Casbah Coffee Club Suites - Official Launch

The Casbah Coffee Club Suites

8 Haymans Green

West Derby

Liverpool 12

8 Haymans Green, the former home of the Best family and the Casbah Club

On Wednesday, 21 August, I was lucky enough to attend the official opening of the Casbah Coffee Club Suites in the company of the Best family - including Pete and his brother Roag – and other invited guests.
 
The Best’s former home at 8 Haymans Green has been remodeled as an AirBnB, with all three floors of the house transformed into Beatles’ themed suites. While the basement Casbah Club has operated as a tourist attraction for some years, this is the first time that fans have had the opportunity to see the rest of the house.
 
Arriving at 9am we were provided with refreshments and allowed to walk around the Casbah Club at our leisure while Pete and Roag were engaged elsewhere, doing press interviews for the local papers as well as a team from Sky, their story going into the hourly news programme. I was speaking to the Sky reporter beforehand and he said it was nice to be doing a good news story for a change. After recent events both locally, nationally and globally, I knew exactly what he meant.

Pete Best being photographed for the Guardian 

With the freedom to explore the Casbah I was able to take plenty of photos without the usual crowds and I’ll share them in a future post. Here's one to whet your appetite.

With their media duties fulfilled, Roag and Pete invited us to join them in the Spider Room, which was the main performance area in the club.
 
By way of introduction, Roag explained that they had talked about turning the empty rooms of their former home above the club into a place where fans could stay since 2006, but other opportunities had arisen – not least the opening of their Liverpool Beatles Museum in 2018 - which meant it was 2019-2020 by the time that the Best family finally agreed that if they were ever going to do it, now was the time.

Roag worked six days a week for three and a half years to bring their vision to life. “I became not just the supervisor on site, but part of the workforce,” he told the press. “I’ve gone from plaster in my eyes, to a nail through my foot, to a scaffold bar hitting me on head – so I’m a fully fledged builder now.

After three and a half years of blood, sweat and tears, the Casbah Coffee Club Suites are the result.

Roag Best

Those who regularly attend Roag’s reveals at the Liverpool Beatles Museum will know their ethos is to try and keep everything that they do authentic, unique and original, and they can justifiably claim that there is nothing more authentic, unique and original than the Casbah Club. Its the most important of the relatively few buildings with a Beatles connection Liverpool has left which remain practically unchanged from how they looked 60+ years ago. 

 
With regards to the new suites, Roag explained that ‘the Beatles not only formed here, they played here, they ate here, they partied here, and they...’ at this point Pete leapt towards his brother, covering Roag’s mouth and mimed the cutting throat action whilst shaking his head… ‘slept here’ Roag concluded, as Pete feigned relief.  As Roag told me later, ‘if these walls could talk, we’d have to tape their mouths up.’  

Pete was up next: “Thank you all for coming, it’s a very special day for us. As Roag said, it’s a pipe dream…an extension of our mother Mona’s legacy. We’re very proud of it, and you can see for yourselves why, when we let you meander around the rooms at your leisure. It’s a piece of history, it’s a piece of love, because a lot of emotion has gone into it.”
 
After thanking his daughter Bonnie, who had helped with the design of the suites, choosing the fabrics and furnishings, helping with the upkeep of the suites in addition to being the customer experience and events manager (“thanks kid”) he became slightly somber, his voice tinged with emotion.
 
“I also want to thank a lady who can’t be with us today. She was taken from us many, many years ago, and I know she’s up there watching, making sure that Roag and I do everything correctly, otherwise she’ll come down and kick our arses, which has happened before. So that’s my mother Mona, Mona Best, known as Mo to family and friends, the ‘Mother of Mersey Beat’ and as always I say, without Mo, maybe none of this would ever have happened. So, wherever you are Mo, thank you, and God bless.”

He blew a kiss skywards.

After thanking everyone for coming Pete invited us to explore the new suites and “feel free to enjoy the comforts up there” before handing back to Roag, who gave thanks to his wife Leigh for all her support, his extended family, the builders and tradesmen who had worked so hard over the last few years to make their dream a reality and finally us, the fans, without whom,  8 Haymans Green would just be a big old house that bands used to play underneath. Luckily for the Best family, one of those bands happened to become the biggest in musical history.

“And now, in the words of our mother Mo, Come with us to the Casbah”!

The entrance hall gives you an idea of just how grand the house is

Key safes for the individual suites named after John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Stuart Sutcliffe, and Pete Best.

You may notice that none of the suites are named after Pete’s replacement, Ringo Starr, but as Roag explained to the press, this is not because of any bad feeling. 

He said: “It’s nothing to do with Pete and Ringo and what happened. 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.”

Two of the invited guests explore the Harrison suite.

The kitchen / diner area of the Harrison suite has a fine view over the huge back garden and West Derby village beyond.

The Sutcliffe Suite, photographed from the bathroom

The period staircase leading to the second floor where the Lennon and McCartney suites are situated

The Lennon suite has room for a fab four guests while the McCartney suite is for 'two of us'.

Views of the Lennon suite.

The Lennon suite also has a living room, kitchen and full bathroom.

 You’ll notice that the rooms have been decorated with a “sprinkling” of a Beatles theme, including photos of the band members, posters and guitars on the wall, but not overly so.

The McCartney Suite bedroom.

The view from the kitchen diner in the McCartney suite.

Something I discovered reading the press interviews today was that Roag was born in the house: “I was born in the McCartney suite and presented to John, Paul and George, who were here that night, they’d played the Cavern. So some of the first people I ever saw in the world were the Beatles.”

In 1959 the Quarry Men (Paul, John and George) were photographed standing by this fireplace. Paul could never have imagined that 65 years later this room would bear his name!

A 2024 recreation. The resemblance is truly striking!

The rooms were available to book from the start of August and guests from America, London and Scotland have already stayed ahead of yesterday's official launch. 

 
With rooms starting from £150 a night, bookings have already come in from the USA and Canada, England and Scotland. I spoke to Evelyn and Andy, a lovely couple from Glasgow who had made the four hour drive down that morning to be one of the first to stay here. You may have seen them interviewed by Sky News. 

Saving the best until last, the best suite in the house is also the Best Suite, encompassing the entire upper floor which I assume from the sloping ceilings was originally the attic space. It’s a huge area which sleeps at least eight.

Something we recognised while roaming the house was that we were likely the last people to have the opportunity to visit every room. In the future any one staying here as a guest will only have access to their room and the communal areas, with the other suites being off limits.  

 Pete Best, circa 1962

 The author, yesterday

Even when you put the significant musical history of this Grade II listed building to one side for a moment, the fact is that 8 Haymans Green is simply a beautiful house. Though they wouldn't have recognised this at the time , Roag and Pete must know with the benefit of hindsight that they were fortunate to have grown up there. Mona certainly backed a winner!

What’s absolutely evident is that the renovation has been a labour of love. Pete and Roag are deservedly delighted to see Mona’s legacy live on. 

Pete: “I think she’d be delighted; she had a dream … she brought music to the kids of Merseyside. 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.” 

Roag: “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.”

Remembering Tony Bramwell

4 June 2024

Tony Bramwell, the Beatles' friend and associate has died, age 78.

Tony Bramwell

I went to bed last night as the news started to come through, and I was hoping that it wasn't true, but on waking this morning posts have started appearing on Facebook and elsewhere stating that Tony Bramwell has passed.

Tony grew up in Hunts Cross, an area of Liverpool between Halewood, Speke and Woolton, practically the same spot as where I live now. He went to the same school as my Dad (Hillfoot Hey) so when we finally met we already had that local connection.

26 Hillfoot Avenue, Hunts Cross: Tony's former home where George Harrison delivered meat  

George Harrison: Blue plaque on where he once belonged

Alternate titles:

Plaque’s Man

Blue Plaque Way

Deep Blue Plaque

For You Blue Plaque

Tired of Midnight Blue Plaque

20 Forthlin Road

20 Forthlin Road,

Allerton,
Liverpool 18

Co-authored by Beatles historians Steve Bradley and Mark Ashworth. 

Simultaneously published on Steve's blog here: Link

Days after spending an afternoon with Paul McCartney's brother Michael,  Steve messaged me again to see if I wanted to join him for a tour of 20 Forthlin Road.  Naturally I jumped at the chance. We enjoyed our visit so much we decided to share our experiences in this co-authored blog, a first. I've let Steve take the lead and incorporate my observations at the appropriate time. 

The former McCartney family home in Allerton

A stolen drum-kit, egg-boxes on the wall, and the smell of lavender. A visit to Paul McCartney’s childhood home.

Recently my friend and fellow Beatles blogger Mark Ashworth joined me for a tour of Paul’s childhood home at 20 Forthlin Road, Allerton. This blog has been co-authored by us both, in true Lennon / McCartney style.

In the care of the National Trust, the home has become a must-see attraction among Liverpool’s Beatles tourism destinations. Furnished in the 1950’s style of the McCartney family’s occupancy, we are given the opportunity to step back in time to experience the ordinary post-war family home of Jim and Mary, Paul and Mike. 

Mark: In 1995 the house came to the attention of the National Trust who chose to buy the property as a means of preserving the site of historical interest for the public. The Trust set about recreating the look and feel of the property as it would have been at the time the McCartney family lived there, with the same level of care and attention as would be afforded the finest stately home. The restoration took three years at a cost of £47,000 (around £93,000 or $117,000 now) with fixtures and fittings, wallpaper, paintwork, furniture, and fireplace all restored in a 1950’s style. Luckily, they had Mike McCartney’s many photos taken both inside and out to use as a reference. 

At the end of April 1956, the McCartney family moved for the last time to this three-bedroomed brick-built terrace house at 20 Forthlin Road in Allerton. Built to a design by the City Architect Sir Lancelot Keay, it had a front parlour which led off to the left from the hallway, and a door led through from the parlour to the rear dining room, overlooking the back garden. The dining room was connected to the kitchen, which in turn connected to the hall. The house was owned by the local authority to whom the McCartneys paid rent of one pound, nineteens shillings and ten-pence a week (around £60 or $75). Jim was earning £400 a year (around £8,300 or $10,445 in 2024) at the Cotton Exchange, which was less than Mary. Because of Mary’s occupation as midwife and health visitor a phone was installed, which in 1956 was still something of a rarity in working-class areas of Liverpool. 

The kitchen at 20 Forthlin Road, restored by the National Trust. Photo credit: Liverpool Echo.

We were greeted by custodian and tour guide Andy Jones, who shows us the alleyway beside the house. It leads to the rear garden with storage where the boys kept their bicycles, and where Paul was snapped by Mike through the window. Andy is determined to offer a memorable visit for fans. His commentary relies on facts shared with him by Mike McCartney, avoiding the need for mythmaking, or speculative storytelling. It feels like we’re stepping into a real home, not a ‘Beatles Museum’ - this is a living documentary of 1950’s Britain. 

Aspirational Mary was proud to call this place home, seeing it as a step-up socially from their earlier home in Speke. Tragedy struck when the family cruelly lost Mary to cancer in October 1956, leaving Jim to raise his two sons with help from the extended family. Jim’s sister Millie visited weekly to do laundry, she would be celebrated in the Scaffold’s ‘Lily the Pink,’ and her husband inspired Paul’s ‘Uncle Albert’. 

Seagulls squawked above us, a sure sign you’re near Liverpool. “Music was always in the house” Andy explains, “Jim always encouraged music, it was a great distraction.” After Paul saw Lonnie Donegan at the Liverpool Empire in November 1956 – just eleven days after losing his mum – his future was assured. The boy threw himself into music as a distraction from grief; the lawn is where Mike photographed Paul playing guitar, his candid shot capturing a boy lost in a world of his own. 

Andy delighted us when he produced a deck-chair from the garden cupboard, enabling us to replicate the photo from Paul’s album, Chaos and Creation in the Backyard. 

The guitar was Paul's salvation during desperately difficult months, as 1956 slipped into 1957, the year he would meet a fellow guitarist from Woolton. 

Andy helpfully pointed out details loved by trivia buffs like Mark and me; the former location of the washing line pulley, and the original fenceposts hidden by the hedge. We pulled up photos on our phones of the Beatles photo session here with Dezo Hoffman on 25th March 1963. A sunny spring day after a long cold lonely winter, the Fab Four were posed on the roof of the outhouse, overlooking the police-dog training ground. Andy explained where Dezo climbed up precariously onto a narrow wall to capture the image. Just four lads snapped in a provincial English council-house garden; eleven months later they were the biggest group in the world.

  

The boys pose for Dezo Hoffman on the roof of the outhouse, and the same location today.

Jim was a proud member of the Speke and Garston Horticultural Society; he tended plants and vegetables in the garden. Andy pointed out the sheltered corner of the garden where Jim planted seedlings, another detail that would have been lost to time had Mike not shared it with Andy and the National Trust. Andy reported that if the boys were locked-out they would climb the back wall, getting in via the bathroom window; “they didn’t see a drainpipe, they saw a climbing frame” he explains with a smile. Inside, Andy puts his slippers on, which reinforces the feeling we’re visiting a friend’s home, rather than a museum. He warmly invites us in, in the same way Jim McCartney admitted the teenaged Lennon, Harrison et al. 

Growing up with the comedy of the Scaffold, Andy taped Beatles records onto cassettes as all our generation did, then was gifted albums as Christmas presents. His fascination developed when he attended Art College in Liverpool, the same one as John, Cynthia, and Stu, he tells us proudly. He was a regular at the Mathew Street Festival and the Cavern, while gradually expanding his knowledge of the group from library books. When he met his future wife Liz – in the Jacaranda – she lived on Newcastle Road. Clearly the Beatles were weaved into Andy’s life long before he arrived at Forthlin. 

The kitchen is furnished with 1950’s cupboards and appliances, detailed with vintage food packets on the shelves. Teacups hang on hooks waiting to be used – Lennon was snapped here by Hoffman, pouring from a teapot. A photo of Mike’s captures his widowed dad stirring a pot on the stove – he was soaking his sons underwear in the days before most homes had a washing machine. The McCartney’s original kitchen sink – retrieved from decades as a plant-bed in the garden – is back in its rightful place. 

Thank U Very Much (Lar!)

Central Library
William Brown Street
Liverpool 3

Furore #28: The Beatles in 1963

 "It's certainly a thrill."

Regular readers of this blog will know that one of my all-time favourite Beatles’ books is The Beatles’ London, A Guide to 467 Beatle Sites by Piet Schreuders, Mark Lewisohn and Adam Smith. It has inspired me and similar minded friends to walk (on feet) something like forty miles around the streets of the capital photographing places with a Beatles’ connection, and prompted me to start There Are Places I Remember – The Beatles’ Liverpool Locations as I made clear in my very first blog way back in 2009.

 

From day one, I’ve loved the research aspect of this hobby, finding new places with a proven Beatles’ connection and photographing them, but writing about my discoveries has always the difficult part. I left school in 1986 and had not had cause to write anything of substance unrelated to my employment until I started the blog. I think I’ve improved over the last 15 years to a point where I’ve developed a style of my own, such as it is, but I’m still not entirely convinced I have it in me to write an entire book, although those who know me have encouraged me to do so for several years.  

 

Of course, some of my blogs have been more successful than others and I’m particularly proud of being the first to pinpoint the newsagents where Paul worked at the time he first met John, of proving where Paul's (not Mike's) photograph of a teenage George Harrison carrying flippers was taken, for identifying the only known photos of the Beatles at Litherland Town Hall, and for making chronological sense of the extant childhood photographs of John Lennon, which in turn inspired me to do something similar with all the photographs of the Beatles taken in 1961.  

 

It might have been one of these aforementioned blogs, or a different one entirely, or something completely unrelated, that first brought me to the attention of Piet Schreuders a few years ago.  As well as being co-author of The Beatles’ London, Piet also publishes Furore magazine, which occasionally has a Beatles’ special. He was kind enough to post them to me. I can’t recommend these issues highly enough as the articles are among some of the most interesting I’ve ever read, particularly those that take an in depth look at some of the locations for famous Beatles’ photographic shoots and provide then and now comparison photos - exactly what I try to do here.

 

You can imagine then how flattered I was when one of the people whose work has been such an inspiration to me first sent me an obscure Beatles' photo, and asked me to try and establish where it was taken, and he’s done it with other photos since.

 

Piet has now issued another Beatles special of his Furore magazine. The centre-piece of  issue #28 is an interview with Maureen O’Grady, a teen reporter from Boyfriend magazine, in an article which chronicles the advent of pop magazines in the British press in 1963, illustrated with memorabilia from her archives including some previously unseen photos. Very sadly, the author of the article, Andre Barreau, who many of you might know played the part of George Harrison in the Bootleg Beatles from 1980 until 2017 passed away in August 2023 before his contribution could be published. His friend Mark Lewisohn has contributed a eulogy, noting how Andre invented the work ‘locationist’ to describe the sort of person who goes around taking then and now photographs of Beatles’ locations.  I finally have a job title!

 

In this new issue, you will find an article about Beatles autopen autographs by Roger Stormo of the Daily Beatle Blog, ‘Abbey Road Trivia’ by Greg Armstrong who writes about the stamped dots on the wall pictured on the back cover of the album with some remarkable photographs of the same wall taken by Laurie Gay Linvill in 1970. Andre Barreau also contributes a piece on the location of Fiona Adam’s famous ‘Twist And Shout’ EP photograph correcting the earlier identification for it in The Beatles’ London in the process, while Piet looks at the ‘Beatles Ashram’ in Rishikesh and tries to pinpoint precisely what was where at the time they visited.

 

Last but hopefully not least, it’s an absolute thrill to confirm that this new issue of Furore also includes an article written by me, my first published work in print.  Piet invited me to contribute a piece about the efforts that are sometimes required when trying to identify where a particular photograph was taken, in this case the one that appears on the front cover of the magazine. I spent many long nights studying early 1963 photographs of the Beatles, particularly George and his atrocious fringe, but did I solve the mystery?  You'll have to buy the magazine to find out!  

 

Furore #28 can be ordered from FuroreMagazine.com

 

* Thanks to Piet Schreuders and Mark Lewisohn for their encouragement.

John and Yoko: Peace Nuts.

‘On 15 June 1968, John Lennon and I planted two acorns for peace at Coventry Cathedral. It was the first of our many Peace Events’.  (Yoko Ono, 1 June 2008).

 

Between June and August 1968, the first National Sculpture Exhibition was held in the ruins of St. Michael’s Cathedral, Coventry. The exhibition was sponsored by the Arts Council and by invitation of Canon Stephen Edmund Verney.

 

The Cathedral had been destroyed during the Luftwaffe raid on Coventry on 14 November 1940, and in common with St. Luke’s Church in Liverpool was left as a permanent memorial to the Blitz.

 

In early June, John and Yoko managed to secure an invitation via Anthony Fawcett who was a member of the organising committee to display their work alongside such renowned sculptors as Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth and Roland Piche.

 

Very much in the early stages of their relationship, both physically and creatively, John’s idea was informed by an earlier work of Yoko’s he’d seen at the Indica Gallery on the day they first met. Yoko’s ‘sculpture’ was an apple on a perspex display stand, an organic, evolving piece representing the life cycle of birth, decay, death and rebirth (the fruit gradually decomposing until only the seeds remained).

 

John decided to plant two acorns as a living sculpture alongside all the ‘heavy old sculptures’ explaining that ‘in fifty years’ time, people will understand what we’re trying to say when there are a couple of lovely great oak trees up there’.

 

Fawcett warned the couple that they might face resistance from Canon Verney who was troubled by the couple’s out of wedlock relationship. Both were actually married at the time, but not to each other.

 

The day before the exhibition opened, John’s driver Les Anthony and Anthony Fawcett arrived in a car towing a trailer where they were outside the Cathedral by Canon Verney.  On the trailer was a large, white, garden seat in wrought iron, a number of plant pots and acorns.  Verney flatly refused to allow them to unload, and a huge argument ensued.

 

After ‘much nastiness’ and several phone calls to some of Britain’s top sculptors, the Canon realised he could not go back on his work and relented.

 

Two acorns were ceremoniously planted in plant pots facing easterly and westerly positions in a hole dug for the occasion by John and Yoko, both of whom arrived sensibly dressed for gardening work in their white suits, much to the amusement of onlookers.  The circular iron seat was designed to slot together, surrounding the acorns which would then grown inside the bench. On the seat was an engraved silver-plated plaque reading ‘Yoko’ by John Lennon, ‘John’ by Yoko Ono, some time in May 1968.  

 

Lennon told the Daily Express that the planting was to symbolize that ‘East and West have met in Yoko and me’.

  

As late comers to the Exhibition, John and Yoko’s acorn piece was not included in the official catalogue and so they made their own, arranging to be photographed by Keith McMillan at the appropriately named ‘Sprout’, a basement next to Gregory Sam’s macrobitotic restaurant in Notting Hill Gate. The resultant image made clever use of perspective to give the impression that John and Yoko were sprouting from the plastic flowerpots.

 

Coventry Telegraph, 17 June 1968

Two days after the exhibition opened, the Coventry Telegraph reported that Mr Norman Pegen, part of the group responsible for staging the event had claimed he had taken the decision not to include John and Yoko’s submission inside the consecrated ground of the Cathedral, which incidentally had been visited by three of the Beatles – Paul, George and either John or Ringo, and Kenny Lynch on Sunday 24 February during the Helen Shapiro tour. 

The bench and acorns had been moved about 50-feet to the Cathedral's gardens. Pegan was quoted as saying ‘the Lennon-Yono (sic) piece is very good – but only as a garden seat and is being used as such by visitors’. Another member of the Cathedral staff noted that fans had already stolen the plaque. 

Coventry Telegraph, 20 June 1968

  

On 22 June 1968, it was reported that the acorns had been stolen.

 

Coventry Telegraph, 22 June 1968

More coverage in the Coventry Evening Telegraph, 25 June 1968 (both)

On Friday 28 June John wrote a letter in response to Canon Verney’s stance prohibiting the installation of John and Yoko’s sculpture within the grounds of the Cathedral, and the distribution of their privately produced catalogue.

The letter finds John at times angry, at others thoughtful and seeking appeasement: ‘Thank you for your Christian attitude….do you have to explain an acorn? I don’t understand why you can’t distribute our leaflet unless you worry about gossip...You talk about young people as if you know something about them - you obviously don't or you wouldn't be worried about our influence on them. Jesus would have loved our piece for what it is… could we not substitute something that is not worth stealing… ‘Sit here and think of a church growing into a bigger church’.

 

Failing to reach a compromise, a driver was sent to retrieve the bench. It was returned to Kenwood, John's home and was seen briefly in the 1988 'Imagine' film.