The Cavern Club, 31st October 1970

Well, word per word the plaque says:

"QUEEN
31st October 1970
Queen played their first ever gig at the Cavern on Halloween 1970. Freddie Mercury had been living in Penny Lane at the time... Fact!"

Did they play there more than once, could they mean their first gig at the Cavern specifically?

Yup... agree with it dodgy looking lol

Ah, so we're into "Eats Shoots and Leaves" territory.

My recollection (never reliable, not sure why I even bother!) is that they only played there once, in which case either

- The Cavern aren't aware of that and the sentence means "their first Cavern gig"
- The Cavern ARE aware, and truly believe that Queen's first performance as Queen was within their walls.

In fairness, even if it IS the latter, it may well be that there was a genuine belief when the plaque was put up - we're still finding out information about those times, and the "Queen in Cornwall" book was only written in 2011.  They've probably taken Rolf Harris' plaque down, but minor corrections (and as far as 99% of the population are concerned, this would be a minor correction) would not have them rewriting all the text. 

Plus, never stand between a scouser and their self-mythologising.....

As far as i know and as stated on the great Queen Live website their first ever concert was on the 27th of june 1970 in Truro. So next week it will be 54 years ago that Queen played there. More info says that Mike Grose was the bassplayer and they were billed as Smile. How i would kill to hear that but i doubt we will never hear it.

Do you mean this guitar?

Yes, this is the one that I meant.

John is definitely genuine and the best of all four. Most likely the only genuine one. The rest all look "good" but I have big doubts because of the thickness of the marker and the obvious slowness of the signing. Brian and Roger look "acceptable". Freddie's is by far the worst of the four. This type of Freddie's signature could be genuine on a record, it's similar to the very ugly style that he used for about one year in the 80's but in this case I think somebody just used a possibly genuine/rushed signature on an LP and simply signed the guitar himself slowly imitating Freddie's handwriting. As pg says, the smudges most likely means there are one, two or three fakes on this guitar. But good ones.

So my previous statement most likely stays - Freddie has really never signed any guitar. (There was one signed guitar auctioned at the UK Convention a couple years ago and that was the ugliest fake I have ever seen, signed almost certainly in late 90's or early 00's as I remember that type from ebay).