Beatles: First band house converted into cult hotel

Beatles fans now have one more reason to travel to Liverpool. Pete Best (82), the band’s former drummer, has converted the Beatles’ first band house into a bed and breakfast hotel. In the former basement club, fans of the legendary “Fab Four” will not only find traces of the band’s first performances. On the upper floor, they can stay in five suites and enjoy a typical English breakfast in the morning.

Beatles traces in the basement club

In the early days of the Beatles, the “Casbah Club” was an exclusive meeting place for the newcomer band’s ever-growing fan base. Today, the club, like the entire Victorian mansion, is a listed building. Best’s mother once bought it and had a brilliant idea: she set up a members-only club in the basement for her son, his band and their friends. Here her sons and their friends could meet, listen to music and perform. The Beatles’ historical footprints can still be admired everywhere in the basement. John, Paul, George, Stuart and Pete helped with the renovation. The spot where John Lennon scratched his name into the wall with a pocket knife can still be admired. “The Beatles played, celebrated and slept here,” said Best.

Original drummer of the Beatles

The Beatles began their international triumph in 1962 and 1963. As if from nowhere, the four shot up the English and then the worldwide charts with their hits “Love Me Do” and “Please Please Me”. But the band existed before Beatlemania – sometimes with a different line-up. Pete Best is one of its original members. After ex-bassist Stuart Sutcliffe, Best joined John Lennon, Paul McCartney (82) and George Harrison in 1960 and played a key role in shaping the band’s sound until 1962 – including at the band’s legendary appearances abroad. Best was recruited a few days before the Beatles’ first trip to Hamburg in August 1960. On August 17, 1960, the group gave its first concert under the name “The Beatles” in Hamburg’s red-light district – with Best on drums.

Replaced by Ringo Starr

It must have been all the more bitter for Best when he was replaced by Ringo Starr (84) in 1962 – presumably under pressure from George Harrison. Today, Best says of this time: “It was very hard and financially difficult at first, but life makes up for it. Maybe it was my karma, maybe it wasn’t meant to be.” Best had to watch the Beatles’ global fame from the band’s breakup in 1970 to the present day from the perspective of an audience. In the 60 years since then, he has largely made peace with his sudden ousting: “I had 60 great years in which I was both Pete and an ex-Beatle. It’s a part of your life, it’s nice to be associated with it, but life goes on,” he said.

Ringo Suite missing

From 1966 to 1971, Debbie Greenberg ran the legendary “Cavern Club”, one of the Beatles’ most famous venues in Liverpool. She knew Pete in the early 1960s and remembers the time when he was dropped from the Beatles line-up: “Pete was a very good-looking guy and had a lot of fans. Word got around that he had been replaced by Ringo. So at Beatles gigs we chanted: ‘Pete forever, Ringo never!'” The fact that Best still struggles a little with being kicked out of the band is evident from the names of the suites in his small bed-and-breakfast house. The five suites on the first floor are named after Paul, John, George, Peter and the original bassist Stuart Sutcliffe and are furnished with all kinds of memorabilia. After sweet Beatles dreams, a real English breakfast awaits visitors in the morning. The only thing missing is a Ringo suite. However, this should not stand in the way of maintaining Beatlemania among the band’s die-hard fans.