Although the Beatles gave up performing live for good in the summer of 1966, their last performance in their hometown took place more than eight months earlier on December 5, 1965. That night, they played the Empire Theatre on Lime Street in the heart of Liverpool.
“Oh, dirty Maggie Mae
They have taken her away
And she’ll never walk down Lime Street anymore
Oh, the judge, he guilty found her
Of robbin’ the homeward bounder
That dirty, no-good, robbin’ Maggie Mae
This is the part of Liverpool
They returned me to
Two pound, ten a week, that was my pay”
Still open to this day, the Liverpool Empire Theatre is a theatre on the corner of Lime Street in Liverpool, England. The playhouse, which opened in 1925, is the largest two-tier auditorium in the United Kingdom and can seat 2,348 people.
Following what would ultimately be their final performance ever in their hometown of Liverpool, England, The Beatles hosted an informal get together at Liverpool’s Adelphi Hotel.
Located in Ranelagh Place, Liverpool city centre, Merseyside, England, the Adelphi Hotel is recorded in the National Heritage List For England as a designated Grade II listed building. It contains 402 en-suite bedrooms, conference and dining facilities, and a gymnasium.
At the hotel that evening in early December of 1965 was a young Liverpudlian autograph seeker by the name of John Conner who entered the hotel with a mono copy of the Beatles Help! album tucked under his arm (the most recent Beatles album, Rubber Soul, had just been released two days earlier on December 3rd, necessitating The Beatles current album promotional concert tour).
A local acquaintance, Paddy Delaine, well known to The Beatles in his former capacity as the doorman for The Cavern Club in Liverpool where the band had got their start, introduced the exceedingly shy John Conner to all four Beatles, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr.
Conner recalled later,
“I was very shy in asking George for his signature, as he was in deep conversation with someone but as he put pen to cover he completed one of my dreams at the time, to obtain The Beatles autographs. John and Ringo signed above themselves, Paul and George below.”
A quarter of a century later, in September 1989, this ultra rare copy of the Help! album autographed by all four Beatles made its way into the possession of music enthusiast Bob Todd.
Todd, in turn, passed it on to his close friend, Max Newby, before he died.
Newby owned the record until his death in 2016, and it remained in his wife’s possession until very recently.
Newby’s wife, Annie Newby, from Durham, remarked to England’s national broadcaster the BBC recently:
“It’s time to pass this special piece of music history on to another fan who will appreciate it as much as Max and Bob did. The signed album brought Max and Bob immense joy. I still remember the day Bob bought it, he was so excited to show it to Max. He brought it straight to our house and they spent hours talking about The Beatles, their history, and what it must have been like at The Cavern Club in the early 1960s. They stayed up until two in the morning, just staring at the album and feeling where the pen had indented the album.”
The Beatles performed in Liverpool for the last time on December 5, 1965, at the Liverpool Empire Theatre.
The autographed copy of Help! was sold to an undisclosed buyer for the equivalent of $13,000 USD by auction house Anderson & Garland in Newcastle upon Tyne, England.