The atmosphere was electric at Liverpool’s Cafe Berlin. A multitude of search lights swept the small stage, revealing guitars leaning lazily against amplifiers, microphones, foot pedals and the mighty drum kit at centre-back, proclaiming its owner’s name: SALVO.

The expectant crowd screamed at every illumination; fooled into believing they had caught a glimpse of movement in their hopefulness. This was Salvo’s home crowd. This was the city in which they were gods. The lights swept endlessly on; the hushed voices were near fever-pitch. Dry ice filtered up through the lights, cloaking the equipment in an eerie blanket of fog. The tension could be felt, prickling against the skin, sending adrenaline pumping furiously, as an audible hush fell over the audience.

Just off stage stood four young men, early twenties, dragging on cigarettes, drinking from beer cans and chatting amiably without any visible signs of stress.

‘Best think about going on, I s’pose,’ said Mal, in no apparent hurry himself to forsake his beer.

The others nodded in agreement, without making any attempt to move. The search lights flickered against the curtain, in vain.

‘Come on, then,’ said Mal, twisting his foot in nonchalant fashion on a cigarette stub. His companions followed suit. ‘Who wants to go out first?’

There was a general murmur of indifference, and Mal stepped out through the curtain, his colleagues following in his wake. Their shadows cut through the fog and caused a ripple of excited murmurings in front of them. The spotlight fell on Mal and the murmur at once rose to a sudden crescendo of screams. Baz struck up a familiar riff on lead guitar and the stage was immediately illuminated. Mal - and a chorus of hundreds - launched into ‘Heartstop’.

It was an inspired decision on the part of the lead singer to kick off with their best selling single. The crowd were with them all the way and they played their hearts out, assured of the fact that this inauspicious little venue was about to play host to their best gig ever. ‘A dive,’ Mal had earlier complained, ‘no room to swing a cat.’

And now, as he glanced across at Baz, caught in the throws of a guitar solo, he saw that he hadn’t been far wrong. The bar was miraculously within an arm’s stretch of the stage. Mal duly stretched, and gulped down a beer in record time, before resuming his passionate rendition of ‘Heartstop’.

Sweeping their powerful way to the final all-conquering conclusion, the band stepped back to accept the tumultuous applause of their audience. Baz spotted the bar and accepted a pint.

‘Ta,’ said Mal, ‘this next one is, um, ‘Shopkeeper’.’

The audience screamed as he embraced the microphone once more and belted out another much-loved favourite. Baz tangoed stage-left with his guitar and availed of the bar. The song faded out with the mournful tones of Mal.

‘Ta,’ he said, above screams of “I LOVE YOU!”, ‘This next one is called, um, ‘Tears’.’ His head nodded rhythmically as he attempted to count himself in, but his band was not yet ready for him; distracted, as they were, by the bar. He shook the mop of hair back from his face and grinned. He’d been dead set against this venue from the on-set, visualising it as their downfall. But not only was this turning out to be a great gig, the blessed venue now had more good points than bad. ‘I keep saying um,’ he told his fans, killing time while Baz wetted his palette. ‘’Tears’.’

Baz struck up the unmistakable riff of ‘Heartstop’.

‘Hang on a mo’,’ Mal told his adoring audience, all singing the opening line of ‘Tears’ or cheering at the unexpected repeat of ‘Heartstop’. ‘Baz is a bit bevvied!’ He stopped, surprised by the difficulty of this last sentence, and by his ability to actually say it. ‘Baz is a bit bevvied!’ he repeated proudly. ‘We’re doing ‘Tears’, mate.’

Baz nodded and picked out ‘Heartstop’ once more.

‘Da-da, da-da, da-da,’ Mal sang instructively.

Baz, brow furrowed in concentration, matched the rhythm with his ‘Heartstop’ riff. His colleagues simply ignored him and played louder. The audience sang along so heartily that the mismatched riff was inaudible.

‘Ta,’ said Mal, ‘this is, um... I’ve got to stop saying um... this is ‘Drudgery’.’

Baz struck up his ‘Heartstop’ riff. The bass guitar over-powered him and ‘Drudgery’ ebbed along relatively unaffected. The crowd roared.

‘Ta,’ said Mal.

The ‘Heartstop’ riff was contagious; as was the unquenchable thirst of the band. The bass guitar echoed the riff of the lead throughout the next number. No one seemed to notice, as Mal interlaced his erudite lyrics with a succession of ‘ta’s and ‘um’s.

Half of the lyrics of the next number were somehow lost in the euphoria of a good gig. Mal, the model of professionalism, confidently repeated the first verse, knowing that his own decisiveness would belie the doubts of his audience. He floated on their chants and shouts, which seemed to be unlike any he had heard before.

The persistence of Baz’s refrain led Salvo to the conviction that they were to play out with their chart topper. Mal announced, um, ‘Flowers’, and managed to fit the lyrics into the tune played throughout the evening by Baz and now the rest of the band.

‘That’s all, ta, goodnight,’ announced Mal, as Baz gently played out. He peered at the crowd, barely distinguishable under cloak of darkness. Groups of people appeared to be no more than gaping holes in the ranks of devoted fans. Too many bevvies, thought Mal dizzily; too, too many.

Baz and the others were already unstrapping guitars and laying drumsticks to rest. Waving to the crowd, the band left the stage; leaving the red lights glowing on amps as a sign of the mandatory encore to come.

‘We’ll play out with ‘Petal’, then straight in to ‘Whistler’,’ Mal said hurriedly, as they took quick drags on a shared cigarette then turned to walk back on stage. The shouts from the audience seemed deafening and unreal.

‘Christ; this is better than the best,’ Mal said in awe.

As one, they walked back out to their places and picked up their instruments. As three, they launched into ‘Petal’. Baz played ‘Heartstop’. The audience clapped and shouted. To Mal it seemed like a dream, as though everything was happening in slow motion. The claps, the shouts; all on 33rpm. He ad-libbed old Doors classics into the tail-end of ‘Whistler’, because they seemed to fit. The clapping grew slower still; the shouts less general.

‘Ta, that’s all,’ said Mal, ‘I’m too bevvied up anyway!’

‘Thank Christ for that,’ muttered the guy from the N.M.E. in the second row.

No one laughed at his quip. Most had left several songs earlier. Those who had chosen to stay had done so simply for the enjoyment to be had from jeers and catcalls. They watched their former icons leave the stage and reached gratefully for their coats.

‘Bloody great gig - BLOODY GREAT!’ said Mal as they collapsed onto the floor of the dressing room.

‘But we’ve got to go back out,’ Baz repeated in consternation, casting a bewildered gaze in the general direction of the dormant equipment. ‘We’ve not done our biggie - we’ve still to play out on the big one.’

‘Our best ever,’ said Mal dreamily, gazing up towards The ‘Stones and Beatles. ‘We’ll always be remembered for this night.’

‘We have to go back out; it’ll ruin us if we don’t do it...’

‘Cafe Berlin - it’ll go down in history as the turning point in our career. The difference between brief fame - and Greatness.’

‘But we haven’t done ‘Heartstop’,’ said Baz...