Tag: Paul McCartney

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.

Liverpool Venues 8 to 10

The city of Liverpool, much like Manchester excels itself in retaining the grand architecture of vintage buildings. Meeting this particular criteria, Liverpool Old Bank public house on James Street down near the waterfront was originally the National Bank built in 1920. When it reopened as a hostelry it retained the American style ornate grandeur including the original tiled floors and high ceilings. It initially opened under the First National Bar name before morphing into the Old Bank in 2018.

Liverpool Old Bank. Image Credit theoldbankliverpool.co.uk

It contains a large bespoke bar on the ground floor with a smaller mezzanine bar in the upstairs area and it was on this upper deck that a group of us gathered for my pal Joe Glenny’s leaving do in November 2023 as he was jetting off for a career break in Australia. Whilst we were in residence there was a posse of acoustic musicians playing on a small stage downstairs.

I managed to glean one of the performer’s names so can record I saw a singer called Aidan play there. I did subsequently notify Joe a few months later that Mogwai were playing in Sydney when he was in residence there, but he shamefully missed attending the gig, there’s just no helping some people!

On a separate occasion, I was pottering around near Central station, as you do, and on Ranelagh Street chanced upon Liverpool Ranelagh’s Tavern. It is a ten a penny Irish theme bar and there was a singer called Seamus yodelling away in the corner.

Ranelagh’s Tavern. Image Credit ranelaghs.co.uk

Liverpool naturally exploits their hometown history with the Beatles and there are a plethora of bars paying homage to the band down Mathew Street and the most famous of them all is the Cavern Club where they played many of their early gigs.

In fact, between the 9th of February 1961 and the 3rd of August 1963 they performed there 292 times, and they were initially billed as deriving from Hamburg. They were surpassed only by the Hideaways who followed them as the resident house band who played over 400 gigs and were thus rewarded with their name being included on the wall of fame.

The Cavern opened its doors in 1957 as a jazz club with its driving force being a local chap called Alan Synter who found a cellar space which was being used at that stage as a tropical fruit warehouse and prior to that a World War II air raid shelter. It is said that when the club was at full capacity, the heat resulted in a sweet fruity smell emanating from the walls, which then became locally known as the ‘Cavern Perfume’. 

The club then moved on to embrace the mood of the day and rebadged itself as a Merseybeat venue. Bands who played there in that period include Rolling Stones, The Kinks, Black Sabbath, Queen and the Who and the local lass Cilla Black was employed there as a hat-check girl.

The Beatles on stage at the Cavern Club. Image Credit beatlesbible.com

Its history then became a little complicated when it closed in 1973 to make way for a ventilation shaft for the new Merseyrail underground railway. That however was never completed, and the site then turned into a car park. There were plans to reopen it in 1982, but it was identified that it was structurally impossible to do so. Many of the bricks from the original cellar were then sold to raise funds for the Strawberry Fields Children’s home.

At a 90-degree angle across the road, they decided to build a new Cavern which was recreated as much as they could in its original image. The initial owner was the former Liverpool football player Tommy Smith, but it closed again in December 1989 when it lost its licence following a vicious assault on a customer resulting in imprisonment for those involved.  

In July 1991 three friends reopened it and still run the club today. A chap called Paul McCartney returned to play a couple of gigs and secret warm up events were staged there by Arctic Monkeys, Jake Bugg, Travis and Oasis over the years. My one visit to Liverpool Cavern Club took place there in 2013 where I witnessed a singer called Freddie. I walked past recently and noted that they now charge simply for the privilege of entering the establishment, so I may not be visiting again!