"The Beatles played here, the Beatles partied here, and the Beatles slept here." And now, interested travelers can stay at the former Casbah Coffee Club and experience a piece of Beatles history.
PA Images/Alamy Stock PhotoOriginal Beatles drummer Pete Best at 8 Haymans Green in the West Derby suburb of Liverpool, the home where the Beatles performed some of their earliest concerts.
The Liverpool home where the Beatles performed some of their very first shows is now open to overnight guests, according to a listing on Airbnb.
In the 1950s and ’60s, the house’s basement held the Casbah Coffee Club, a tiny concert venue where the Beatles frequently performed. At the time, the home belonged to Mona Best, the mother of the original drummer for the Beatles, Pete Best.
Now, Pete Best and his brother Roag have opened the home to guests on Airbnb. For as little as $200 a night, Beatles enthusiasts can sleep where the most famous band in history once performed before Beatlemania took the world by storm.
Inside The History Of The Casbah Coffee Club
In 1954, Mona Best sold all her jewelry to bet on a racehorse named “Never Say Die” at the Epsom Derby. Luckily, she won, earning her enough money to purchase a home located at 8 Haymans Green in the West Derby suburb of Liverpool.
“As the horse was winning and coming past the finishing post, she suddenly jumped up and started screaming: ‘I’ve won the house, I’ve won the house, I’ve won the house!'” Pete Best told The Guardian. “It was only then that she told us what she’d done.”
At first, the rest of the Best family was not as ecstatic about the home as Mona was. “The first time I ever saw this building… it looked like Dracula’s castle to be quite honest,” Pete Best, now 82 years old, said. “It was overgrown, it had been an old Conservative Club, which had lain empty for years, but Mona fell in love with it, and she wanted it.”
In 1959, Mona transformed the basement into a music venue, naming it the Casbah Coffee Club. She booked a band called the Les Stewart Quartet for opening night, but the group broke up before the date arrived. Instead, one of the band’s members — George Harrison — offered to bring some of his friends along to perform with him.
Album/Alamy Stock PhotoPaul McCartney, Ken Brown (the guitarist for the Quarrymen), and John Lennon performing at the Casbah Coffee Club in 1959.
Those friends just happened to be John Lennon and Paul McCartney.
Under the name the Quarrymen, the newly formed band played 13 shows at the Casbah Coffee Club. Later, once they rebranded themselves as the Beatles, they performed an additional 40 shows at the venue. Pete Best eventually joined in as the drummer in 1960, though he was replaced by Ringo Starr two years later.
The Casbah Coffee Club closed in 1962 — with the Beatles performing the final show — but its legacy as the place where the band got its start has lived on.
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Transforming The Historic Venue Where The Beatles Once Played Into An Airbnb
The home at 8 Haymans Green was given heritage status by the English government in 2006 and opened as a tourist attraction. Now, Pete and Roag Best have taken that a step further and transformed it into an Airbnb.
The house features five rentable units, each named after a member of the Beatles, including Best, Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, and even Stuart Sutcliffe, the band’s early bass guitarist who died tragically young.
Notably missing is a room named for Ringo Star, the drummer who replaced Pete Best, but the family claims there was no ill will in that decision.
“It’s nothing to do with Pete and Ringo and what happened,” Roag Best explained. “Everything we do is about being authentic, and the Beatles that performed and partied here were John, Paul, George, Pete, and Stuart. Ringo was never a member when he was here.”
The brothers worked hard to renovate the home in preparation for its transformation into an Airbnb.
PA Images/Alamy Stock PhotoGuests can now stay overnight at the Liverpool home that once held the Casbah Coffee Club.
“I’ve gone from plaster in my eyes, to a nail through my foot, to a scaffold bar hitting me on the head — so I’m a fully fledged builder now,” Roag told The Guardian.
Their first guests, Evelyn Weatherston and her partner Andy Rees, traveled more than 200 miles from Glasgow, Scotland, to experience the home for themselves.
“We’re big Beatles fans,” Weatherston told The Guardian. “We’ve been to the Casbah before, and the history of the Casbah, it’s very special… the fact that you can now stay here is very exciting, so we were keen to come as soon as we could.”
As for how the original mastermind behind the Casbah Coffee Club, Mona Best, would feel about the renovation, the Best brothers say she would be proud of their entrepreneurial spirit.
“I think if she’d still been here today — and she’s watching from above, I’ll tell you that now — she’d be very proud, of the legacy that’s been left, and the legacy that we’re building,” Pete explained.
Roag agreed, stating, “My mum would be absolutely over the moon with how this property looks now. So it’s nice to make her proud, you always want to make your mum proud.”
After reading about the new Airbnb in Liverpool where the Beatles once performed, dive into the story of nine Beatles songs with unbelievable backstories. Then, look through 29 photos that capture The Beatles in their early days.
