. ‘It’ll be drinks all round
in Lark Lane when we finish this…I’ll have to give
Manfred a call and get him over to celebrate.’
Executive Honorary Members:- Sir
Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr. Executive Patrons:- Sir George Martin,
Julian Lennon. Patron:- Astrid Kirchherr. Honorary Members:- Cynthia
Lennon, Pete Best, Yoko Ono, Gay Byrne, Geoff Rhind, Gerry Marsden, Allan
Williams, Richard Lester, Harry Prytherch, (The Original Quarrymen):-
Rod Davis, Colin Hanton, Eric Griffiths, Len Garry, Pete Shotton.
E-mail us at: beatlesireland(at)utvinternet.com (Please note: To stop spam please copy email address and replace (at) with @)
“As
Beatles fans around the world eagerly await the publication of
BBC Music Journalist Spencer Leigh’s Book ‘The Best
Of Fellas. The Story of Bob Wooler – Liverpool’s First
DJ’ : here is an article which gives us an insight into
the former Cavern DJ’s take on all things Beatle related.
