It is an iconic venue which kickstarted the rise of The Beatles popularity in the UK and led to their fateful meeting with manager Brian Epstein.
And Sir Paul McCartney will return to where his music career began with a headline gig at Liverpool’s Cavern Club, more than six decades after the band first took to the stage.
The legendary musician, 76, will take to the stage for the exclusive gig in the famous venue on Mathew Street, Liverpool, at 2pm on Thursday.
Yesterday: Sir Paul McCartney will return to where his music career began with a headline gig at Liverpool’s Cavern Club, more than six decades after the band first took to the stage
Twist and shout! Heralded as being the birthplace of the Fab Four, the venue played host to the band, originally known as the Quarrymen in their early years (pictured in 1963)
Heralded as being the birthplace of the Fab Four, the venue played host to the band, originally known as the QuarryMen in their early years.
Tickets will be made available for free from the Echo Arena Box Office from 10am on a first come, first served basis, with the show kicking off around 1pm.
Hundreds of fans queued from the early hours of the morning in a bid to secure a coveted ticket.
The Help! hitmaker was in his home city on Wednesday, where he dropped a massive hint about the gig during a Q and A session at his old school, now the Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts (Lipa), which he founded.
He told Pulp frontman and event host Jarvis Cocker: ‘We are playing the Echo Arena in December but the thing is we also have, tomorrow, we have a little secret gig somewhere in Liverpool.’
During the session, held in an auditorium named after Sir Paul, he paid tribute to his bandmates John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr when asked about the finest musicians he had ever worked with.
He said: ‘Out of all the ones I’ve worked with it would be the fellow Beatles. It would be John, who was pretty cool, and George and Ringo.
‘Having worked with John so one on one I got to see his brilliance before the world did.’
The cellar bar, now relocated to the other side of the road to where the original venue stood, last played host to Sir Paul in 1999.
During the chat Sir Paul said he chose to make a concept album because he doesn’t think he can compete with the likes of Taylor Swift and Beyonce.
The Beatles legend has gone down the old-fashioned route of giving his fans a record which takes them on a journey on his 17th solo LP, ‘Egypt Station’, like his own band did with 1966’s ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’ and their peers Pink Floyd did on 1979’s ‘The Wall’ and 1983’s ‘The Final Cut’, because he prefers the format to a ‘collection of singles’ which many pop stars put out these days.
‘These days you have the big stars like Beyoncé, Taylor Swift and Kendrick Lamar, particularly the first two, their songs are a collection of singles.
‘They are all great commercial tracks but it doesn’t roll through like a Pink Floyd album used to, or a Fleetwood Mac album.’
Quipping that he can’t rival with ‘Delicate’ hitmaker Taylor’s legs, he continued: ‘So I thought, well, I can’t compete with that Taylor Swift thing, she’s got better legs than me!
‘But maybe what I can do is do what used to be called a concept album, an album that if you want you can listen the whole way through and it should roll through and take you somewhere.’
Paul also shared how not having access to recording devices so readily allowed the band – which was also comprised of Sir Ringo Starr and the late John Lennon and George Harrison – to make music much quicker back in the day.
He said: ‘I always think it was a great thing that we never had a tape recorder…
‘Now you can record anything at any time so I find myself with thousands of sketches and it’s like ‘Oh I’ll finish that one day’. And so I have thousands to finish.
‘It’s really good if you can get the original performance down all in one.’