 The album had limited commercial success, reaching a peak position of No. 111 during a seven-week run on the US Billboard 200 album chart. Assessments of the album often weigh the poor sound quality against the historic importance and insight provided into The Beatles'early stage act. Rolling Stone reviewer John Swenson called the album "poorly recorded but fascinating" and commented that it showed The Beatles as "raw but extremely powerful." Allmusic, commenting on a reissue, wrote: "The results were very low-fidelity, and despite The Beatles' enormous success, it took Taylor fifteen years to find someone greedy and shameless enough to release them as a record". Q Magazine described the recordings as having "certain historical interest" and remarked: "The show seems like a riot but the sound itself is terrible – like one hell of a great party going on next door." George Harrison gave the assessment: "The Star-Club recording was the crummiest recording ever made in our name!"
