WHEN Liverpool musicologist Spencer Leigh's book Let's Go Down the Cavern was published in 1984, it was one of the first to examine in detail the story of Merseybeat. Publishers Vermilion printed just 5,000 copies, however, and decided not to reprint. Since then it has achieved cult status, and although priced at £5.95 at the time sells for around £40 at Beatles Conventions. Now, 20 years on, Leigh - who had got back the rights to the original - has decided to take another look at it. Although his new publication Twist and Shout! reprints some of the original material, it is bigger, with new material and a different attitude. "I was a little on the naive side when I wrote that first book," he admits. "I believed a lot of what people told me. So this is a different book and twice as long." It includes interviews with people conducted since the original, including one with Raymond Jones, the man credited with starting the Beatle craze by stepping into the NEMS record shop and asking for a copy of the Beatles' My Bonnie.. Brian Epstein, who ran the shop did not have a copy, and decided to investigate - and the whole Beatles business began. Jones was living in Spain and had never told his story before. But Leigh tracked him down through a friend of the late Bob Wooler, the one-time disc jockey and compere at the Cavern. "Jones was annoyed that people had been turning up at Beatles conventions pretending that they were him." Leigh has also taken a trip to Hamburg where the Beatles and other groups first made their names. When he wrote the first book, he had never been. It proved something of an eye-opener. "I realised Hamburg could never get a tourist industry on the back of the groups, as the area they worked in is the sleaziest place in the city. The site of the Star Club where the Beatles played is now actually a brothel. "And we worry about the fact that the NEMS shop has been replaced by an Ann Summers store and does not have a plaque!" r Twist and Shout! features hundreds of interviews, most of them on tape and conducted for Leigh's Radio Merseyside programmes. The well-organised Leigh transcribes all his taped interviews so they are easier to access. The book - his sixteenth - has been published by Southport crime writer Ron Ellis by his Nirvana Books publishing house.The jacket design has been done by Southport artist Gloria Hardman. Meanwhile, Leigh is working on his next book, a review of the first 1,000 number one hits in Britain. * TWIST and Shout, by Spencer Leigh, is published by Nirvana Books at £14.99. | 
