On The Beatles beat

There is so much for the casual Beatles fan in Liverpool.

You can check out a string of museums dedicated to the band, check into the Hard Days Night Hotel and hit the cobbled, bar-fringed lanes of the Cavern Quarter, which is akin to an open-air theme park devoted to the Fab Four.

Have your photograph taken with their larger-than-life statue on the promenade by the River Mersey, visit the suburban childhood homes of John Lennon and Paul McCartney, and hang out in the places that inspired their songs, including Penny Lane and Strawberry Field. But there are lesser-known spots with Beatles connections that will thrill and intrigue aficionados of the band. Here are five such places.

THE JACARANDA

The Liverpool venue most synonymous with The Beatles is The Cavern Club, where the band performed 292 times between 1961 and 1963. Revellers flock to the replica of this subterranean bar-club, which has live music most nights, including weekend performances by a resident Liverpudlian Beatles tribute band.

They also play at International Beatleweek, the world’s biggest Beatles festival, held in the city each August (20-25, 2025). Yet it’s The Jacaranda — affectionately known as “The Jac” — that hosted the first live performance by the real Beatles.

This was in August 1960, when Lennon, McCartney and George Harrison played alongside original bassist Stuart Sutcliffe (a Scot who died of a brain haemorrhage in 1962) and drummer Pete Best (who was replaced by Ringo Starr, also in 1962). A blue plaque to mark the momentous first gig studs this venue in Ropewalks, another buzzing Liverpool nightlife district (about 15 minutes on foot from the Cavern Quarter).

Also housing a bar, vinyl store and record label, The Jacaranda was opened in an old watchmakers’ shop by the Beatles’ first manager, Allan Williams, and it continues to be one of Liverpool’s most vital musical hubs, with both grassroots and established bands playing gigs here. The Jac also has an offshoot venue — the Jacaranda Baltic — in the Baltic Triangle, a gritty-hip enclave south of the city centre.

HOPE STREET

You’ll find numerous links to the Beatles on and around this picturesque hilltop strip running between the city’s Anglican and Catholic cathedrals. McCartney and Harrison attended grammar school here, while Lennon and Sutcliffe went to the arts college next door.

In 1996, McCartney co-founded the Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts in his old school (he recently popped in with his mate Bruce Springsteen, who was playing concerts in Liverpool). Countless talents have since graduated from LIPA in fields like dance, acting and music, including members of Liverpool bands The Wombats and Circa Waves, and Leanne Best, the niece of Pete Best (she played a key role in recent Liverpool-based TV crime drama This City Is Ours).

Around the corner, on steeply sloping Rice Street, the unassuming Ye Cracke pub, founded in 1862, was a favourite haunt of Lennon and Sutcliffe when they were students, while back on Hope Street, they also frequented the more lavishly decorated Philharmonic Dining Rooms.

McCartney played an impromptu gig at “The Phil” in 2018 for an episode of James Corden’s Carpool Karaoke. The pub wins acclaim for its pints, pies and heritage-listed interior melding marble, mosaic and mahogany, and sits across the street from its sister concert hall (another participating venue for International Beatleweek).

THE BLUE ANGEL

Located where Ropewalks meets Chinatown, the Blue Angel is another obscure nugget on the Beatles trail. It was historically a jazz club, but along with the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan, the band were among the big 1960s pop acts to play here.

This was another venture once owned by Allan Williams, who was replaced as the Beatles’ manager by Brian Epstein in 1961. It was at the Blue Angel that Epstein spotted a young Liverpool woman, Cilla Black, singing, and he arranged auditions for her in London.

The Blue Angel is often known as The Raz — it briefly changed its name to the Razzmatazz in the 1980s — before reverting back to its original name. It’s a popular haunt with today’s students, but nostalgia reigns here too, with reunions and anniversaries held, when tunes from yesteryear —including Fab Four tracks — have the dance floor bouncing.

CASBAH COFFEE CLUB

Labelled the Holy Grail of the Beatles trail, this much-mythologised venue is where the band spent hours practising, performing and honing their skills and tunes. Occupying the basement of the house owned by Mona Best, the Delhi-born mother of drummer Pete, it became a hotspot for Liverpool’s rock‘n’roll scene in the late 1950s and early 60s.

Soft drinks and snacks were served here, as was coffee from an espresso machine — a rarity in Liverpool at the time. New music throbbed at the Casbah, both on record players and live, with the Beatles turning out several times here and being the last band to play before the club’s closure in 1962.

Still in the Best family, and furnished with Beatles memorabilia, the Casbah is in West Derby, a suburb in north Liverpool. Converted rooms and suites can now be booked by overnight guests, and tours and experiences can also be arranged at the old Casbah.

Combined tickets also offer admission to the Liverpool Beatles Museum on Mathew Street in the Cavern Quarter. Boasting more than 1000 authentic Beatles items, it’s run by Roag Best, Pete’s half-brother, father of Leanne, son of Mona and Neil Aspinall, the Beatles’ first tour manager and long-time associate of the band. Pete, meanwhile, is now 83 — the same age as Paul — and still plays in a band that “captures the sound of the Beatles in their formative years”.

WOOLTON

It was in this quaint, leafy village-like suburb in the city’s south, on July 6, 1957, that Lennon first met McCartney. Lennon was playing with his skiffle band, The Quarrymen, at the garden fete at Woolton’s St Peter’s Church. The pair quickly hit it off and McCartney was soon invited to join an outfit that would evolve into the Beatles.

There’s another good reason to roam around the churchyard of St Peter’s — it contains the grave of one Eleanor Rigby, whose name provided the inspiration for the track on the 1966 album Revolver. Usually overlooked by Beatles fans is the grave of Lennon’s uncle, George Toogood Smith, the husband of his Aunt Mimi.

After the breakdown of his parents’ marriage, Lennon moved in with the couple in south Liverpool and his uncle bought him his first musical instrument: a harmonica. Sadly, George died in 1955, so never got to see how his gift helped change the world.