(Credits: Far Out / Casbah Coffee Club / Pete Best)
Sun 22 March 2026 10:00, UK
When people make the pilgrimage to Liverpool to bask in the birthplace of The Beatles, they’re actually going to the wrong place.
At 10 Matthew Street, in what is now called the Cavern Quarter, you’ll see a bustling crowd constantly surrounding that basement venue – The Cavern Club, to tourists and fans, is treated like a mecca, and for those flocking to the city on a musical tour, it’s first on the list to hit, as it’s often mythologised that the band started right there on that stage, and that this is the definitive spot for Beatles fans, but in reality, the band started long before, and somewhere else entirely.
Another misconception would be planting the seed too early, though. Plenty of people would see the birthplace of Paul McCartney, over on Forthlin Road, as the key spot. Or perhaps John Lennon’s childhood home on Menlove Avenue. But in reality, if there was one key starting point for the band, it was a beaten-up social club bought off the back of a bet by their original drummer’s mother.
When drummer Pete Best’s mother saw the strange, castle-like exterior of an old conservative club, she knew she had to have it. “The first time I ever saw this building, my mother, Mona, brought me round to see it, and it looked like Dracula’s castle to be quite honest,” the band’s original drummer recalled, adding, “But Mona fell in love with it, and she wanted it.”
Mona hatched a plan to get it in the most chance-fuelled way possible. Without telling the family, she pawned all her jewellery and put a bet on a horse, an outsider. However, as if fate was moving it all to happen, she won.
“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!’” Best recalled, and immediately after, Mona set about doing the place up to open it as Casbah Coffee House – building a venue in the basement.
That venue is truly where The Beatles started, because it was where the Quarrymen began, and there isn’t one without the other. After George Harrison was booked as part of the resident band, it was he who started putting the pieces together, as Best remembered, “George basically turned round and said: ‘I happen to know a couple of guys who aren’t doing anything’ – they turned out to be John Lennon and Paul McCartney.”
So Casbah Coffee House became their first rehearsal space, and then their first stage as they played 13 of their first shows as The Quarrymen there, and then, after returning from Hamburg with a new name, they played it 40 times as the newly christened The Beatles. So if there’s any one clear origin spot – it’s there.
Now, though, the place is an Airbnb, meaning you can spend the night at the true birthplace of The Beatles, and given that Best was booted out of the band, he needed some way to make some money out of it, so Casbah was opened as a tourist attraction, renting out the rooms upstairs to fans making the journey to the city.
With rooms named after Lennon, McCartney and Harrison, as well as Best himself and the original bassist, Stuart Sutcliffe, you can rest easy, soaking in the history, but if you want to rest in the Ringo Starr suite? Tough.
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