Tag: Liverpool Sound City

Liverpool Venues 31 to 32

On the days when I am navigating my way back to Lime Street train station after a visit to the Liverpool office, I quite often skelp down Mathew Street, where you enter into an alternate ‘Beatleland’ area with music assailing your ears at every point.

Towards the bottom of the road is Liverpool Grapes Inn which resides in a building that dates back to 1804. There is little documentation on the earlier hostelries that were in that very spot. Considering how busy the thoroughfare is today; it is remarkable to recall that in the early 1960’s it was only pub on the whole street, and in those days, it was surrounded by warehouses.

Grapes Inn. Image Credit creativetourist.com

It was a customary watering hole for the young Beatles after their regular Cavern gigs as the club at that point was unlicensed. There is a famous photo of them in the Inn circa 1962 with what looks like pints of Mild! It was for a short period the Famous Grapes and like many others, including the Dog and Partridge at Didsbury, was renamed the Beautiful South when the said band went on a month long promotional tour.

It has been through many refurbishments, but they have always endeavoured to retain the original features, some which continue to be discovered to this day. On the day I passed there was a tour party being entertained by Eddie and Edie on a makeshift stage in front of the pub, they were somewhat predictably singing ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’.

I have just learnt that the song was given its debut in the 1945 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Carousel and is in fact sung twice at separate occasions in the production. This being prior to the universally famous cover by Gerry and the Pacemakers in 1963, which then was further adopted by the Liverpool fans on the Spion Kop at Anfield.   

Beatles having a bevy. Image Credit Liverpool Echo.

Returning now to my Sound City Festival 2025 review and having quickly adopted a lessons learned from having accessibility issues to the Jacaranda we headed next door in good time for the next band in the Liverpool Shipping Forecast. It was previously a Flares branch pub and looks like it has been open since 2010 in its current format.

There is a welcoming wood panelled main ground floor bar and then there is the upstairs space (known as the Top Deck) which stages mainly DJ events with the likes of Calvin Harris and Mark Ronson having played there in the past. They have held periodic vinyl fairs, and their kitchen is linked to Ruby Jean’s diner, which churns out ‘Americana’ tucker (basically anything unhealthy).

The lavatories used to have a special touch in that the actual shipping forecast, first broadcast on Radio 4 in 1925, was piped into them, alongside relaxing sounds of waves and seagulls. However, the kit was subsequently stolen, and I shall respectfully refrain at this stage from any Scouse ‘hub cap’ references!    

Shipping Forecast. Image Credit creativetourist.com

Our destination was reached by heading down the steps into The Hold venue which has a capacity of 200 and it fits perfectly into the archetypal category of a sweaty cellar bar, in a good way!  The brickwork is exposed with a low wooden beam roof, which served to enhance the acoustics, however you do face the inevitable ‘pillar viewability’ challenge.

Despite the venue size they do admirably attract a decent level of band with Ghostpoet, Four Tet, Deary, Futureheads and Pulled Apart by Horses having graced the stage there. The main bar was not open that day, but thankfully they had some cold cans available at a pop-up table bar.

On stage was a young Liverpool singer/songwriter called Dylan Robert (no prizes for where his first name derived from!). He commenced his musical journey at the age of ten when he played guitar with his best mate Ben Harper. These two chaps have stuck together as Ben is now his producer. He also had a shared passion with football but a broken collarbone at the age of eleven resulted in him turning 100% down the musical path.

He had progressed up onto the main bill from a spot on the Sound City showcase roster in 2024. He has already released a slew of singles and I enjoyed his set, where he reminded me a little bit of another Liverpool act Shack. 

Liverpool Venues 28 to 30

I am starting this week with a recent addition within the Mathew Street Cavern Quarter, namely Liverpool Temple Tavern. The hostelry initially opened its doors in June 2025 taking over the old Reiss store that was located there previously. They are owned by local independent Pub Invest Group who also hold the reins on forty other sites in the city including the nearby Erics and Rubber Soul.

It is split over two floors with grand interiors and comes complete with outdoor tables for those ‘summer nights’. Music is featured at various points during the week under the banner of Trad sessions and on my one foray I saw a local artist called Steve performing.

Temple Tavern. Image Credit liverpoolecho.co.uk

I now return to the Sounds of the City Festival I attended in May 2025 where our next port of call was the Jacaranda on Slater Street (known locally as the Jac). It was opened in 1958 by a forward thinking geezer called Allan Williams who leased an old watch repair shop and then transformed it into a coffee bar. It provided a stage for fledgling local bands and was a key player in the rise of Merseybeat in the 1960’s.

Four young scamps named John Lennon, Stuart Sutcliffe, George Harrison and Paul McCartney were regular visitors and were called The Silver Beetles. The first two named paid for some rehearsal space by painting murals in the cellar, which unsurprisingly remain to this day.

The venue also hosted the first ever Beatles performance in August 1960 where they played as a five-piece for 2.5 hours with the addition of Pete Best. They had to improvise microphone stands by utilising broom handles held aloft by fans. Their reward was to be paid with beans on toast and Coca-Cola, and they proceeded to deputise for the regular house band the Royal Caribbean Steel Band every Monday night.  

Jacaranda Beatles wall. Image Credit beatlesstory.com

The afore mentioned owner of the establishment secured their first tour to Hamburg also in 1960, where they actually set off from outside the Jacaranda in Mr Wiliiam’s green Austin van. He also introduced them to Richard Starkey (Ringo Starr) who was a club regular and at that stage a drummer for Rory Storm & The Hurricanes.

Cynthia Lennon cites that John completed the lyrics to ‘One After 909’ song in the venue, the song then later reappeared on the Let It Be album. Allan Williams was invited to those album recording sessions, and in the footage, John is heard to say ‘Where do you think you are? The Jacaranda?’ They parted ways after that with Brian Epstein taking over the management reins, and the rest as they say is history.    

Fast forward then to the mid-1990’s and the place was literally on its knees and in a derelict state. The new owner Graham Stanley restored it but in the upgrades was considerate of its history.

In 2018 he also launched two related record shops, coinciding with the 60th anniversary of the original opening. One was based within the original building and the other Jacaranda Baltic located nearer to the waterfront. In one of the branches, he managed to purloin a 1948 voice-o-graph booth, only one of four working versions that exist in the world. Many album launches have taken place there including Foals, Stereophonics, Wunderhorse and The Pretenders.  In 2024 a blue plaque was installed based on its Beatles connection.  

Upon entry you find yourself in the homely Jacaranda Ground Floor Bar where we saw a local singer called Freddie performing. At the top end of the large room there are steps that take you down to the main venue of Liverpool Jacaranda. It has a 400 capacity, and they have live music every night and like Cinderella morphs in another mode at the midnight hour at the weekends, with free live shows, namely Indie Rock Circus on Fridays and Rock N Roll Circus on Saturdays. The festivities are completed with open mic events on the Sunday.

The Jacaranda. Image Credit Liverpool Echo.

However, this is where I discovered one of the key challenges of this festival, even during an early afternoon slot, which was the fact that the small cellar venues were liable to fill out very quickly.

So, I had a new novel position of watching from halfway down the stairs and peering through with my nose against the glass and a muted sound travelling through the pane. But as I would arbitrate in my one man ‘gig VAR’ meetings, they all count! What I could see but only partially hear was some energetic folk sounds from Sair, who I can only obtain sketchy details about, but I think derive from Leeds.