Liverpool Empire Theatre and the Beatles

The Liverpool Empire Theatre stands on Lime Street, opposite Lime Street station. The Quarrymen tried out for a television talent show here in 1957 and 1959, and the Beatles played the theatre from 1962. It is also where they played their last Liverpool concerts, on 5 December 1965. The theatre is still open. It has no Beatles plaque.

Talent contests before the Beatles name

In June 1957 the Quarrymen entered TV Star Search, a talent contest run by the Canadian impresario Carroll Levis. They passed the audition at the Empire on 9 June and played a heat on 19 June, but a skiffle group from Speke won. In October 1959 the group came back as Johnny and the Moondogs and passed another Star Search qualifying audition at the theatre on 18 October.

Beatles shows at the Empire, 1962 to 1965

The Beatles played the Empire on these dates:

The BBC day, 7 December 1963

The BBC recorded two programmes at the Empire that Saturday, and the audience at both was 2,500 members of the Beatles' Northern Area Fan Club. The first was Juke Box Jury, taped from 2.30pm to 3.15pm. On that show the four Beatles made up the panel and voted new singles a hit or a miss. They played a concert straight after it, and the BBC filmed the whole set. Thirty minutes of that film went out at 8.10pm the same evening as It's The Beatles, and Juke Box Jury was also shown that night.

The last Liverpool concerts

The Beatles played two shows at the Empire on 5 December 1965, and they never gave another concert in Liverpool. About 40,000 people reportedly applied for tickets, for a theatre then quoted at 2,550 seats. At the late show Paul McCartney got behind the drums for the support band, the Koobas, on Dizzy Miss Lizzy.

The theatre now

The present building opened on 9 March 1925. W. and T. R. Milburn designed it, and it replaced an earlier theatre on the same site. It has been Grade II listed since 1990 and seats 2,348. ATG Entertainment runs it as a touring house, so the only way inside is with a ticket for a show. There is no Beatles plaque or other marker on the building.

Liverpool unveiled the Beatles statue at Pier Head on 5 December 2015, fifty years to the day after the last Empire shows.