Mersey Beat: September 6 1962

John, George, Stu and I used to play at a Strip Club in Upper Parliament Street, backing Janice the Stripper. At the time we wore little lilac jackets...or purple jackets, or something. Well, we played behind Janice and naturally we looked at her...the audience looked at her, everybody looked at her, just sort of normal. At the end of the act, she would turn round and...well, we were all young lads, we'd never seen anything like it before, and all blushed...four blushing red-faced lads.

Janice brought sheets of music for us to play all her arrangements. She gave us a bit of Beethoven and the Spanish Fire Dance. So in the end we said 'We can't read music, sorry, but instead of the Spanish Fire Dance we can play The Harry Lime Cha-Cha, which we've arranged ourselves, and instead of Beethoven you can have 'Moonglow' or 'September Song' - take your pick...and instead of the 'Sabre Dance' we'll give you 'Ramrod.' So that's what she got. She seemed quite satisfied anyway.

The Strip club wasn't an important chapter in our lives, but it was an interesting one.
Text ©Bill Harry/Mersey Beat Limited. Photograph ©Francis Michael (Michael McCartney)

Editor's note: Paul used to regularly send letters to me when he traveled and I decided to include some excerpts in Mersey Beat. This amusing piece was illustrated by a photograph of Paul credited to Francis Michael. This was actually Paul's brother Mike and was his first photograph to be printed in a newspaper.
The strip club appearance took place in July 1960 at the New Cabaret Artistes club at 174a Upper Parliament Street. Strip clubs were illegal in Liverpool at the time as the city had a Watch Committee which strictly enforced moral laws. The club, which had a short life, was run by Lord Woodbine and Allan Williams and Williams had hired a big-busted stripper from Manchester called Janice. Janice refused to perform unless she had a live group backing her, so Williams hired the four-piece Silver Beatles to provide her backing for one week. The group didn't have a drummer with them and comprised John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Stuart Sutcliffe.
I doubt if John and Stuart were red-faced, they spent many an hour drawing from nude models in the art college Life Rooms and actually found it boring.

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