You can stay at the club where the Beatles played some of their first gigs

The musicians who would become The Beatles played some of their first shows at the Beatles Casbah Coffee Cluba music venue in the basement of a house in Liverpool. The house was owned by Mona Best, the mother of the band’s former drummer Pete Best, who lived upstairs as a teenager.

Now, Pete and his brother, Roagreopen the building as one Airbnb. Guests can stay in Beatles-themed rooms, filled with memorabilia from the band.

“The Beatles played here, the Beatles partied here and the Beatles slept here,” says Pete, now 82 PA media‘s Eleanor Barlow.

Mona bought the building, located in the city’s West Derby area, after winning an unlikely bet, the newspaper said Guardian‘S Hannah Al-Othman. At the 1954 Epsom Derby, she pawned all the jewelry she owned and placed the money on an inexperienced jockey riding a horse named ‘Never Say Die’. She watched the race with her family, who knew nothing about the bet.

“As the horse was winning and crossing the finish line, she suddenly jumped up and started shouting, ‘I won the house, I won the house, I won the house!’” Pete tells the man. Guardian. “Only then did she tell us what she had done.”

The bet was just one of many smart gambles in her life. Another was her decision to convert the home’s basement into a music venue. When she opened the Casbah Coffee Club in 1959, she also acted as a promoter.

“There was no promotion for women, she was the first to do that,” Roag said Far away magazine‘s Kelly Scanlon in January. “There are so many groups that came through the Casbah doors that went on and had success.”

On opening night, Mona had booked a band called the Les Stewart Quartet. Unfortunately, this group never achieved success, as they disbanded shortly before the performance. One of the band members was a young man named George Harrison, who said he could bring some friends to play instead.

“It turned out to be John Lennon and Paul McCartney,” says Pete Guardian.

At the time they called themselves the Quarrymen, and under that name they played thirteen times at the Casbah. Later, when they became The Beatles, they returned for more than 40 performances. Pete joined the band in 1960.

When the club closed in 1962, the Beatles arrived carried out on the last evening. In 2006, the British government assigned the location protected heritage status and reopened as a tourist attraction. Now guests can come and stay where the legendary group began.

The new rooms are decorated with posters, guitars, photos and other Beatles-themed items. Some rooms are named after band members including Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, Best and even Stuart Sutcliffethe Beatles’ original bassist who left to take up painting.

There is no room named after it Ringo Starrwho replaced Pete as drummer in 1962, but the Best brothers say this omission was not born of ill will toward the drummer.

“It has nothing to do with Pete and Ringo and what happened,” Roag told PA Media. “Everything we do is about being authentic, and the Beatles who performed and partied here were John, Paul, George, Pete and Stuart. Ringo was never a member when he was here.”

Mona died in 1988, and Pete thinks his mother would be “delighted” if she could see the renovated house today. “She’s watching from above,” he says Guardian. “She would be very proud of the legacy we have left and the legacy we are building.”