It was the address where the Beatles played their last ever live public performance* in 1969; now 3 Savile Row is set to become a seven-storey museum dedicated to the Fab Four.
Titled simply The Beatles, the new visitor attraction — set to open in 2027, according the Guardian — will be based in the Georgian townhouse in Mayfair which the group established as the HQ of their record label Apple Corps. It is Apple Corps which has now re-acquired the building, and it will display archive material throughout.
3 Savile Row features prominently in Peter Jackson’s 2021 documentary The Beatles: Get Back, in which the band is filmed cobbling together what would be their final album, Let It Be — and perhaps the runaway success of this film prompted the decision to turn it into a museum. One of the major attractions will be a facsimile recording studio, as well as the chance to go on the rooftop (cue a rush on cherry red macintoshes, as influencers imitate Ringo, who sported his wife’s waterproof).
Beatles lore is etched deep in the fabric of London (along with Liverpool and Hamburg), a place where the group lived, played and recorded (indeed Paul McCartney still has the St John’s Wood house that he bought in 1965). The usually off-limits Abbey Road Studios let a select group of Beatles fans in for tours in 2024, though tickets were steep. It’s only right that London has a permanent Beatles museum, and there’s literally no better place to put it.
Following last week’s news that visitors will soon be able to ascend the BT Tower again, are we witnessing a return to the heady heights of swinging sixties London?
*Semi public anyway; people could hear but not see it.
