What would you do if you had enough money to fulfill a dream? Waukesha software entrepreneur Dave Meister told Libby Collins about his plans to recreate the legendary Cavern Club where the Beatles played before they were famous. Listen in the player above.
A partial transcript is provided below, courtesy of eCourt Reporters.
LIBBY COLLINS: I want to talk a little bit about the Cavern Club. For anybody out there who isn’t familiar, that is where the Beatles played in Liverpool, what, almost 300 times. It’s legendary in the music business. You decided to make it to the specifications of the original club. How daunting a task was that? Where did you begin?
DAVE MEISTER: Well, in the Hartland location, we couldn’t make it the full size to the specifications because the ceiling was two feet lower than what it should be to make it that way, so we just scaled it down. And so now some people say, hey, this is a man cave, I’d like to have it in my basement. And I said good luck, because it took four years to build that and put it together that way. Because it’s not just making it look like it, it’s the authentic brick and it’s the authentic sounds and stage, so we have that.
LIBBY COLLINS: What kind of brick did you use?
DAVE MEISTER: Handmade brick that we bought from a local brick company here that they brought in from the east coast. And so, we had that, and then we had Dennis Grimm and his two sons, they’re masons, but they’re artists, and they made it happen. And there’s a little plaque down there that says Dennis Grimm and his sons that were there to do it.
LIBBY COLLINS: It’s a relatively small stage. I mean, the original Cavern Club, it wasn’t a massive stage. What are we talking about in dimensions?
DAVE MEISTER: It’s about 40 feet wide by 50 feet long.
LIBBY COLLINS: Okay.
DAVE MEISTER: That’s what the club is, haven’t been there yet, and so I did the best that I could from online, you know, what the specifications were, and I tried to take that. And so, Let It Be, which was the club in Waukesha, that is —
LIBBY COLLINS: This is the third club now we’re talking about.
DAVE MEISTER: This is the third one that is full scale of what the Cavern was. But of course, in Liverpool, they had tunnels going here and there, I don’t have that, I have just the Cavern itself with the arches that would have been tunnels that went underground.