The Cavern Club in Liverpool, the nightclub birthplace of the Beatles, promotes itself as “the place where it all began”. On May 11, Apple, the Beatles’ management company, announced its re-acquisition of 3 Savile Row, London, the building they might usefully conceive of as “the place where it all ended”.
In the Beatleverse, 3 Savile Row is perhaps most associated with the Beatles’ iconic yet bittersweet rooftop performance. Iconic because this improvised concert was first captured for posterity in their 1970 film (and album) Let It Be. It was then digitally zhuzhed up for Peter Jackson’s epic retelling, Get Back, in 2021. Bittersweet because that performance on a chilly January day in 1969 was the last time the world ever saw the magic of John, Paul, George and Ringo gigging together. Or in the words of the promotional trailer for Let It Be: “rehearsing, recording, rapping, relaxing, philosophising … creating.”
The Savile Row building was the Beatles’ third London office. They moved there after outgrowing 94 Baker Street, which had previously housed the Apple Boutique in 1967, and following a short-lived stay at 95 Wigmore Street in early 1968.
