Description
The 1st line on the jacket blurb translates as, “Another book about the Beatles ?” This excellent reportage photography book was shot in the same year The Beatles performed their last show in their home city. This book documents the vacuum created by their departure and the fleeting moment when the world’s media descended “Mersey Sound” had the world’s media descended upon it. There’s plenty of shots inside the Cavern club and The Clayton Squares loading in their gear in Matthew Street. Liverpool “beat” poet Adrian Henri is featured. The heavy contrast B&W images of musicians and poets present a vivid depiction of bygone era. The accompanying 45rpm features the Clayton Squares recorded live at the Cavern with The Hideaways at the Sink Club on the B-side. Surprisingly there was very little published on the Cavern at the time (beyond the magazine special On the Scene At the Cavern Club -by Beatles publicist Tony Barrow under the nom de plume Alistair Griffin.)
Seuss, Dommermuth and Maier produced two further books in the 1960s, Prag in 1967 and London Scene ( pub simultaneously as London Pop Gesehen in 1969. Regardless, I’ve never seen copies being offered for sale based on the printing.
The title was published in Germany and the Netherlands in 3 known editions (see below) but sadly no English language version exists. As with the their follow up books, the first edition was probably the Büchergilde Gutenberg edition (Book Club), before being licensed to Europaische verlagsanstalt.
• German Language edition : 1965 Büchergilde Gutenberg (Gutenberg Book Guild-club) Printed :Frankfurt am Main. No credit on cover, only title page & BG2 on 45rpm & sleeve (instead of EVA101) (Footnote ;BG1 was compilation of field recordings of bird song! )
• German Language edition : 1965 Europaische verlagsanstalt (European publishing house)- credited on cover & EVA101 on 45rpm
• Dutch Language Edition : 1966 Europaring credited on cover but the book and 45rpm Europaische verlagsanstalt & EVA101 credits.
Copies of this book are regularly offered for sale without the cover or the record. Several copies we’ve handled have had water damaged dustjackets, enough to suggest that copies were later distributed after being stored in a damp warehouse. Besides finding a DJ in decent condition, there’s also the problem of matching the correct record and sleeve. Clearly a lot of dust jackets , sleeves and records have been switched by book dealers over the year while attempting to composite complete copies- without observing the fine detail.
Also the 45prm EP has been separated from the books and included in record collections….
Clayton Squares – A1 Watch Your Step; A2 -Hey, Good-Looking; A3 -Tell Me How Do You Feel;
Hideaways – B1-Black Night; B2 – Momma, Keep Your Big Mouth Shut.
- Hard cover : 100 pages, 20 text including a foreword by Mike Evans (Clayton Squares player and later in The Liverpool Scene with Adrian Henri) & 80 B&W photos
- Book dimensions : 20.5 x 20.5 cm
- Publisher : See above
- Language: German or Dutch
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