Acclaimed photographer and former Daily Post picture editor Stephen Shakeshaft tells Peter Elson how Liverpool’s people and the fast-changing backdrop of the city inspired his latest exhibition
IT WAS the singular weekly appearance of a colleague which alerted the 17-year-old Stephen Shakeshaft to a seismic shift in worldwide popular culture, back in the early 1960s.
“Sharing the sub-editors’ bench with me was John, arrived on Wednesdays in a silver mohair suit,” says Stephen, who started as a Daily Post & Echo copy-boy.
“He told me he was on at the Cavern Club performing as one of The Escorts pop group.
“I was fascinated, so I went down myself and it opened up my life to what lunchtimes were like at that time in the city.
“You could walk along Mathew Street and hear this booming sound from the gratings.
“Everyone wore duffel coats, queuing in this cobbled street, filled with fruit boxes.
“You went down through this old iron door into a very confined space, so crowded the manager Raymond McFall told me to hang onto his jacket.
“There was an incredible atmosphere with a throng of kids dancing as if they were Velcro-ed together and the walls were pouring with condensation.
“As soon as I got my camera out, the lens misted over and the flash-lights short-circuited in my pockets. This taught me a lesson to put the camera in a drying cabinet before going down there.”
This just after The Beatles had left Liverpool, but the Cavern’s allure still attracted big stars like Petula Clark and Sandy Shaw.
“I can’t imagine kids going dancing now in a warehouse basement at lunchtimes, but it showed the city’s amazing energy.”
