What Bourbon Street is to New Orleans, Mathew Street is to Liverpool. The short, cobbled alley is the site of the tiny bôite, the Cavern Club, where the Beatles played in the early 1960s. It forms the center of the recently named Beatles Quarter and is teeming with tourists who want to pose beside the John Lennon statue or under one of the plaques dedicated to the band.

Just outside Liverpool, the family of "fifth Beatle" Pete Best is touting its basement, once a popular music venue called the Casbah Coffee Club. A George Harrison quote is etched on the window of a local beauty salon. "A good place to wash your hair, Liverpool—good, soft water," he reportedly said. Local buses carry the tagline for the city's John Lennon Airport: Above Us Only Sky.

In recent months, the Beatles heritage industry has had a new burst of activity. The first-ever Beatles-themed hotel—Hard Days Night Hotel, of course—opened its doors in February. In March, a local transportation company acquired the Beatles Story museum and announced its plans for a second location.

The band wasn't always so celebrated—or so exploited—in its hometown. Liverpudlians, famed for snubbing their noses at the rich and successful, had little love for these musicians who had left for London and Los Angeles. And 30 years ago, Liverpool was coping with race riots, dock strikes, and an unemployment rate of 20 percent. Crippled by debt, the city was unable to capitalize on the Beatles connection.

But over the years, Apple Corps, the business originally set up by the Beatles to reinvest their earnings, has quietly helped Liverpool get on its feet. Notoriously difficult to deal with and fiercely protective of the Beatles legacy, Apple Corps appears to have turned a benevolent blind eye on the city's burgeoning business of the Beatles. In return, many businesspeople in Liverpool tread carefully, knowing that Apple Corps could put an end to many ventures with a simple letter.

"A lot of people in Liverpool have been using images that you wouldn't get away with elsewhere, but there's been a reluctance to clamp down," says Bill Heckle, a former schoolteacher who started Cavern City Tours in 1983. The company operates the Magical Mystery Tour, a bus ride to Beatles landmarks, and organizes International Beatle Week each August.

But some locals are wondering whether the relationship is on the cusp of change. For 40 years, Apple Corps was headed by Neil Aspinall, a Liverpool-born school friend of Paul McCartney’s and a Beatles roadie. Aspinall retired in 2007 and died in March; there is speculation that his successor, Jeff Jones, will become more aggressive about monetizing the Beatles brand. (The company declined to comment on any aspect of this story.)

"Liverpool was very late getting in on the act," observes Tony Barrow, who was press officer for the Beatles during their formative years, from 1962 to 1968. That all changed in December 1980, when John Lennon was murdered in New York and fans began making pilgrimages to his birthplace.