Alan Sytner, Cavern Club Founder, passes

Alan Sytner, founder of the Cavern Club, has died. He was the owner when John Lennon first met him in the 1950s and helped the Beatles get their first break.

There was nothing terribly appealing about Liverpool's subterranean tunnels - used as air raid shelters during the war - when the jazz enthusiast Alan Sytner first stepped inside them in the late 1950s.

But despite their damp brick walls and narrow archways, they were to inspire Mr Sytner - whose death on holiday in France was announced yesterday - to establish the club that helped to propel the Beatles to fame. His concept for the club came when he visited the jazz district in Paris and stumbled upon Le Caveau, a warren of interconnecting cellars which were small, damp but atmospheric by virtue of the way that the sound of a trumpet resonated around the walls.

He decided to convert the tunnels beneath 8-10 Mathew Street into a Liverpudlian equivalent, and named it the Cavern Club.

John Lennon, the teenage leader of a Liverpool skiffle group called the Quarrymen, met Mr Sytner when the band played at his golf club. Soon afterwards, on 7 August 1957, the Quarrymen were booked at the Cavern Club for an evening performance billed as a "skiffle session". The band began with "Come Go With Me" but Lennon then launched into "Hound Dog", followed by "Blue Suede Shoes". Mr Sytner famously sent a note on stage reading "Cut out the bloody rock!" (Paul McCartney missed this session as he was at a scout camp.)

May he rest in peace.