How to have a truly immersive experience of The Fab Four
Not long ago I was delivering an 11-week Introduction to Entrepreneurship module to over 500 undergraduates at a top London business school. As most were from outside UK, I greeted them with a ‘Welcome to London Slide’ and asked them to shout out the names of the top London attractions on TripAdvisor.
They were able to identify Buckingham Palace, The Houses of Parliament, and the London Eye. I then asked them “who are these people?” and showed them this picture:
They all knew this was The Beatles and some even knew that it was Abbey Road. This picture was taken in 1969, around the last time they all worked together, 30 years before those students were born.
I explained there is good business branding lesson here. When The Beatles delivered this artwork to their record company, EMI were perplexed that the name of the album and the name of the band was not on the front. John Lennon wryly replied, “they’ll know it’s us”.
The Beatles were the first example of ‘going viral’. On February 9th, 1964, they appeared live on The Ed Sullivan Show and 70 million people tuned in, the largest TV audience ever at that time.
In my lectures, I continued to use The Beatles’ story as a classic example of entrepreneurship: a rollercoaster ride of struggle, success, conflict, near bankruptcy, recovery, and perennial success, now deftly managed by their own company, Apple Corporation. Today, their streams, downloads and DVDs still sell in huge numbers, and in the pipeline are individual biopics of all four Beatles, directed by Sam Mendes.
In Liverpool, leading custodians of the Beatles brand are Pete Best, who was in the Beatles from 1960-62, and his brother Roag, the son of Neil Aspinall, The Beatles Road manager in the 60s and latterly Chief Executive of Apple Corporation.
You can find Pete and Roag’s extensive memorabilia in The Liverpool Beatles Museum in Mathew Street, three floors of previously unseen items. But for a truly immersive experience, let me take you down to The Casbah Coffee Club, another great example of entrepreneurship in action.
In 1959, Pete and Roag’s mother, Mona Best bought a five-story house in West Derby, just outside Liverpool, and then put a club and espresso machine in the tiny basement. She enlisted the local teenagers to decorate it, and on the opening night 29th August 1959, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ken Brown were booked to play.
200 teenagers turned up, but only 50 could squeeze into the club itself. The very enterprising Mona set up a table at the front gate and sold memberships. 150 people happily listened from outside.
The Casbah Coffee Club has long been offering guided tours and the stories are fascinating. You can see the artwork that John, Paul, George, and Pete themselves painted, as well as a couple of places where John cheekily carved his initials, receiving a clip around the ear from Mona on both occasions.
The Casbah Coffee Club was also the first place The Beatles played on their first return from Hamburg, even before they played at The Cavern. Neil Aspinall designed the posters: ‘The Beatles Direct From Hamburg’ and the Casbah members packed in, expecting a German band. There were some grumbles that it was actually just some members of The Quarrymen and The Blackjacks (Pete’s old band).
But these were now professional musicians, battle-hardened from playing eight hours a day to potentially hostile audiences of sailors and gangsters. As Pete told me: “at the Casbah, we kicked into Red Sails in the Sunset, and they knew it was The Beatles”. The rest, as they say, is history.
Today, the five-story house in West Derby has been turned into The Casbah Suites, bookable on Airbnb, with beautifully furnished rooms dedicated to John, Paul, George, Pete, and original bass player Stuart Sutcliffe who sadly died in 1962.
The Casbah can arrange everything, from guided tours of the other Liverpool attractions, such as John and Paul’s childhood homes, Strawberry Field, and The Cavern, to even your own specially curated private gig in the Casbah Coffee Club itself. If you’re a musician, you can actually play where The Beatles played.
I stayed in the Paul McCartney Suite, who not only looks over the serene gardens, but was the room where Roag Best himself was born in 1962.
As he says: “The Beatles played, partied, and slept at The Casbah. Now you can too!”
The Casbah Suites
The Casbah Suites on Airbnb: https://www.airbnb.co.uk/users/show/578224452
The Casbah Coffee club: https://www.petebest.com/casbah-coffee-club/
