The Beatles Festival at the Cavern Club in Liverpool has been cancelled.

In reaction, The Coronado Clarion will hold festival in Coronado.

Al Graham

Editor Coronado Clarion

Article From The Liverpool Echo:

The Mathew Street Festival is being axed and replaced with an international music event in Liverpool. The popular city centre event attracts more than 300,000 people each year over the August Bank Holiday weekend.

But Liverpool’s Mayor Joe Anderson said that a combination of high costs and a wish to “freshen up” the city’s music calendar meant that the festival could not continue as it had for the last 20 years. He said, “We have been looking at the best option for the festival since 2010.  In previous years it has been criticized.  Each year I would come in to find dozens of emails from families saying that they had been put off going in the future because they had witnessed people fighting or vomiting or even fouling the streets.

“Looking at the financial settlement from the government and also thinking about how to get the best value for money we wanted to find a way of carrying on all the best bits of the Mathew Street Festival.  We want to keep the carnival atmosphere but we want to get away from that drunken culture.  It was hugely disappointing last year to see the number of people – particularly young people – who were drinking too much at the festival.  It was clear that we needed to do something new and protecting the free element was at the heart of that.” The new festival – to be called The Liverpool International Music Festival – will see four days of events including a concert from the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra in Sefton Park and Beatles-influenced outdoor stages on the Pier Head.

Mayor Anderson said, “The events that we put on will be free, and they will be suited to a more family-friendly audience. For us, it’s about taking the best of what we had at Mathew Street and building on that.  It will still be Europe’s biggest annual free city centre music festival.”